☯
A week ago I bought a digital alarm clock to make sure I get up in time to ride with my brother to Fayetteville for my left eye cataract surgery at the VA Hospital there. The problem was that the digital alarm clock ran off batteries and didn't make a loud enough noise to wake me up three mornings in a row.
Last night I went and bought an analog electric alarm clock that has connections for a 9-volt battery in case the power grid goes off. I brought it home and tried it out, and it is plenty loud. I set it to go off this morning at seven o'clock and it did that in spades. Wow! I ran to shut it off!
Its also a clock radio, but i didn't try out that aspect of it. I haven't listened to a radio station for years, and so I don't know which stations broadcast at five o'clock in the morning, and don't possess the slightest interest in finding out.
The noxious buzzer does the trick, so why bother? I kept the receipt with the idea of taking it back for a refund after I use it in the morning, but I might just keep it because all of my appointments at the VA arthritic clinic in Durham are fairly early on Friday mornings. Besides, I might just start listening to the radio again to interrupt the sound of silence.
Twice yesterday I went out to the brightly lit box stores to walk around in their air-conditioning and get some exercise. I not only went there because it's terribly hot outside, but to walk up and down the aisles closing first one eye and then the other. That way I still see the world through my left eye that still has the brown-colored cataract lens, and the new way I see the world through my right eye.
When the surgeon takes the bandage off my left eye on Saturday, I'll never see the world the way it became for me over the last 72 years again. At least, I hope that's the way it turns out. The surgery could go south, and I could be blind in my left eye forever. I don't believe that for a minute, but I have to be realistic and remember its possible.
It's quite startling to go to the gardening section of the Lowe's store and look at the flowers there with my old and new vision. The color of the flowers are radically different when I close my right eye and then my left. With the cataract replaced in my right eye I see a brilliantly pink flower, and when I then close the fixed eye, and look at the same blossom with my left eye, it's orange-ish red and unfocused. It's almost like I can "see" the very air itself surrounding the pink flower.
The only colors that stay the same are the brown/black ones. I don't know what will happen when I can look at the flowers there with clear lens in both eyes. I only have two days to find out. Tomorrow morning I'll get the surgery, and then, around ten o'clock Saturday morning I'll go in for the post-op appointment, the bandage will be removed, and by eleven o'clock I'll be riding home with my brother with two plastic lens in my eyes to see the world with. I could say that I can't wait, but I pretty much have to. I've waited already for a good long time.
Maybe when both eyes are done I'll be happy instead of being a little sad like I was/am after having the first eye done. It's hard to describe how having my sight changed that radically caused me to be depressed. I think it's because of the prospect of having to learn to see all over again. Nothing visible will be like I've grown to expect it to be.
The objects in the world I will see then will most likely stay the same externally, it's the way I will view them that will be different. That means I'll have to change my mind. Mind is speech. Whatta ya think I'm writing so fiercely now for? With any luck, by Sunday I will have already partially changed my mind with written speech.
In a couple of weeks you won't be able to figure out I ever needed eyeglasses. When you look deeply into my hooded eyes... for a change... they will be clearly focused. It could be like the old days in a few days when people used to say that it frightened them when I looked through them. That had nothing to do with my intent. I have a protruding brow that makes it difficult for the other to see what I'm looking at unless they get up right in my face. Then, it's too late.
The most lasting principle I took away from all those NLP seminars and hypnosis schools was that nothing need be done to get people to enter a somnambulistic trance. They do it to themselves by volunteering to abandon hope for my sake. Because of what they've convinced themselves is to be trusted about me not taking their bait. It ain't easy being green (the emerald is Taurus's birthstone). But, when vegetable oracles come easy, it makes all other approaches to divination seem un-necessarily droll. Learning to do nothing well takes ti-me.
My life seems thoroughly associated with receptivity. The number two as opposed to number one. In almost every case my homework is about remembering that I get by giving. If I passively wait long enough the people I seek influence with will succumb to their own desire to please me, and that's what pleases me. I need nothing more.
I hate having to change my mind. I do it all the time, but with artificial lens, there won't be a possibility of reversing my decisions. It frightens me to consider that I might not be able to go ho-me again. The world I see on Saturday will be the world I see for the rest of my life.
Well, as long as I don't get other eye problems. Like macular degeneration. My mother had that happen to her in her nineties. She lost her mind when her ability to speak became confused. She couldn't believe her eyes anymore after her cataract surgery. Goodbye-cruel-world. No blame.
☯
