On seeing things

I had a spot of excitement yesterday morning. While sitting at the computer, I became aware that I couldn't focus clearly on what I was reading - because there was a point of intensely bright white light at the centre of my vision. This expanded slowly into a jagged circle in painfully bright neon colours, which flickered and continued to expand.

So I got out the yellow pages (by this time I could see clearly within the ring of light again) and found an ophthalmologist in the neighbourhood, and called them up. The secretary was professionally cool and distant, "appointment next week" and so on, until she asked me to describe my symptoms. When I did, her voice changed: "Come here now, right now."

Ten minutes later, at the doctor's office, I was having my retinas photographed; the circle was now larger than the frame of my glasses. Ten minutes after that, I was shaking hands with the doctor; the circle had reached the periphery of my vision and was effectively gone. We talked about my health and habits, and he asked whether I get migraines. "Yes, but not at the moment," which was true: no nausea, no blurry vision, no headache, no disturbed sense of balance.

He had a good look in each eye, then had me read from the chart, and then he relaxed and sat down. "Your eyes react normally to light and there is no immediately obvious organic damage, so it's probably not an emergency." Very comforting; but then what the hell is it? "An asymptomatic migraine, the pattern of light you described is absolutely typical of migraine attacks."

We left it at that, because he feared that the eye drops and the testing might trigger a proper migraine, and made an appointment for a complete examination next week.

He was right, it was a migraine without symptoms: I recognize the "day after" symptoms this morning.

One of the reasons that I am so visually orientated is my childhood experience of needing to get my glasses changed (new prescription) every eighteen months or so. (I'm not sure how many pairs of glasses I had during my youth; I have the impression that I had new lenses at least four times between 12 and 18. In the thirty years after that, I've had three pairs.)

One doesn't notice the slow deterioration in vision any more than one notices one's hair growing, until one day it crosses a threshold and you realize that you can't see clearly.

What you do notice, is the infinitely fine detail of the world on the day you get your new glasses. That shape on the horizon is an apartment building, it has windows, there is a woman standing at the window. That green blob in the garden? It's a tree, it has individual leaves, the leaves have serrated edges, there's an aphid on the tip of that leaf. Clouds aren't grey, they are a dozen colours; and they are moving, shifting from within, constantly changing shape. (This is the reason I always included the number on the license plate when I drew cars from life: because I could.)

Powers of Ten was a revelation to me, and a confirmation of my experience: the world is indeed infinite, there really is no limit to what you can see.

It still amazes me sometimes to walk on the Blauer Weg and look out across the valley and realize that I can see individual leaves on the trees on the other side; or watching pigeons land on the roof of a building half a mile away (silhouetted against the light). The difference between the way I see the moon (the seas, the bright spots of craters) and the way all of my cameras have seen the moon (a small white smudge) has been a lifelong disappointment.

However, the quality of vision isn't constant: I cannot see that clearly at under twenty feet. I realized this while looking at a model railway exhibition with E, she could read the writing on the side of the boxcars five feet away from us. I would have had to bring it to reading distance to do that.

I was reminded of this at the Espresso-Laden on Saturday. Thomas the baristo has just got glasses for the first time, and his delight and surprise at the world made me remember my childhood experience.