November 24, 2003
seeing through my eyes
This is a photo of samples of tints for lenses taken at my optician's. I have rose colored sunglasses which I recommend highly. (The tint is called Serengeti). They make almost everything look prettier.
I can remember getting my first pair of glasses in fourth grade. They were cat's eyes. The world was astonishing. I couldn't believe that this was what everyone else saw. Such rich detail, so far away. I can remember trying to walk down a flight of stairs with my new glasses and feeling worried about missing a step, misjudging a distance. I still feel that way. Ostensibly, I was nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other - wearing glasses eventually made me completely nearsighted.
Parade Magazine had photos of what nearsighted and farsighted people see; you know, sharp up close, foggy in the distance and vice versa. It was a revelation to my mother when I showed her. She couldn't believe that the world looked like this to me. She was always shocked to hear about any difference between us.
When I was in high school contacts were invented, and I learned to wear them. This was a painful process, requiring the development of calluses on the inside of the eyelid over a period of weeks. My ears would ring so when I put my contacts in. My contacts were small and hard. My friend Barb had contacts the size of half her eyeball. Contacts provided me with my first experience of peripheral vision - a panorama - I didn't run out of vision around corners. I wore contacts until my sophomore year in college when I managed a scene shop in a summer stock theater. I kept scratching my cornea because of all the sawdust that blew in my eyes. I think I resigned myself to wearing glasses at that time. I started saying "You can't make a point with a contact lens", sweeping off my glasses and staring into the eyes of the other.
I've had a number of scratched corneas. They can put you to bed, in the dark, patched and completely motionless, wishing for sandbags. Since your eyes are hooked together, you cannot move your unscratched eye, without irritating the scratched one. In fact, you cannot move your body without moving your eyes. They're suspended in your body like beach balls in water, moving with every ripple. Having a scratched cornea brings this phenomenon into awareness because any ripple is accompanied by excruciating pain.
About fifteen years ago, I woke up with a scratched cornea just three months after my kundalini energy was restored in a group with a phenemonal healer. I had called up too much life force energy before I had the structure to contain it. The energy went away with the scratch. It's taken me a long time to build a container that can handle it.
I also had a scratched cornea after my cataract surgery. I was very young to have cataracts, early fifties. I didn't take steroids or have diabetes either, but I had smoked cigarettes. All the eighty year old ladies I know who have had this surgery were fine in a day. I spent a week in bed with audio books (which I have come to love). Nine years later, I still have a cataract in my left eye. I dread the surgery, and I savor the capacity to focus one of my eyes naturally. It's getting pretty foggy and yellow, though. Monet, the impressionist, had cataracts. I think that's why he painted the light the way that he did.
In a recent seminar I attended, Ruthy Alon (www.bonesforlife.com) talked about the eyes affecting posture and body movement. Someone asked if wearing bifocals could do it. She said yes. I have something much stranger than bifocals. I think some of my lifelong difficulty with coordination and balance had to do with my peculiar eyesight But the real problem was my mother's constant horrified attention to my "clumsiness".
Here's a little synchronicity. Last night I discovered a little red zit on my right eyelid, of all places. It drew my attention to my eye. Thanks. Now that I wrote about my eyes, it can go away. It wasn't conscious until now.
Ironically, I think I have quite a good eye.