Tag: vision

oct 11/RUN

2.5 miles
river road trail, south/edmund, north
49 degrees

Ran south on the river road trail to the 44th st parking lot, then down to the grassy overlook. Such a wonderful view of the river, shining in the morning sun! Windy today. How many leaves will be off of the trees by tomorrow? Tried to pay attention to my breath, to be grateful to be out on the trail this morning, and to think in triples (mostly dactyls):

  • full of grief
  • filled with joy
  • suffering
  • bountiful
  • troublesome
  • lacking life
  • falling leaves
  • swirling wind
  • river view
  • running path
  • moving feet
  • dripping nose
  • breathe in deep

Still working on my mood ring poems. I think I’ve finally figured out the form–so tedious! I had to create a table with separate boxes for each letter. I think it was worth the extra time and I’m pleased that I could do the entire thing on my own, without any help from Scott.

oct 4/RUN

5.25 miles
franklin hill
35 degrees

What a wonderful morning for a run! Sunny, no wind, cool. Saw my shadow a few times. Admired the river, the glowing thinning trees. Felt nice and strong and happy to be breathing deeply outside, especially since I am having another sinus/allergy thing–I haven’t had one since June. Such a drag being stuffed up and tired–and devoting considerable energy to convincing myself I’m fine and it’s not the virus and it will only last a few days or a week. So glad running (and the nasal washes I’ve started doing) help. Ran down the franklin hill and then by some geese, taking over the path closest to the water. The water was still and thick–that wasn’t little bits of ice I was seeing? Not cold enough yet, right? Ran up the hill until I reached the Franklin bridge. Walked for a minute or 2, then ran back on seabury.

some random things to remember from this weekend

This morning I watched the London Marathon and saw Sara (without an h!) Hall run an amazing race, sprinting the last 400, after running for 2 hours and 21 minutes, to catch the person ahead of her and take second place. So exciting and inspiring to watch someone run so well and try as hard as she absolutely could.

Yesterday we drove to Duluth to see Lake Superior. On the way up, we stopped at a rest area. This was my first time inside a building with other people since March 8. Wow. Everyone was wearing a mask. It wasn’t too bad. I was reminded of my bad vision as I struggled to figure out which bathroom was which and whether or not there was someone in a stall when I tried checking for feet. It takes a much longer time for my eyes to focus and see, so I can’t just quickly walk into a bathroom and know I’m in the right one. I hate being slow or having to slow down to figure something out.

On the ride home in the evening, we heard “Maniac” on the radio from Flashdance. Those lyrics! (mostly cheesy, but I liked a few lines.) Scott and I both struggled to understand the line, “on the wire between will and what will be.” We wondered, was he actually saying “will and what won’t be”? but then Scott realized the first will meant your own agency while the second one referred to fate–on the wire between what you can control and what has already been decided. Wow, deep.

Speaking of lyrics, the other day, during online school, FWA asked me to suggest two songs with similar themes that he could use for analyzing lyrics in his AP Comp and Lit class. After struggling for a minute, I suggested, Beck’s “Loser” and Courtney Barnett’s “Avant Gardner.” How did I come up with those? Not sure, but they worked well for him. Nice.

What a beautiful October poem:

October/ ROBERT FROST

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

oct 1/RUN

3.35 miles
the hill, 4 times
48 degrees

Getting colder. Woke up this morning and turned on the heat, wore running tights under my shorts when I left the house. Did a slower first mile as a warm-up then decided to do the hill, the one where the road is closed and that is above the tunnel of trees, beside the Welcoming Oaks, four times. When I tried this last week, I attempted to sprint up the hill. This time, I just ran continuously, hoping to go a little faster with each hill. I didn’t closely check my watch, so I’m not sure if I did, but I enjoyed the run a lot more, and I didn’t have to stop. I think I’ll try this again next week, but do 5 loops instead of 4. During my warm-up mile, I listened to traffic rushing by a few blocks farther north on Lake Street. As I ran the hills, I listened to a playlist titled, “Sara 2020.” I saw the river, shining blueish-white, through the trees a few times. Beautiful. The second time I ran down the hill, I noticed a runner on the sidewalk over on Edmund. We seemed to be going the same pace. I tried to avoid looking at them instead of speeding up or slowing down. It worked. Saw a women ahead of me walking 2 dogs, talking on her phone or talking to her dogs? Not sure. A few people were wearing bright yellow shirts which glowed in the not quite overcast, not quite sunny light. Did I think about anything? I can’t remember.

MOOD: MISANTHROPIC

Continuing to work on my mood rings. Today I’m thinking about how irritating/frustrating some walkers or bikers or runners are on the trail–refusing to move over, getting in the way, speeding by too quickly. While this has always upset me, it is more dangerous now with my deteriorating vision. People’s carelessness can make it much scarier for me to run or bike. This behavior saddens me, then pisses me off, then causes me to see others as the enemy. I think I’m justified in my frustration, but I’m also bothered by own reactions. For this poem, I want to start by finding as many accounts of my irritation as I can in my running log entries. I’ll either use those as starting off point, to edit and shape, or I’ll combine them somehow into a poem–a cento? an erasure?

Here’s an account (from April 20, 2020) that doesn’t quite fit, because it’s not about me and my encounter with annoying bikers, but that I’d like to work in somehow:

read the FUCKING signs!

Yesterday, Scott, Delia the dog, our daughter, and I took a 4 mile walk around the neighborhood. Walking in the grass between the boulevard and the parkway, we witnessed a runner running in the road (on the part designated for pedestrians), getting increasingly upset as bikers (who are not supposed to bike on this part of the road) whizzed by her. When the first one passed her, she yelled “this is not the bike lane!” and then muttered to herself in anger. When the next one passed, she shrieked frantically “read the FUCKING signs!” (the city has signs posted all over the road/path identifying who should be in what lane). I could understand her anger–in other situations, I’ve been her, maybe not screaming “fuck!” but feeling that upset–but I could also see how difficult it was for the bikers, trying to find room to move when it was so crowded and when walkers were also ignoring the signs and taking over the bike paths. I’m not sure how to make this situation with crowded paths any easier, so I try to avoid it by running early, before it gets crowded.

In honor of the first day of October, I want to post part of one of my favorite October poems by May Swenson:

from October/ May Swenson

Now and then, a red leaf riding
the slow flow of gray water.
From the bridge, see far into
the woods, now that limbs are bare,
ground thick-littered. See,
along the scarcely gliding stream,
the blanched, diminished, ragged
swamp and woods the sun still
spills into. Stand still, stare
hard into bramble and tangle,
past leaning broken trunks,
sprawled roots exposed. Will
something move?—some vision
come to outline? Yes, there—
deep in—a dark bird hangs
in the thicket, stretches a wing.
Reversing his perch, he says one
“Chuck.” His shoulder-patch
that should be red looks gray.
This old redwing has decided to
stay, this year, not join the
strenuous migration. Better here,
in the familiar, to fade.

sept 30/RUN

2.5 miles
two trails
59 degrees

For some dumb reason, I thought that running a bit later (almost noon) when it was very windy (20+ mph) would result in less crowded paths. I even thought the lower trail would be empty. I was very wrong. I probably encountered the most people I ever have today. I got much closer than 6 feet several times and had to call out “excuse me.” Oh well. If I ever consider running on the Winchell trail again, I will have to make sure and wear a mask the entire time. The river road trail was crowded too. I did a lot of weaving. I’m pretty sure I had a few ridiculous performances, weaving out into the road to avoid people, then quickly stopping to tie my shoe, then starting up again, trying to avoid having to pass the walker I had just passed again.

It was beautiful down there on the Winchell Trail, below the road, with so many leaves swirling around and glowing and painting the trees in reds, yellows, oranges. And, o the river! Such a bright blue in the sun. And no thick leaves to block my view!

a moment to remember

Turning down at the 44th street parking lot to run on the Winchell Trail, two bikers were walking their bikes up the hill, framed by a few bright yellow trees and the wide, blue river. Suddenly a gust of wind caught them by surprise and one of the women yelled out, “Whoop!” –or “whoa” or something like that. I think I like “whoop” the best. One day, maybe I’ll manage to fit this moment into a poem.

Speaking of poems, I finished my fourth mood ring poem: Loneliness. It’s the first of my poems about my darker moods. These are harder for me to write because my inclination is not to dwell in the bad feelings. I am wondering if it is too dramatic in its darkness? The poem is inspired by Ada Limón’s “Instructions on Not Giving Up” and uses her first two sentences as a guide. (“More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry blossoms shoving their cotton-candy colored limbs to the slate sky of Spring rains, it is the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leaves the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come.”

MOOD: LONELINESS

More than the distorted letters that shift on the page, more than the bikes that appear without warning, it is the faded faces that really get to me. When the light is too bright, or not quite the right kind of light, or not bright enough, the features leave. Sometimes the outline of a nose, a mouth, ears, freckles remain, but the eyes, almost always, are dead. Lifeless. Lacking a spark. The pupils looking like black ballbearings. Othertimes, all that’s there is a dark blob, perched on the shoulders of my son, my daughter, my husband, a friend I have known for years. Aiming my eyes at a shoulder, I might catch a quick flash of an iris through my periphery. Mostly I rely on memory and recall the face I used to see. Imagine the flare of a nostril, the raising of an eyebrow. Wish for the reassurance that I am not alone, that someone else is here. Alien and alienating, an uncanny valley begins to form between me and and the rest of the world.

I’m still trying to figure out how to incorporate the rings–my ring scotoma–into or onto the poem. In theory, I’d love to do some poems within poems, but I’m not sure if it works. I’ll keep playing around with it. Now it’s time to work on some other dark moods: frustration, fatigue, feeling useless and old. I can’t remember if I wrote about this the other day, but I am struck by a mood I don’t have: anger (or rage). I am not angry about my failing vision. Is this because I had been living with it for so long, not knowing what it was, or even that anything was actually wrong with me–I blamed a weak will for any problems I seemed to have–and I was overwhelmingly relieved to finally know what it was?

Almost forgot to mention, but how could I?

Judith C. Puotinen: March 5th, 1942- September 30th, 2009

11 years ago today my mom died.

sept 27/RUN

5.25 miles
franklin loop
55 degrees

Decided to run the Franklin loop today. I’ve avoided it until now because I’ve been doing shorter runs more frequently and because of the pandemic and trying to avoid other people. The first half of it was fine, but by mile 3 I was doing a lot of weaving around to try and keep my 6ft of distance. There were only a few times when I got closer than that. What a beautiful morning for a run! Overcast and coolish, not too much wind. So many bright, intense colors.

Things I Remember

  • Honking geese! A ton of them under the lake street bridge. I couldn’t see them through all the green, but I could hear their honks
  • One goose honk sounded so forlorn or was it angry? Now I can’t remember the call but it was strange enough that I spent a few minutes wondering if it was a goose or some other bird. Decided it was a goose
  • A lone rower on the river with the water as smooth as glass
  • One of the dirt trails that leads down into the gorge, framed by yellow leaves looking mysterious and inviting and dangerous

At the start of my run, thought about more of my moods as I lose my central vision, particularly how I need to spend some time on my darker feelings. I remember having some thoughts about it, but now, writing this log entry, all I can remember is this: some of what makes me feel awe and wonderment–that the brain can mostly hide the worst effects of my failing vision–is what causes doubt and uncertainty–if i can still read some things and see color and notice birds in the sky, is my vision really that bad? Am I exaggerating it? I know I’ve written about this here a few times already.

Here’s a draft of my awe poem”

MOOD: AWE

[epitaph] Legend has it that before an execution, King Charles II of England closed one eye and aimed his blind spot on the head of the condemned man. This allowed Charles’ brain to decapitate the prisoner before the axe took its turn.

Behold, the awesome power of sight! Not found in one destructive glance but in an accumulation of looks. Against the odds and in spite of damaged cones, misfiring signals, and incomplete data, these looks produce something resembling vision — an image, a feeling, a fuzzy form.  So much could go wrong, and often does. Yet, light, cells, the optic nerve, the visual cortex find a way. Through guesswork and improvisation, imagination and processes scientists still don’t understand, they ensure I see more than seems possible. O faithful cones! Dilligently delivering data despite dwindling numbers. Allowing me to see some color — greens and golds and pinks and blues. Enabling me to read slightly distorted letters. O clever, industrious brain! Tirelessly trying to make sense of scrambled signals. Conjuring images, filling in broken lines, concealing gaping holes and black rings. Making it possible for me to still exclaim, “oh my god look at that wedge of geese, high in the clean blue air!”

Listening to the Current as I write this and the new Janelle Monáe song came on, Turntables. I especially liked these lyrics:

There’s a boomerang boomin’ back, yeah
You laid the egg, now it’s ’bout to hatch, yeah
You gaslightin’, ’bout to meet your match, uh
You fuck up the kitchen, then you should do the dishes

One of my introductions to poetry was through song lyrics. I used to love listening to a song for the first time and reading the lyrics on the record sleeve, watching how the lyrics and rhythms worked together, often in surprising ways. Some day, I want to write song lyrics and collaborate with Scott on a song. So far, I haven’t been inspired.

sept 25/RUN

3 miles
turkey hollow
66 degrees

Before starting my run, I listened to a recording of my latest mood poem: awe. I was hoping to think about it as I ran but I quickly became distracted by the leaves and the effort and irritating bikers on the trail. I decided to run south on the trail. It wasn’t too crowded, but I did encounter several bikers, always biking too close to the dividing line between pedestrians and bikers. 2 bikers biking side by side were especially bad–one of them was way over the line, forcing me onto the makeshift dirt trail on the other side. I yelled, of course, Part of my anger over this is me being a crank, but a lot of it has to do with safety–with my vision, my reflexes are much slower and I wouldn’t be able to move out of the way fast enough if they were about to hit me–and how I see–my depth perception is off and it’s difficult to judge how close people are to me; I can’t alway see their edges and often it looks like they are deliberately trying to run into me.

Despite this annoyance, I enjoyed my run. I saw the river and many red, orange, and yellow trees. Heard some black-capped chickadees. Anything else? No turkeys in turkey hollow. Instead, I saw a kid running around in circles, enjoying the freedom and the breeze and maybe also making the leaves crunch as he ran. I did that last night while Scott, Delia, and I were on our walk. I love that sound!

This weather is a little too warm for running, but great for sitting in the backyard in my red chair under the crab apple tree. I think I’ll do that after I finish writing this entry.

Working on my third mood ring poem: awe

MOOD // AWE

Behold, the awesome power of sight! Not found in a single controlling, destructive glance but in the accumulation of looks made every moment that, against the odds and in spite of damaged cones, misfiring signals, and incomplete data produce something resembling sight—an image, a feeling, a fuzzy form.  So much could go wrong, and often does, yet the light and the cells and the optic nerve and the visual cortex find a way through guesswork and improvisation and imagination and processes that scientists still don’t understand to ensure that almost all of us see more than seems possible. O clever, industious brain! 

That’s all I have so far. I envision adding a few more sentences.

sept 24/RUN

1.2 miles
river road, north/south
62 degrees

3.1 miles
over lake street bridge and back
64 degrees

I was just about to leave for a run when my son asked if I could run with him for his online gym class. Of course! I wish he could learn to love running; I would worry much less about all the time he spends in front of his computer. We did a combination of running and walking. A beautiful fall morning. As we were walking I said to FWA, “It’s really fall now!” On cue, a swirl of leaves fell between us. (I looked up “collective noun for leaves” and got: pile and Autumn–really? An Autumn of leaves? Ugh. Decided on my own: swirl.)

After walking back home with him, I headed out again for my own run. Decided to run across the lake street bridge to check out the trees on the banks of the Mississippi. Big, bright slashes of red, orange, yellow! Not quite peak, but getting there. When I reached the east side of the river, I ran up the hill just past the steps and stopped at my favorite spot where the path is right on the edge of the bluff, above the tree-line, and you can see the blue water and the glowing trees on the other side. I stopped for a few minutes and admired an orange tree on the west side.

Yesterday I worked some more on my second mood ring poem. Happy to have figured out the story that I’m trying to tell: it wasn’t until my vision failed that I became very curious about how vision works and once I did, I learned all sorts of fascinating, delightful things. Here’s the text of the poem without the formatting:

MOOD // CURIOUS

All I remember from science class is the inscrutable image of an inverted tree, entering upright, then shrinking and flipping around. I don’t remember the retina or that it’s a thin layer of tissue lining the back of your eye or that at its center is the macula where some of the most important cells reside, waiting to convert light into signals that travel through the optic nerve to the visual cortex. I never thought about blind spots or tried to find mine or wondered about how much of what I saw was real or illusion. But when my brain could no longer hide the effects of diminishing cones I started paying attention. Now I’m learning about photoreceptors and the fovea and the number of cone cells in it and why they’re called cone cells and what the types of scotomas are and when the blind spot was first written about and how the brain guesses or makes up images when it lacks visual data and why some people, in the early stages of vision loss, hallucinate dragons and floating heads and little people dressed in costumes.

I have decided that each of these mood ring poems will be a block of text very similar in size and dimensions to the Amsler Grid, which is a grid you can use to check for macular degeneration. Each of the poems will have my blind ring on it in some way–lightly superimposed or darker, blocking the text, or maybe even creating an erasure poem. I’m still trying to figure it out. Here’s one possible version:

Originally, I made the “ring” text even lighter but I’ve been thinking I might want to make the ring become more difficult to see around as the poems continue–so the text would get lighter and lighter?

Here’s an amsler grid:

sept 22/RUN

3.25 miles
hill “sprints”*
67 degrees

* Warmed up by running north on 43rd ave, east on 32nd, south on Edmund. Jogged down the hill beside the Welcoming Oaks, then much faster, sometimes sprinting, up the hill 4 times.

Decided to try hill sprints for the first time today. I’ll call it a success because I set out to do 4, and I did 4. But it was difficult and I only ran hard all the way to the turn around on 2 out of the 4. I’m sure I’ll get better if I keep doing these. Listened to a playlist as I ran. Didn’t think about anything but getting to the top of the hill and then trying to slow my heart rate as I ran back down.

I ran through the neighborhood as a warm-up. So many beautiful leaves! Several bright red trees. One or two orange ones. A cluster of yellow. I could smell the dry mustiness of decay. Saw lots of acorns on the ground. Too many squirrels looked like they might dart out in front of me.

mood: curiosity

(I wrote this bit when I woke up this morning. It’s a very rough draft, but gives me some things to work with,\.) Before I was diagnosed with cone dystrophy, I never thought much about my vision. I never imagined that I would lose it. Even though I had been having problems for years seeing things—seeing the cursor on a computer or a ball being thrown at me or a bird in the sky—I never connected those problems with bad vision. I thought it was something else, maybe a weird quirk in my brain? Is this the wonder of the brain, its ability to work with limited resources, concealing how damaged our vision is?

I was never curious about my vision or how it worked. The only thing I remember from learning about how we see was the image of the inverted tree, entering the eye upright, then shrinking and flipping around at the back of the eye. I knew the terms retina (I think), pupil, iris, but I didn’t know the retina was a thin layer of cells lining the back of your eye or that at its center was the macula and in a pit at its center was the fovea where some of the most important photoreceptor cells reside, waiting to convert light into nerve signals that travel through the optic nerve to the visual cortex. I don’t ever remember hearing about rods or cones until my eye doctor explained that my cones were scrambling. I didn’t think about blind spots or try to find mine or wonder too often about how much of what I saw was real or illusion. If I ever thought about the limits of my perception, it was in the abstract, after studying the empiricists in my Modern Philosophy course in college. And a blind spot was something you had in relation to your biased and limited world view.  

I suppose I should have been curious about these things, I should have wanted a basic understanding of vision, but it wasn’t until my brain was unable to hide the effects of my diminishing cones and I learned I was losing my central vision that I payed attention. Part of this is because I take my body for granted when it’s working. Why question or scrutinize it when its doing its job? Part of this is because I don’t want to know how it works because once I know, I might think too much about how easily it might not work. And part of this is because I struggle to remember or understand anything with scientific jargon. 

But now, I’m curious. And I’m finding joy in learning about ganglion cells and the optic chiasm and the fovea and how many cone cells are in it and why they’re called cone cells and how the brain handles a lack of visual data (recalling past images, making stuff up) and how optical illusions work and the different types of scotomas and how to use eccentric vision (EV) to compensate for a loss of central vision and when the blind spot was first written about (1668) and two different Charles’s: King Charles II who loved to execute people with his blind spot and Charles Bonnet who first described the trippy visual hallucinations some people experience as they’re losing their vision.

sept 21/RUN

3 miles
the loop that kept getting larger
67 degrees

Warmer this morning. 80s later this afternoon. Windy. Heard several crows–an especially loud one right after I started running, another when I reached Edmund, near the spot they’ve identified as containing poison ivy and that they’ve marked with big warning signs. Didn’t glance at the river even though I ran on the river road as part of each loop but I did see Dave the Daily Walker! We greeted each other and remarked on how long it had been since we’ve seen each other. Was raced by a young kid as I ran up a hill beside his house. So much energy and exuberance. Encountered some workers filling a pothole in the road–they were wearing masks. Ran past some beautifully yellow trees on 47th ave. Can’t remember if I saw any red ones.

moment of the morning

Before my run, I walked Delia the dog. Right by one of my favorite houses–the one with the cat that has deemed themselves queen of the block (note added 21 sept 2024: the cat is male, so king — why do I think his name is Matt?), sometimes escorting you down the sidewalk, and with the bright orange and pink and yellow zinnias, and with the big water bucket for dogs with a Bob Dylan quote on it, and with the “Any Functioning Adult, 2020” yard sign–I heard the gentle singing of the wind chimes and the wind through a pine tree and crows softly (yes, it sounded soft, not harsh) cawing, and a trickling fountain all at once. What a wonderful symphony of sounds!

wonder mood: curiosity

Also before my run, I read through some of my notes and did some free-writing about wonder and my vision. I have three types of wonder:

  1. delight (finding my blind spot)
  2. curiosity (questions, facts, information, anecdotes about scotomas and seeing/not seeing)
  3. awe (the magic/power of my sight, and sight/brain in general)

As I ran, I thought about curiosity. At first, I had the idea (after running down the hill on 33rd and turning left on the river road) of doing a series of questions that I wonder about–a mix of questions about the physical process of seeing and other questions, like the classic childhood hypothetical–“Would you rather lose your hearing or your vision?”. Then later (I can’t remember where I was running when this happened), I thought about a block of texts combining some of the most interesting/strange/unsettling/important facts about blind spots into a cento.

Here’s a strange anecdote I discovered: King Charles II of England liked to aim his blind spot at a prisoner’s head before they were decapitated. Googling this, all mentions of this story lead to the neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran and his mention of it in his popular articles about blind spots. Is this story true? After some more digging, I discovered this line from an abstract on an article about Faraday and his eyesight:

in the second volume of the Philosophical Transactions it is recorded that Mariotte demonstrated the blind spot ‘to the Royal Society before King Charles II in 1668.

Then I found Mariotte’s article from 1668 here. Pretty cool. In my brief search, I couldn’t find much else–no instances of King Charles II actually doing this, but I did learn that he helped create the Royal Society from which this paper comes and also a bit more about him and his reign (which I’m sure I learned back in 11th grade when I took AP European History). He was called The Merry Monarch, partly for the hedonism of his court–apparently, he was obsessed with sex–and partly because of how relieved/happy people were to be done with Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. I also learned that in the 1660s, there was a lot of anti-Catholic hysteria with many Catholics being executed. Are these the prisoners that Charles II decapitated in his mind?

sept 18/RUN

3.15 miles
neighborhood/lake street bridge/river road trail
46 degrees

Wonderful fall weather! Sun, crisp air, changing leaves, uncrowded sidewalks/roads/paths! I ran over the lake street bridge again. A bit windy; I could feel one chunk of my hair coming out of my pony tail and flopping around just above my visor. How funny did it look to the drivers passing me? The river was a beautiful blue. No rowers on the water. No canoes or motor boats either. I don’t remember seeing any leaves changing on the tree-line along the river’s edge. Still all green. Soon, red, orange, yellow. Then my view comes back. Coming off the lake street bridge and heading south on the trail, I overheard some bikers talking about today’s stage of the Tour de France. Nice! Heard some geese honking overhead–high in the clean blue air.

https://twitter.com/danalevinpoet/status/1304885340654702593?s=20

I love this idea of yielding to a poem or an idea…or the gorge. I think of it in relation to being open and generous and willing to listen (and to hear and to notice).

mood: wonder

Another day of working on my writing project on vision loss and mood. This morning, while watching the Tour de France, I noticed a sign with an exclamation mark on it quickly flash across the screen and pointed it out to Scott who hadn’t noticed it. I wondered, how is it that I could see this sign (and while Scott couldn’t) but miss so much else when I’m watching tv? How does my vision work and not work?

I bring this up in the current draft of my wonder poem in 2 ways.

To witness the spot of my unseeing usually concealed behind the smoke and mirrors of softened forms and filled-in gaps is astonishing. What impossible magic enables me to see anything with this ring obscuring my view? I like staring at it until my eyes ache, my head hurts. Observing how it moves slightly when I shift my gaze. How it grows bigger when I cover my left eye, smaller when I cover my right. How it begins to pulse, then fade, then flare, a fiery black hoop burning through my thinning retina. What a strange feeling to watch this show and suddenly know it is more real than the illusions my brain offers as sight.

1. impossible magic

How can I still see as well as I can with so many of my cone cells gone? How does my brain make sense of the limited information it’s receiving from the few remaining cells? Most of the time when I am curious about this, it is with awe and astonishment. What an amazing organ the brain is! It’s fascinating to learn about how the brain/mind compensates for lack of information, how it guesses, how it fills in the gaps.

Last week, I learned about Charles Bonnet Syndrome which is a phenomenon that can happen to around 15% of people with macular degeneration. It’s named after the man who first described it, having noticed it in his aging grandfather. When the brain doesn’t receive visual data from the eyes it provides its own images, either making them up or recalling stored ones. This causes visual hallucinations. People with CBS usually experience these hallucinations when they wake up and they don’t last long. The favorite hallucinations I read about in this article were

  • people dressed in costume from an earlier time
  • imaginary creatures, like dragons

What? Somewhere else I read about how the hallucinations are smaller, so you see tiny people dressed up in costumes. Nice! Thankfully, when you experience this, you know it’s a hallucination. I don’t have this syndrome. Instead, my brain likes to fill in the gap with a background that matches the area surrounding the missing image. So, while someone with CBS has hallucinations and sees something that isn’t there, I have a different problem: what is there is hidden behind a background (like a blank, blue sky or more green trees or endless waving water–all 3 of these have happened to me) with no indication of its presence or my inability to see it. Is there an antonym for hallucination? It is not that I see things that aren’t there; it is that I don’t see things that are there and I have no idea that I’m not seeing them–until suddenly, without warning, I do, like a bike that wasn’t there appearing beside me in my peripheral vision. I think this happened to me a lot more right after my vision declined in 2016. Has my brain figured out how to compensate for it?

2. optical illusions

Much of the time, even for me with my increasingly bad vision, the brain’s tricks for filling in gaps and working with incomplete visual data are hidden. I might see things a little fuzzier but I still see them. Unless I concentrate, I can’t see the ring scotoma in my central vision. There is no dark black ring on the page when I’m reading. But it’s there and when I found it by staring intently at a blank wall, I was astonished and fascinated. I was also relieved. Here, with this ring, was evidence that my vision is declining, that I’m not making this bad vision thing up. Because my brain is so good at compensating and performing magic tricks, it can be easy for me to think my eyes are better than they are, that I’m seeing more than I am.