Restored Vision

    Metafilter recently posted a link to an article about a man who had his sight restored at middle age. The entire article is impressive and worth reading in its entirety, but a specific point that was brought up was the huge number of imperfections only noticable through vision.

    Virgil, blind since childhood, worked as a masseuse. His sense of touch, therefore, was highly developed. A point specifically brought up in the article is that he was newly disgusted by imperfections in the skin of his clients that had previously felt smooth. Comments of this type have been made, in fact, by most people who have had sight restored to them after being blind for a long time; previously unnoticeable imperfections bother them, such as cracks in paint or graffiti.

    While I am nowhere near blind, my vision is rather terrible; I will always need to wear some sort of corrective lenses. I am just blind enough, however, or maybe just empathic enough, to know exactly what is meant by these people. Imperfections noticeable by touch bother me much more than imperfections noticeable by sight. Life quite literally blurs around the edges when I remove my glasses, and though I am not able to read or bring in new information, it is slightly comforting to see no imperfections, only rounded, feather-edged pieces of color, light, and movement.

    There is a certain kind of disillusionment that comes with sharper perception. In vision, it does not have a name. In life, it is considered part of growing up. Both situations involve new ability to notice detail, and thus notice the details that mar the walls, skin, and textures that make up our environment, or, in the other case, to notice that our parents are not perfect and nobody is really an ideal role model. While some lose their newfound vision after all, such as Virgil in the article above, the memories of the imperfections remain with us throughout our lives. It is more comforting to live a blurred existence, but I, for one, would not choose that permanent comfort.

New Project.

Reactions to short stories. First from my favorite anthology, then (perhaps) others.

The anthology I am referring to above is called Masterpieces: The Best Science Ficition of the Twentieth Century. It is edited by Orson Scott Card, and contains an amazing selection of short stories by, well, the best science fiction authors of the twentieth century, from Aldiss to Turtledove, from Asimov to Martin, from Bradbury to Gibson to Heinlein.

In short, it is awesome and far rarer than it ought to be.