Tag Archives: vision

Depth perception

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.

the “perfect tree” as seen from the Joya cortija
the holm oak closer, near dusk
…and from down the hill, in sun

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.

Vision/revision

Although the word “vision” derives from the Latin visionem, it first appeared in English with the definition of things seen in the mind or via the supernatural. Vision as simply the sense of sight is a later meaning (late 15th c.), and vision referring to foresight dates only to 100 years ago [see https://www.etymonline.com/word/vision#etymonline_v_7835]. The cliché “a vision of loveliness” provides an example of the early, 13th century meaning, as does the phrase “visions of sugarplums.” Poets have long been known for writing about, or being under the influence of, such vision.

When the first flush of poetic vision inspires work that later needs some adjustment, writers turn to revision. According to Etymology Online, revision’s history in English first showed up as a noun in the 1610s: “act of looking over again, re-examination and correction,” from French révision, from Late Latin revisionem (nominative revisio) “a seeing again” … the meaning “that which is revised, a product of revision” is from 1845.” This noun, and its verb form (the act/work/verb-sense of revising), keep me occupied a good bit of the time, especially lately while I’m trying to catch up with a large backlog–20 years of poetry drafts.

And then there’s this: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/cataracts#vm_A_20f6f6e1… blurred vision, leading to eye strain, drier eyes, halos around lights at night, trouble reading street signs. Yes, time to get a cataract evaluation, suggests my optometrist. “It’s our legacy,” my brother says, because our dad and most of his siblings got cataracts before age 70; Dad was only 48.

Efforts to correct cataracts apparently date as far back as 600 BCE in India, reports the American Academy of Ophthalmology, but the “father of modern cataract extraction surgery” was Jacques Daviel in 1747; since then, the surgery’s come a long way. I’m not worried about having it done and actually rather eager to see better and not need glasses all the time, though it could be over a year before that happens. In the meantime, the symptoms are irritating but not too significant. I can read books (and drafts of poems) just fine. I just might want to avoid driving in the dark, rainy nights of midwinter.

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Anticipating removal of the thickening, cloudy lens that blurs my visual outlook offers a metaphor for the revision process in my writing. Observation, reflection, critical analysis, problem-solving, intervention, re-envisioning, repair. And perhaps: clarity, if I’m lucky.