Name:
Location: St. Vincent & Grenadines

You were driving home in the dark on one glass-slippered heel, window sliced open and bathing in the snowliquor of the night air. We heard you singing, and couldn't bear to wake you.

09 January 2006

All the other options held before me are growing increasingly unclear.

I'm fond of glasses in many ways, really I am. It's the dependency upon them that wears thin. Some spectacle-wearers can take them or leave them, but I'm so myopic that I'm helpless without them -- can't see farther than six inches from the end of my nose with any clarity.

Which is a royal pain when they get dusty, stained, scratched, bent, or broken, as they inevitably will. Losing tiny nuts and screws is tricky when it happens in the midst of the working day. If I'm lucky enough to find the nut and screw after it falls on the floor -- tricky at the best of times, and especially tricky when I, ahem, don't have my glasses on -- and I'm lucky enough to have my glasses repair kit with me, I still have to summon the fine motor skills necessary to replace the tiny nut and screw with a tiny screwdriver. Without my glasses on. While everything else gets put on hold.

Enough of that. My specs have influenced my style for nearly 20 years now, but they also put a crimp in it. I've been renting my eyes since I was 12 years old, and it's time to put a down payment on peepers of my own.

In the neighborhood of four grand, it's going to be. And since it's elective surgery, I'm paying out of pocket. So I'll be paying for a while. But it's worth it to me if I can have 15 to 20 years of clear sight, before I go presbyopic like everybody does. (The prefix presby- means old. Does that mean that Presbyterians believe in old people?)

You can go here to read a poem of mine that was just published in The Dickens, which has some interesting resonance with my forthcoming surgery, despite the fact that I wrote it nearly nine years ago. My optometrist looked at me strangely after he read it.

1 Comments:

Blogger Jemaleddin said...

I'll expect frequent updates on the condition of your eyes - I've been wanting laser surgery for a while but have been too afraid of the complications: starbursts and loss of night-vision and whatnot.

And Presbyterians are led by old people: presybters, in fact. Sorta like deacons, for those of a more baptist origin. (Yet again, being a preacher's son comes in handy. We'll add that to the list right after "emergency bong repair.")

5:18 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home