yyt

i drove to get the papers because it was raining. pulling out of the circle and turning left i noticed that things looked strange. closing one eye everything looked fine. the other was missing a contact. strange. bought the paper came back to look in the machine and around the house finding nothing.

35 years of wearing contact and losing nothing then in three years i am down to my backup. having to buy new ones, tuesday i head into to be fitted for new ones. the usual jokes i cannot see the chart without my lenses, with them i can read the bottom line. he verifies this then starts the fast paced multiple choice quiz - is this better or this - here it was “number one or number two”.

he seemed to be taking more time than i remember. i also noticed that nothing was really improving my sight. he told me to rest my eyes a bit and we would start again in about 20 minutes. read an article in smithsonian trashing jeff wall.

back for round two and again nothing was really improving. he went out to make a phone call. it seems that my eyes had moulded to the hard lenses - from decades of wearing - and that the corneas were changing as he was measuring them. i needed to have my eyes rest before he could get a decent reading. there were two options wear one lens and let one eye rest then do the same for the other eye. five weeks an eye. or i could dump the lenses he would fit me with spectacles and the process would take only five weeks.

i opted for the second.

problem here was that he could only correct my vision to 20/60. to be able to drive it has to be 20/40. heading home would be interesting. found it somewhat ironic that i would be teaching photography blind. however, would bike to the train and in chicago i walk everywhere. my close up vision was fine i could read and look at snaps i simply couldn’t recognise people on the street.

the spectacles gave me headaches and in truth weren’t better than not wearing them objects looked clearer but there was fringing and fun house distortion without them out of focus but none of the other aberrations. the spectacles were only a benefit at night. i preferred the out of focus world, i started to recognise people via their actions and posture. taught with no problem, didn’t like the fact that i couldn’t drive.

still wandered with the leiquinhas - again as viewfinders rely on near vision and rangefinder cameras don’t require perfect vision as the determination of distance is more mathematical. it seemed that i noticed details better which seems counter intuitive.

it was depressing though, a week into this i was wondering how i would make it five weeks. i am of the opinion that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. my corneas had to return to their natural state after years of hard lenses but with those lenses and my mutant corneas, i could read text at great distances, now they are hoping for 20/20.