In second grade, I could not see the blackboard from my desk. My teacher noticed; I went to the optometrist, and thereafter began my worsening nearsightedness. New specs annually for many years, broken frames, ugly frames, though–unlike many of my friends–I never lost my glasses because I could not see at all without them. Somewhere along the way, astigmatism kicked in. In high school, I blamed my ineptness at any sport involving a ball on my astigmatism (contact lenses corrected my nearsightedness but weren’t as effective on the misshapen cornea). But my ineptness was largely due to lack of interest in sports.
And now, encroaching cataract formations mean that I’m getting surgical procedures for the removal of those thickened “cascades” that make it hard to drive at night, read street signs, or discern a cat from a fox in the back meadow. I had my left eye operated on this past week, with the insertion of a medium-length lens that gives me 20/40 vision in that eye: a miracle to me after so many years of blur. I have to wait two weeks before the surgeon does the right eye, and in the meantime I’m discovering the true challenges of poor depth perception. My brain hasn’t adjusted to the changes in my eye, and simple things like walking downstairs or pouring tea into a cup pose unexpected difficulties.
Topping things off, I’ve contracted covid for the first time ever. So I am being extra careful as I walk through my house and into my yard–taking a fall due to bad depth perception would be one more problem I just don’t need.
So I have been considering vision lately, and what it means to perceive, to have differences in perspective, focus, framing. Or different cultural and social “lenses,” as we refer to them when we are teaching students to write compositions in college. It is as easy to trip oneself up metaphorically as physically if one pays no attention to such perceptions.
Today, I feel to ill to spend much time pondering. But I have enjoyed looking at the photos–taken from different vantage points and times of day–of the lovely tree on the other side of the riverbed from Joya. Very healing, as trees can be.
ann e michael 
When you have a change in vision, a change in perspective, a very different world opens up before and around you. I suspect, like my wife, you will be surprised how colors look after the second cataract surgery. She found that earlier descriptions of object needed refinement with her new visual pallate. And when I developed wet macular degeneration in one eye I knew I was lucky in that I was the odd case where it affected the periphral vision in my eye rather than the center. But that changed soon enough when I developed a macular hole and geographic atrophy in the central vision of that eye. But the brain’s neuroplasticity is a wonder and the hole in the vision in the right eye (close the left and the car 20 feet in front of me disappears) is ignored by the brain which takes the good peripheral vision of the right and merges only that with the full vision of the leftl. Still, from time to time, it is interesting to close the left eye and see the world warped by the right eye. It is odd but at the same time it is wonderful to have a new perspective on things. And so long as the left eye behaves I can drive as badly as I ever have.
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We think we see the world as it is. As my wife learned when she had her cataracts removed, she was shocked how different and brighter colors appeared. She acknowledged that the would have to revisit some of her writing to update her descriptions. And I have learned, first hand, we assume our vision will be with us forever, changing slowly over time. When I developed wet macular degeneration in my (formerly) dominant right eye I counted myself lucky as, unusually, it appeared in the periphery and a short series of injections “froze” it. But not long thereafter I developed both geographic atrophy and a macular hole in the center vision of the right eye, essentially leaving that eye for reading purposes legally blind but still useful for its peripheral vision. Bless the human brain because its neuroplasticity enable my visual cortex to ignore the hole and merge the images from both eyes into a rather clear picture. Still it does have one wierd advantage. If when driving (I don’t do this except parked in a lot) if I close the left eye the car 20 feet in front of me disappears. But so long as the left eye continues to see well I will be able to drive as badly as I always have. But every now and again it is actually fun to close the left and see the world with the warped vision of the right eye. When the visual perspective changes, so does the broader perception and the world, or bits of it, is new and discoverable.
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Useful info, Lou. And an interesting extension of the visual concept to the broader, wider world.
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Oh, I’m so sorry about the Covid–yes, be careful! I’ve been sick all week but it just seems to be a bad cold. If it helps, my husband had cataract surgery and toric lens inserts several years back and after a short period of adjustment, it’s been great.
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