I have fought a long battle with glaucoma, through many eye operations, and long, slow and only partial recoveries (I know the cancer/chemo aggravated my vision problems). And though it has now claimed most of my eyesight, leaving me with partial vision in only one eye, I do have that vision. I can walk about in the world, and I can understand aspects of the universe that I didn’t understand before because of this limit on my eyesight. I have grown to be kinder, gentler, and more forgiving. I have come to see the world in layers: more comprehensively, more in the fierce urgency of “now,” in moving from point A to point B, in negotiating shifts of shadow and light, and in listening more intently with complete focus to bird songs, to the sounds of traffic, to the tenor of people’s voices as they speak. It has been in many ways an opening up of a world that until recently felt like it was closing down. I am particularly grateful to the Lions Center for the Blind and particularly to Shaun Wargowsky, who has helped me learn how to cross busy streets with a blind cane, how to negotiate the subway system in the Bay Area, and how to use my new Iphone as a device for obtaining verbal directions to guide me as I navigate my new world.
