The Watcher Cat

The Watcher Cat

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Temporarily Normal

So, while la Caterina and I were visiting her family for Thanksgiving this past week, my brother-in-law, who is an extremely skilled Doctor of Optometry, gave me a very thorough eye exam, with some good news--my myopia is slightly reduced this year. Then we went to find glasses. As he watched me peer with my suit-inch focal length into the mirrors, he had an inspiration. He whisked me to the back, popped two contact lenses in that corrected for my myopia (though not my double vision and astigmatism), and took me back out to look at frames.

For the first time in nearly 40 years, I saw the world in full focus, without an apparatus hanging from my ears and weighing down my face.

What an extraordinary sight! To be so in touch the world without my normal mediating specs and without the normal feeling of vulnerability and disorientation that I take for granted! To see, direct--well, at least it felt direct.

We all see through lenses, after all, if only those of our eyes, our characters, and our preconceptions.

But for just a moment, I was sighted more like than the norm than I have been since I can clearly remember.

How nice to visit that world. And yet how clearly I can see with my apparatus. In another time and place, I would be that disoriented blinking mole all the time.

In short, life, as it is, has much to commend it. Even in all of its imperfections.

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