Perceptions

Prologue: Blur

I am a pair of slender, purple-rimmed spectacles. I make for simple mornings and effortless evenings. I offer color and clues. I am a sight and I am sight itself.

(More literally, here in 2011, I am a 10-year-old girl with glasses and the author of this piece. But the first part is more important.)

March 8, 2021: The Appointment (Part 2) (Gold Aviators)

In the words of Les Misérables, “The time is now / The day is here.” My new optometrist has just returned to this bleak, grey-cloaked examination room. Dr. Joseph Isik defies everything that I’ve come to expect of an eye specialist: he can hold a conversation, trusts my judgment, and has the dimensions and radiance of a fluorescent lamp. He has revealed that I have a nevus on my left eye. He has gone so far as to compliment my irises, despite seeing dozens of them each day. (“They’re just hazel,” I mean to say, but his praise has transfixed me.)

“Alrighty, the moment of truth,” he sings. Opening his palms like the magician he surely is, Isik reveals two teeny plastic cartons. I have spent months pining for their contents. I have spent a decade fearing them..

Do I fare well with any entities or substances coming even remotely close to my eyes? No. No. In fact, I react quite poorly in such situations. But it’s decided. I have committed to joining the mainstream. No more clouded vision. In order to turn a new leaf, I must cast aside my anxieties and embrace the subtle art of jabbing my fingers into my eye sockets.

Passing me my first lens, Isik gives a brief demonstration of the task at hand. Appears easy enough. Perhaps, the doctor ponders, we can begin with a simple exercise: touching my index finger to my naked cornea. Sounds somewhat doable. I give it a shot. I nearly throw up.

My squeamishness, it would seem, has not faded away as gracefully as I had hoped. But before I can apologize for being so shamefully sensitive, Isik has begun prying open my lids in an attempt to insert the contacts himself. It is a Clockwork Orange waking nightmare; it is the sincerest act of care. And though I lightly squeal and squirm, I certainly handle myself better this time around. Blinking profusely, I come to, glance around the room, and realize that I can see.

September 16, 2014: Practice (Part 1) (Black Ray-Bans)

They noticed that I was pretty good with my feet, so they made me field hockey goalie for the season. The whole thing reeks of desperation: their star keeper’s in high school now, whereas two years ago, after completing 21 shuttles of the PACER test (out of, like, 150), I started hacking like the victim of chronic asbestos exposure. I’m no athlete, and they know it.

But they need a goalie on their roster. I’ve signed my name, and – to be honest – I’m more than a little jazzed to be part of a team. Today’s our first practice and here in the claustrophobic girls’ locker room, I’ve donned all the fetid, chunky, garish orange gear. (There are pads, quite literally, everywhere.) Only one component remains: the brain barrier herself, my helmet.

And here she comes! She’s jet black, she’s heavier than a newborn baby, she carries the aroma of a dead squirrel. Oh, she’s just grand. Coronate me, coach!

And as the crown descends upon my head, I wish my former self well, knowing that a new epoch has begun. Goodbye, horribly-cliché-13-year-old sob story, and hello –

“You’ll need to take off your glasses.”

Cue panic.

“Oh. Um. But then I won’t be able to … see.”

Nice one.

“You have contacts, don’t you?”

I do not.

“I do not.”

“Well for God’s sake, kid, how did you think this was gonna go?”

Ahem, you came to me, remember? And if you don’t let me play, you’re screwed, lady.

“I’m so, so, so, so, so sorry! I promise I can make it work! Can we loosen this? I’ll just cram the glasses underneath. See?”

Breathing labored and frames askew, I have sealed my fate for the next two months. “Look, as long as your vision’s intact, you can do whatever you want.”

Alright, I’ll take it. But just know that I will never, under any circumstances, get contacts.

March 9, 2021: Practice (Part 2) Day 2 with contacts.

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Yesterday, you wore them for five minutes, and you neither put them in nor took them out yourself.

Today, you have yet to attempt insertion. Because you’re absolutely mortified by the prospect of it.

But that’s why you’ve set aside 30 whole minutes before class! You cannot possibly take half an hour to do that which a normal person does in 10 seconds!! That would be downright ludacris!!!

Crack open the first case. Scrub your hands until they sparkle. Now dry them until they burn. Place the lens on the very tip of your index finger. Look in the mirror but for the love of God, do not look yourself in the eye. Align your missile with your target. Ignore the faint ringing in your ears that suggests you’re losing consciousness. Ignore the faint taps of your housemate at the door – yes, you’ve overtaken the one shared bathroom, but dammit, she can wait. Allow your soul to leave your body. Aim. Fire.

AND BAM! You’ve failed in the most pathetic fashion imaginable. Not only did your manic blinking block the contact from your cornea – it has also caused the lens to drop directly down the drain. And somehow, your unscathed eye still stings like an alcohol-dabbed wound.

It’s fine. You have dozens more. Repeat the process. Repeat the process. Repeat the process and praise every otherworldly being for preserving this lens, no matter how averse it is to suctioning to your face. Repeat the process and WAIT, something’s happening here, blink blink blink, the contact’s not on your finger anymore, and now there’s a new kind of stinging, as if your eye has developed a tumorous growth, and you want nothing more than to expel this foreign object from your person but you fight the urge to perform the “Out, vile jelly!” scene from King Lear and would you look at that! Praise be! You’ve done it!

Equipped with 20/15 vision, you have officially defied all odds. Revel in this moment for as long as it takes to regain your sense of awareness. Now use this mediocre eyesight to check the time, and thank yourself again for factoring in that healthy half-hour cushion.

Squint. Let the clock come into focus. Class started 6 minutes ago.

May 24, 2018: The Appointment (Part 1) (Tortoise Frames)

In the words of Les Misérables, “The time is now / The day is here.” I’ve mustered up the courage to tell my optomotrist – Martin Newman, whose patients praise him online as “an older, relatively obese man who has absolutely no personality” – that I want contacts. I suppose “want” is an overstatement. But I’m ready for my big reveal, my Velma moment; the time when everyone who’s seen my face almost every day for the past 7 years will finally, truly, see my face.

Newman’s making sure that my prescription hasn’t changed. The alarming proximity of our faces is made even more distressing by his severe breaths. They’re more a thunder than a wheeze; they resound straight through to my retinas. As he rolls away on his miniscule,

one-moment-from-imploding-under-his-intense-and-highly-concentrated-weight stool, I make my own shuddering exhalation. Here goes nothing.

“Dr. Newman, I was wondering if I might be able to get contacts today.”

The word “contact” precludes him – in every possible irony – from meeting my gaze. “…Do you think that would be possible?”

And suddenly two bratwursts (later recognized as Newman’s fingers) are tugging at my eyelids, while two more squeeze a chartreuse fluid into my now-gaping sockets. I go berserk.

“EEEEEEEEEEERRRRGHGGGGGGGGGRGGGGGGGGRGGGGGGGGGHHHH,”

squawks the incapacitated girl to her merciless assailant, flailing slightly and causing the liquid to fall like tainted, toxic tears.

“If you cannot handle that, young lady, you cannot handle contacts.”

Ah, how swell. I suppose now’s as fitting a time as ever to hit rock bottom.

March 13, 2021: Driving Lesson

This is My Year. I relinquished my “minor” status two years ago, but Today I am an Adult. Because I have Contacts. And before long, I’m going to get my Driver’s License. And right now, I’m Driving, training for my Road Test, while wearing – you guessed it – the Contacts that I put into my Eyes this morning with Relative Ease. Life is going So Well. So Well! Am I…the Best Driver Ever? The Most Independent Person?

Whocaresthatmydadislegallyobligatedtobeinthepassengerseatrightnow? I have Matured.

Kind of funky that my head is … Pounding right now. That the street sign a few feet away is … Illegible. That, upon closer consideration, my distance vision has … Gone Completely to Shit.

Okay. It’s Totally Fine. Maybe if I just rub my eyes a little … here at this red light …

Rubrubrubrubrubrub.

Fuck.

It appears that my Left Lens. Which is decidedly the wrong prescription. Has dislodged itself from my cornea. And found a home under the gas pedal.

I Abhor Contacts.

March 29, 2020: Fog (Part 2) (Blue Translucent Frames)

To step outside is to be blinded. To take one breath is to envelope yourself in a weighty, pervasive cloud. To live through a pandemic is to become your most melodramatic diarist.

What I mean is that glasses and KN95s do a great job of prohibiting each other from carrying out their basic functions. Even more simply: mask + glasses = major condensation. And yes, I’ll take foggy vision over risk of infection any day. And yes, this minor inconvenience is even more insignificant in the context of a global health crisis. And yes, there’s an easy fix to this minute hindrance. I’ve been rethinking my vendetta against contacts.

November 15, 2018: Fog (Part 1) (Blue Translucent Frames)

A passage from the first book of The Aeneid, translated today in class:

“Venus surrounds the walking men [Aeneas and his friend Achates] with a dark cloud,

and the goddess enveloped them with a great cloak of fog,

so that no one was able to discern them, nor to touch them,

nor to construct a delay, nor to ask the causes of their coming.”

“Discern” is a potent word, states my Latin instructor. It means to see someone for who they truly are. It goes beyond mere sight.

I would like to be seen.

December 8, 2021: In My Eyes

A planet drifts within each pool of milk. Their crusts are a stormy cerulean, their mantle a soft chartreuse. Their outer core is a rusty brown, their inner core an impossible black hole.

I couldn’t distinguish such subtleties before; perhaps I hadn’t even tried. But no longer must I gaze through window panes, with their smudges and cobwebs and – figurative – bird droppings. Never have I observed life with such ease.

Staring at a mirror, into my own pupils, I can discern a faint reflection. She’s hardly abstracted. She’s distant, yet she couldn’t be closer. I think she looks rather lovely.

Epilogue: Blur

It’s terribly odd to be recognized. Does my current image not differ from the one that exists within your memory? Have I not, in turn, transcended perception? In this choice, did I seek conspicuousness or invisibility? And what does it mean if I see differently and see myself differently and yet am (seen) just the same?

Defining yourself by a flimsy pair of frames is a mistake. Electing to abandon those frames is psychotic. It leaves you with no choice but to build from scratch – to redesign and reconstruct your entire person. It’s the self-inflicted identity crisis that you thought you could hold off for at least a few more years.

But what, then, does it mean to find comfort in this current state? And balance, knowing that you have not completely cast aside that other way of life and may switch between your two modes whenever you see fit?

At my bedside, the gold aviators sit neatly in their case.

Oh, please. With each metaphor, you dig yourself deeper into the world’s most shallow abyss. Sure, you switched to contacts at age 20. But when were you planning to tell them that you

still

can’t

ride

a bike?

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