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I have worn glasses for as long as I can remember. I know that this is only the fault of my poor memory, and that before fifth grade I didn’t need glasses. I have no first memory of glasses, but the the image that most clearly captures onslaught of spectacles for me is one from fifth grade, in which I have been saddled with a pair of black-framed reading glasses at least two sizes too large for my head. It is not a pretty picture, this ill-dressed aspiring intellectual trapped in shorts and a purple cougar-emblazoned t-shirt. It is the kind of angst that they write mediocre first novels about in MFA programs across the country.

I did not have much of a chance when it came to eyesight. Both of my parents are myopic. My father, for as long as I have known him, has favored highly-unimaginative square frames with a double bridge and translucent plastic nosepads. In the days of my youth they were heavy glasses that left distinct indentations in the bridge of his nose that still feel uncomfortable even in memory. I don’t know how long he’s worn that style, that badge of industrio-bureaucratic middle management, which, though he has studiously avoided that level of responsibility throughout his career, my father fits into perfectly: off brand polos and khakis, comfortable loafers and a pocket full of cheap pens. His glasses are utilitarian, a tool to help him see clearly, and to that end they are durable and dependable. He cannot see them as an object of design, as a symbol that lends his character a certain dead weight and inflexibility.

My mother, on the other hand, has always opted for contact lenses. She, like me, is blessed with an astigmatism, and as such has always worn hard-lens contacts. For those of you who’ve not known the joys of rigid gas permeable contacts they are thin sheaths of stiff plastic that float in front of your pupils. In theory they are so thin as to be unnoticeable, but in the element of the eye, whose tightly controlled mechanics have been carefully honed over thousands of years of incremental evolution, they feel, at first, like trying to gently tuck hockey pucks under your eyelids. Every blink knocks them off center just a bit, and I find the milliseconds of readjustment irritating. My eyes water just writing about it. I have tried wearing hard lenses regularly, but it exhausts my eyes, so I have settled for the occasional discomfort of wearing them during sports, since as I focus on the event my body forgets I’m wearing contacts until the action is over. I do not know how, or perhaps more importantly why, my mother gets up every morning and puts them into her eyes, but one of the consequences seemed to be that her eyes were always bloodshot.

It is hard for me not to read something into everything; my world is nothing if not a long list metaphors and allusions. This is pathetic fallacy writ large: everything has a meaning; As above so below. So it is impossible for me not to see my weak eyes as the reason that I cannot see the right in the world, as the cause of so much anxiety. Extend that metaphor another generation, perhaps, and say that it is inherited, that I had no choice over how I grew up and learned to see the world, that my weak eyes were learned as much as inherited. It is hard for me to walk in the world and see it as a happy, safe place. The ‘realist’ in me shouts out: It is not! The world is dangerous and frightening place! Didn’t you read this? Haven’t you heard that? But I have worked hard to ignore this voice and have learned to some degree a new way of seeing. Still, even when I am not afraid that my son will be snatched, it is hard for me to be positive. I see a car and think only of the greed, exploitation and pollution inherent in the automobile rather than its ingenuity and beauty. I see a plastic bag and think only of the litter and the waste, rather than the beauty of living in a place where everyone has access to clean, healthy food.

Even writing this I can hear the sarcastic, biting voice in the back of my head: Yeah, access to potato chips, candy and tabloids, real fucking great. This cancerous voice clouds my vision, attaching itself to everything I see, blinding me to the beauty that I know is in the world, but which I struggle so hard to find. I think the worst of everyone I pass, judging them on the car they drive, the bags they carry, how they say hello. It is too easy to say I look around and see a world full of half-empty glasses; it is more accurate to say I live in a world of broken glass wondering with a smug certainty which of them will cut me.

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the idea that my vision is flawed is part of having flawed vision, that this is a never ending catch 22, a downward spiral of negativity and self-loathing, one which I never seem to tire of exploring and charting with a sadistic kind of accuracy. I don’t rationally believe that the world is one way or the other. I rationally believe that to a great degree I create the world that I live in. That isn’t a physical truth, but a metaphysical one. I do not experience the world as the world, but through the sensory input of my physical body that’s run through the filter of my mind, which translates the physical impact of hard edges and loud sounds into something resembling my experience while simultaneously adding an unconscious narrative, the unceasingly negative commentary to the director’s cut of my life.

Learning to see the world as it is, both beautifully and horribly, takes a lot of practice. The world doesn’t change, it’s always been beautifully horrible and horrible beautiful: contrast the beauty of the Psalms with the pessimism of Job. I cannot change my physical eyes. Okay, I can, but I’m not ready to cut into my eyeballs with frickin’ lasers, no matter how safe they promise me it’ll be. Eyeballs don’t grow back, people. But I can change the way I see the world. It’s not easy; I’ve grown accustomed to my biting pessimism. It is an easy and safe way to live. I know its curves and corners in a way that is intimate and unconscious. Choosing optimism and happiness is hard; it disagrees violently with what I ‘know’ and what I read and hear; it paints the world Pollyanna and I see myself as a rube, a mark and a sap, naïve and trusting. Deviate even a fraction from my pessimism and the world is suddenly an unsafe place. That’s backwards perhaps: the world is an unsafe place, and to deviate from that belief is therefore dangerous, but that’s the way that bad old ideas stay in place, because of the implicit truth that disobeying them is dangerous.

My the warp in the way I see the world is the metaphysical embodiment of my boundaries, the edges of my vision and my ignorance, and therefore the shape of my superstition. My vision of a dangerous and degraded world that I must move through with great care keeps me safe, but it keeps out new and fresh ideas, novel exploration and unexpected inspiration. The world over has been thoroughly mapped, but I can be an explorer merely by challenging my own boundaries, trying a new restaurant, walking down a new street or going somewhere I’ve never been, and in doing so push back the edge of my fear.

I don’t know that I’ll ever see the world as an inherently good place. I have spent a long time believing otherwise, being taught over and over again both that fear will keep me alive, and that I am powerless to change the way things are. I know, rationally, that this attitude is as dangerous as the the world it attempts to describe; that moving through the world wrapped in fear and mistrust generates those things in the people I pass. I know from experience that being able to be open to the people I pass by and interact with generally brings out something nice. I work hard everyday to look the people I pass in the eye and say hello, but it is always work, and that says a great deal about the way I approach the world outside my door. And that may be all it will ever be, a layer of habit layered awkwardly over a deep vein of dark pessimism, and if that’s the case, so be it. I may never reshape my eyes, but the glasses I put in front of them compensate for their deformity, so I might well consider my artificial happiness a corrective lens for my soul.

 

Categories: Self-Portrait Series
Tags: eyes