Wednesday, November 25, 2020

See Spot


I'm not sure my eyes are working properly anymore. Of course, they never have. All I have to do is take my glasses off for a moment to realize how lucky I am to be alive now because in another era I would have blundered into a tar pit. I would have been stomped into salsa by a mastodon. I would have died young but at least I would never have seen it coming.

I should have my eyes checked again. But it's been less than a year since the last exam and I can wait. It isn't any one thing, anyway. Seems like I'm always trying to navigate around the smudgy bits and exploring my trifocals for areas of clarity in any given situation. Supposedly I have a cataract that no one is in a hurry to do anything about. I also have enough floaters that in certain lights it's like I'm living in an aquarium, which isn't so bad. The only place it's really annoying is at the piano. I wonder if I can get sheet music the size of the old Dick And Jane book we learned from in first grade. We sat in its shadow. Four kids could make a fort out of that sucker without even using blankets.


I like to think of my eyes as having "let themselves go." That's the expression people use to describe old people who have flat-out given up on trying to be something they're not. I guess it's meant to be derogatory. Seems to me if you're an old woman who rolls out of bed and into a muumuu and scuff slippers, you've got a good grip on things. Mostly no one describes me as having let myself go because it implies I was holding it together before, and there's not a lot of evidence for that. Comfort, Sloth, and I are a mighty team, and Vanity doesn't have a shot against us when we stick together.

Some things I can see more clearly now, in this life pause we've been given. Our isolation is not without its blessings, especially with the stripping-away of diversion and trivial pursuit. So much of what we do is designed to distract us from our eventual, unimportant demise. We acquire mindlessly, we manufacture conflict. We're desperate and diligent in filling up our lives, we feed our rage and our fears. We complain about our busyness and yet we feed that too. We don't like to think about our lifetimes contracting. But there's no getting around that. There's something to be said about knowing what's important, and a lot of unimportant stuff needs to be moved out of the way to see it.


What we need to do is let ourselves go. We're the ones in our way. Every best joy is simple. We all need things for simple survival, and we should do our best to see that everyone gets them, because right now the winners and losers are determined by a game of dice. But we don't need much--not nearly as much as we imagine. Rejoice in good food. Rejoice in food at all. Go outside. Stay inside. Play music. Play at all. Make art. Make out. Make up. Everything is bigger than we are, and that is the biggest comfort and joy of all.

I rejoice in weak eyes that can still see, and I rejoice in you, and in everything that still wings and still slithers and still sprouts on a still-green earth. And I'll fight for all of these tomorrow, but today I'll let my thankfulness for it all roll through me. Gratitude is another word for peace.

That much is clear.

38 comments:

  1. All the eye issues you describe are most familiar. Sadly retinal detachment in left eye has left it almost blind and macula degeneration in the right has really worsened. No mor driving or even reading print . Yet there is still much ti enjoy and be thankful for. I have visited your posts over many years and loved them all. IPad allows me to still read and post comment once in a while. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've got gratitude up the wazoo and it helps immensely to get by on a day to day basis. Wallowing in the infirmities, both real and imagined, of aging is only fodder for humor in my world. You and your humble blog are just more icing on the cake. Stay as happy and healthy as possible, my friend!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is one HELL of a lot of fodder for humor. I swan.

      Delete
    2. I don't think I've heard "I swan." since my maternal grandmother died in 1978. Are you her incarnate spirit?

      Delete
  3. A big yes from here. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday here but I do celebrate (daily) the joys you have mentioned. And am grateful for them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I see you have your own Santa!
    Good for you . . . .

    ReplyDelete
  5. So Santa is visiting you? I thought he only drank milk.

    ReplyDelete
  6. So Santa is visiting you? I thought he only drank milk.

    ReplyDelete
  7. May your Thanksgiving beer be plentiful. I am thankful for many things, not least of all your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm so glad I read this today. It's a beautiful world after all.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Your Santa looks good. I am struggling with piano playing while reading music and sewing at times.... Love to you two on Thanksgiving! BTW we need to figure out our cousins winter challenge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just figgered out why I'm having trouble quilting the last one--d'Oh--I didn't have the quilting foot on! This is what happens when too much time passes. I forget everything.

      Delete
  10. baby boomers are going to get abused and treated like garbage in the retirement homes. Maybe you boomers shouldn't have been so selfish and arrogant and greedy. Literally everyone hates baby boomers now. Enjoy those retirement homes, and good luck, boomers!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aw! Happy Thanksgiving anyway, Anonymous. Just give happiness a TRY, and then maybe you can get a job, move out of your parents' basement, find a significant other, procreate, and add to this fucking mess we call Reality. Yeah, we fucked up... but you will, too. It's what humans do. Hopefully, some better, more advanced species will take over next time.

      Delete
    2. This is not a real person. We let it hang around but it has to eat at the little table.

      Delete
  11. Every day is Thanksgiving, Christmas and my birthday all at once. I am continually amazed and awed. Happy Thanksgiving to you, Murr, and to Dave and Pootie.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Rejoice, be thankful and reduce the clutter in our lives. All good advice. Thanks for this, I needed it today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I may have HINTED at clutter...and yet it remains!

      Delete
  13. Thanksgiving is a holiday I'd like to see take hold in Australia. No presents or cards or crass marketing, just sharing a meal and showing gratitude for the things we already have.
    The gods of consumerism are trying their hardest to make Halloween a 'thing' here, flooding the cheap stores with tons of ghastly plastic crap and rubbishy one-wear costumes. We've never had a Halloween tradition here, although my Scottish forebears might have. Goodness knows what they'd have made of blood soaked nurses uniforms at Aldi but I'm guessing they wouldn't have approved of the colossal waste of money.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When people started doing huge installations on their lawns for Halloween, I kind of liked it. Especially when I learned it bugged certain kinds of Christians. But now it just looks like a giant bunch of plastic.

      Delete
  14. Enjoyed the read. I still see the Dave I saw in grade school. And as for you, take care of your eyes. Remember just a year ago I had a brain tumor taken out that also took some of my sight. You just have to!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dave never really changes much! I'm not sure I realized that about your sight. That's bad. I think I'm ruining mine with too much screen-reading.

      Delete
  15. I am not unknown. I am Mari Belsky dang it.

    ReplyDelete
  16. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  17. As to the cataract, don't fret it too much. I had early (age 58) onset, it looked like there was a constant fog settleing over me. The lens replacement is a outpatient procedure, and is actually interesting from a patient's perspective. Also, if it's done bilateraly, you won't need glasses except for reading.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But I actually look better in glasses....no, I'm not worried, but evidently they like it to be a little more established before they get out the ray gun.

      Delete
    2. That's a insurance thing, none of the health insurers will pay until vision is decreased to beyond some point.

      Delete