A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

An Eye for an Eye

I went to see an ophthalmologist, Dr. L., today. I aced the eye chart, even with my wonky left eye, but there's still a problem with my vision. Dr. L. says it may never go away. When I said, oh, maybe the brain will find a work-around -- something others have said to me -- she said, Probably not. "The brain isn't really all that flexible. And the lesion has deprived part of it of oxygen." In other words, I've got a dead spot in my brain.

Oddly enough, her candor appeals to me. I'm a little tired of the choruses of "Climb Every Mountain," "You'll Never Walk Alone" and "Cockeyed Optimist" that people keep singing at me. A little honest resignation to reality never hurt anyone.
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