So - here is an Autumn thing I'd been getting ready to write about for several days now. I was reminded of this odd little quirk when I was inside sitting down and acquiring a bit more caffeine in the middle of the day; and I took my glasses off. This is what I saw out my window:
Actually took quite a bit of work with the camera to get it blurred approximately right. Last time I asked the optometrist what my uncorrected vision was nowadays, the answer was "Oh, around 20/230 at this point. " That's beyond legally blind. I've had glasses since the 3rd grade; so, used to it.
In general when people see an image like this, the first impulse is to "fix it" - and put it back in focus. But the world looks like this to me any time my glasses are off; so - I still look. Is there something to see? The impressionist blurred fall leaves out my window looked quite lovely to me. A little more than the camera can capture, because there was always a little movement from light wind. Very nice.
So of course I put my glasses back on, to see what it really looked like - and it looked like nothing at all; the gorgeous display vanished into some sharp separate bits that just did not have any impact. At all.
Yeah, there's probably a metaphor floating around here somewhere...
I took the glasses back off, and just settled back and enjoyed the Monet/Van Gogh Autumn. That view is lovely - highly evocative of the season, for me, and "enough", all by itself. Coffee and - perspective; this is reality too. Comfy. Move around a little for a different view and - the whole woods is a landscape out of a museum.
This made me recall that I have long felt sorry for people with normal vision- because they can't take their glasses off, and see this way. That first struck me when I was quite young, probably in the first year I had glasses. We were putting up the Christmas tree; and I was given the job of crawling under it to adjust the stand a bit- and a wayward branch took my glasses off.
Looking up through the tree, the world opened up, and the magic expanded manyfold. The tree lights changed into fantasy stars, with scintillating points; the ornaments now reflected the lights with about 50 times the shimmer. I stayed under the tree; on my back, glasses off - until the family started to wonder if I was ok. Then I did have the fun of telling my sister, also a glasses wearer, about the phenomenon. She crawled under, after a lot of convincing; and had the same epiphany. "Ohmylord. It's so much more beautiful!" My brothers - don't wear glasses, and could not understand.
I've climbed under every Christmas tree, every year, and repeated and recaptured. It's a very durable joy. Normally sighted people can kind of replicate it by squinting so that the eyelashes obscure most of the world - but the squinting part is an effort and intrusive. Us legally blind folk are the lucky ones here.
Sometimes - the world looks better with your glasses off. It's still the world, and reality - but maybe a little easier on us than all the hard edges. I recommend it.
If you're in the mood for a little more escape- and a little more Autumn; these two posts have been popular for a good while -
The Turn Of The Year
Zen Firewood
The world still turns.