Julie, the Mansion Activities Director, has returned from vacation and the first thing she did was put up a new Amazon Mansion Wish List, he calls it her “daily miracle. There are two wonderful and important themes for the new Wish List, one is dirt and the other is picnic plates and outdoor plastic, like plates and tea cups.
But the big thing she needs as the residents and local Church volunteers begin to prepare the vast Mansion garden for summer, is dirt. Good planting soil and manure.
The Mansion doesn’t really have rich soil and there is not enough money to buy what the garden needs. The residents are planning an award-winning and spectacular garden this year, one stuff with vegetables which they shall eat and flowers for their tables and rooms, and just to sit and watch and smell. Last year’s garden was stunning.
Soil is important and relatively cheap, as is manure, I urged Julie to put it up, she is very wary of wearing out the people who have devoured the Wish List three times in as many weeks. Julie, like many people is not used to such passionate generosity.
Last year, the Army Of Good bought the residents a picnic table for the outdoors, and this year they mean to use it. There are lots of brightly colored disposable outdoor things on the new list, also. I told Julie i didn’t think this list would last too long either.
Put up the soil on the list, I told Julie. It will come. Dirt is the cheapest thing we ever buy.This is a great way to give, you buy what you want and pay what you want, and it goes straight to the people you want to get it.
You are brightening the Mansion lives every day. (Is it time to start thinking of july Fourth?)
Helen Keller once said that the most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision. This makes sense to me, but I cherish both sight and vision, and am working hard to protect the vision in one of my eyes, the left.
My eye surgeons are wise to me now, they call up big and detailed photos of my eye up on their huge computer screens and run them by me; “would this one be good for your blog, it is quite detailed.” They also offer to show my eye in red, yellow or blue.
They told me no one has ever asked to photograph their eyes before. Well, I said, most people don’t have a hungry blog.
At first they thought my requests to photograph my eye photographs were strange, now they are into it.
We all agreed this latest black and white shot of my left eye, taken just before some intensive laser surgery, was the most dramatic and revealing.
The sight of my eye this way always shocks me, but there is something eerily beautiful about it for me.
I love the vessels spreading out through the eye. You can see the problem to the right of the dark cloud in the center, these are leaks from blood vessels that cause a swelling in the eye. A war zone.
And it looks like one of those grainy, black-and-white military war videos up there, a firefight, you can almost see the bombs bursting and exploding.
When I first came to these retinal specialists, this swelling was across part of the retina, and the tops of letters were beginning to disappear when I read books or pages or blog posts. I was frightened, as a writer and photographer, I value my sight.
The doctors said 10 or 15 years ago, I would almost surely have become blind in at least one eye.
i have come to appreciate my own discomfort with drama, this is definitely in the category of “life happens,” and it happens a lot worse to many people much of the time.
Even from this photo, I can see the battle still raging over there near the center of my eye. The doctors say we will keep beating it back, but it will be a struggle, and require some work. My eye is eerie, complex and mysterious. It doesn’t look anything like it does from the outside, there is so much happening in there.
After two laser surgeries, one this afternoon, the swelling has been reduced and has moved away from the retina, which is in the center left. The photograph does not show the results of today’s surgery, we don’t know if it was successful. i will almost surely need more surgery in a f ew months, and be tested often.
The procedure was not painful, but it was uncomfortable and draining. They numbed my eye, injected me with yellow dyes and dilated my pupils, which made the light blinding. It wore me out.
The doctor glued my eye open to a special lens that kept it open during the surgery. It was a challenge to stay still, I think the surgery took about 15 minutes. Back in several months for more. The glue kept sticking, and it didn’t get back to normal for awhile.
Having a numb eye is new to me, and like most people, I don’t like people poking things in my eye.
Maria came into the examining and surgery rooms with me, and drove me home. I was blinded by the eye dilation and oozing numbing medications. I missed my eye patch, they ran out. I could never have driven home by myself.
I was, of course, reading about vision in the waiting room, everything is a gift, and everything a lesson. Getting older is about many good things, and one thing that isn’t always a good thing is that some parts begin to wear and need care. I am allergic to old talk, but neither to i wish to hide from aging.
Vision has nothing to do with sight, but vision helps me to appreciate my life when I sometimes feared these past few months that I would be losing my sight. The doctors seemed genuinely alarmed at first.
If my life has meaning at all, it is in my vision for living it, not my sight. This surgery is humbling. Nietzche said the visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others. I keep studying these amazing photographs to see where my swelling cloud has gone. Away from the retina, get away. I know what to look at now.
Helen Keller also said we should hold our head high, she had brilliant vision but no sight.
She said she always looked the world straight in the eye.
Early on in this process, a doctor told me there was a good chance I would eventually go blind because of these vessel leaks and swelling, they would eventually cover the retina in one eye, then the other.
I do not think I will go blind now, there are some new – the doctors call them “miracle” drops – that I put in my eyes four times every day. They have reduced the swelling. My eye, said the doctors, is resilient and seems bent on seeing clearly. It is winning the battle of the vessels for now.
One of the surgeons said the idea was to force the hemoraghing vessels to “behave,” an odd term, I thought. Do we think they have a conscience?
You put your chin on a curved platform, the eye is held open, and blinding lights come shooting into your eyes, like the newer video games.
The new medicine, taken by eye drops and injections, reduces the swellings.The laser treatment cauterizes the leaks and contains them in a small place, captures them in a way and contains them.
My vision in the left eye is now 20/20, and the doctors are happy about that. But I will need to work to keep it there, I will have to monitor my eyes and continue these treatments my whole life. I will no longer take such a precious thing as sight for granted.
This sometimes makes me see the world in a new way as is true for people with serious sight impairments, or who are blind. They seem to see a lot more than many people with good sight. They learn to use all of their senses, and they need to think a lot.
For awhile, I was wondering how I could look the world straight in the eye if I had no sight.
But I get it now. We almost all have sight. Vision is harder to come by, and it has nothing to do with sight. There is wisdom in everything if I can open my eyes and ears to it.
My eyes will do their work, we will work together. All in all, I am quite lucky.
I am grateful that my left eye is looking the world straight in the eye.
A psychologist wrote a half-century ago that Americans, fleeing farms and rural areas all over the country, were becoming disconnected from the lives of animals, their partners on the earth, and also from the natural world. These two elements are essential to humans struggling with a complex and increasingly dehumanized world.
I was one of those people, I lived in cities for most of my life, and and I came to feel I was broken because of my disconnection from the natural world. Instinctively, I fled to the country and began to heal. I credit the animals I have been living with and the beauty of the world around me with helping me to pick up the broken pieces and put me back together.
When I came to the fence – I only had my I phone X – the lambs rushed over me, curious and full of play. The sun hit the barn square on, and I wonder if it wasn’t built with that in mind, it was so beautiful.
I could no longer live without seeing this scene above and others like it every day of my life. Lambs running in a beautiful pasture on a nearby road at sunset, I stopped the car and got out and just breathed in the life and beauty of this barn and pasture, the setting sun catching the old red barn in just the right way.
Until recently humans have always lived close to animals and the natural world, animals were always our partners in life and the natural world is full of glory and mystery and beauty. It is not a matter of liking the country, for me it is matter of life and death, living in the country has helped me to find myself and live my life.
Off to round two of Laser Eye Surgery today, round one didn’t quite make it. Another chapter in Life’s Little Dance, as I call it, things never move in a straight line for all. I love my eyesight and hope to keep it sharp. More later. Maria is driving me, and with any luck, i’ll get another patch to war. Great thing for a pirate.
A year ago, Maria and I attended a Belly Dancing benefit for Meals On Wheels in Bennington, Vt., we were quite amazed. I fell in love with Belly Dancing right away, it was, to me, one of the most powerful affirmations of the Feminine Devine I had ever seen.
And it changed Maria’s life.
She joined the group, the Sisters Of The Shawl and has been exposing her belly once a week for more than a year. Belly Dancing is not just a group you can join, it is an attitude, a state of mind, a statement about a woman’s spirit, body and pride.
“This is what we look like,” said one of the dancers to a wary audience member once.
Last Saturday the Sisters Of The Shawl performed in the Bennington Masonic Lodge again, along with dancing groups from all over New England.
Watching these women perform seems like much more than a dance to me., it is dance of the spirit, it awakens the dreamer and spark within. We both fell in love with this idea, me as an observer, Maria as a member of the group.
Dance is the poetry of the human body, I think.
It is the narration of a magical story, what they see and feel, what you see and feel, that recites on lips, on hips, with all of one’s body.
It takes years to learn how to do it, Maria is not yet ready to perform, she is working hard to get there, and loving it. She will get there.
Every week, she comes home and shows me her new ability to “bump,” or shake her shoulders, or twitch, I wouldn’t even begin to describe it. It is very hard to do.
Belly Dancing, wrote Shah Asad Rizvi, “illuminates imaginations and embraces the most sacred depths of souls.”
This is so. The Sisters of The Shawl came to our Open House last October, and they have been invited to return this October, the Open House is set for Columbus Day weekend, both days. Mary Kellogg will read from her fourth book, soon to be published, Ed Gulley will be here to show some art, and we expect a new puppy to be on hand to liven things up.
A few years ago, neither Maria nor I could have imagined loving belly dancing, life is curious and wonderful if you can keep your eyes and ears open and learn to watch and listen.
Perhaps the Shah had us mind when he wrote Belly Dancers, “show me a person who found love in his life and did not celebrate it with a dance.”
