Paksworld

I was very overdue for a visit to the eye doctor–Stuff keeps coming up–but since my husband needed to see one with some urgency, we made matching appointments and I had the full “do” today.  As I suspected, I’m getting cataracts, but they’re in the early stages.  Everything else is healthy.   I need new glasses (which I was pretty sure of, too.

I’ve been nearsighted since at least age 8 (when I got my first glasses) and severely so since about 12-13.     As I got older, I had this fantasy that advancing age would neatly cure the myopia…but that’s not how it worked. First, my close vision got farsighted…no longer could I put my nose almost on the page of the Compact OED and read its tiny print without a magnifying glass (and the glass that came with it had long since gone walkabout, used on other things.)   The distance vision was still over 20/500.  (Yeah, it wasn’t minor myopia!)  But finally, today, it looks like age is accomplishing something in the distance vision department.   It’s down to something over 20/300.   That’s still being unable to see the big E without glasses, but at least I can see the chart and tell that there’s something on it.  (It used to be a white blur, and if on a white wall just a faintly grayish blob.)

A writer’s physical vision and creative vision aren’t necessarily linked…but when in my case, I think my preference for art with well-defined details,  a dislike (much stronger years ago) for ‘blurry’ pastels  and media that doesn’t allow clear focus arises from the unpleasant blur I have experienced every time I take my glasses off.    I want my world in focus.    When I photograph moving water, I don’t like the blur that became popular back in the 70s.    Not only am I fascinated by the shapes that the surface of moving makes, but I want to see every bubble, every drop.    The white blur is how I see a waterfall or a rushing stream without my glasses….and thus, to me, not realistic or pleasant.

So when I write, in whatever setting, I “see” it in sharp focus.    I was taught to see–to pay attention to the real colors (including of shadows), the actual shapes,  partly by my early struggle to see as my eyes got worse, partly by the ability to stick my face close and see tiny details, and partly by my mother, who had had art training and painted when she could, in her spare time.    I remember her telling me,  when I was in about second grade, that tree trunks aren’t all brown, nor leaves all green, the way teachers told us to color pictures of trees.   She took me outside to the chinaberry tree and had me look closely at the bark, at the various colors, at the way sun and shadow changed those colors, and then at the leaves and the effect of sunlight on the leaves and the different levels.  (That chinaberry bark had magenta, orange, lime green, tan, and yes, some brown–but not all Crayola ™ brown.   Once I’d looked at one tree–really looked–of course I looked at others.  And then bushes.  Flowers.  Leaves.   People.  The color of the shadow under a mesquite tree compared to a huisache tree…or a Texas ebony.   The color cast into a wall in shadow by a sidewalk of colored concrete.  And so on.

I had been told my eyesight might go earlier than others–and at 15 I was told that accommodation had gone as far as it could with glasses–but the myopia was still progressing.   They  put me in contact lenses to put some pressure on the eyeball and for 17 years I wore contacts, until the dusty environment of a south Texas riding arena made that impossible for a time.  And since the myopia didn’t progress, I just stayed in glasses after that.

Again…impetus to see, while I could see.   And, being a writer, the impetus to attempt to convey clearly focused images–but not just visual.    I’m grateful that today’s exam didn’t turn up any reasons for immediate worry, and that my new glasses should give me clearer vision than I’ve had for a couple of years.