Blurred Vision

Falling Through Twilight

I’m sitting before my cabin window looking out, thinking of what it would take to paint what I see. I started close in, realizing I see my glasses. My thumb was beneath my chin and my curled fingers in view of my eyes too. Then I looked out and thought how to paint it, you’d have to start at the freeway fence and work your way back in layers: The sky would be the first layer, then the fence, then the trees that are growing toward the morning light so that they literally hang over the fence, as if they’re drunk and need support. Then back up ten feet or so to the two tall, straight trees. One has a buffalo skull on it. The other a hanging copper owl. Below one is a bushel basket. Below the other the leaning frame of a birdhouse. Then the path. Then the half moon of chairs I can see gathered around the fire pit, along with the edge of the rocks and branches. Then the few greens in the window box. Then the window, the table with its lamp, the computer, my coffee mug. Then me.

I got started thinking of it because it struck me funny how I was seeing parts of myself as I looked out. “I” was part of the picture. How seldom that happens.

I paint a self-portrait once a year. That’s different. The portraits are always a little weird. Last year’s was called Falling through Twilight. This year’s After the Storm (haven’t taken a picture of it yet). They’re abstract because I have no idea how to do realism. Which reminds me of another memory I had when I was remembering the clarity of my vision after my first pair of contact lenses a few posts back. Because I thought, even while I was writing about it, that there’s something to be said for blurred vision too.

My first “vision” if you want to call it that, occurred in church on Holy Thursday. There’s this tradition where you keep vigil with the Blessed Sacrament on the evening of Holy Thursday, generally after the reenactment of the washing of the feet. I always think of it as sitting outside the jail cell where Jesus is held before he goes to that day’s version of trial and punishment. I discovered this tradition about the time my spiritual journey was heating up, and it floored me to get to sit in a quiet dark church and just “be” with Jesus. Some emotion came over me that first time, and I had tears streaming down my face. I took my glasses off. Half a church away were the votive candle rows that sit on the side altars. While I was looking at them through the blur of the tears, a face formed. I felt that the face was telling me I was not alone. It was the first of many such small occurrences that told me, basically, the same thing. They often came out of blurry times if not always blurred vision.

I got bad news today. “Bad news days” might as well be called blurry vision days. It was moderately bad news when I started writing this, which is one reason why I was pensive. You get moderately bad news and you go into a pause mode. There’s a certain “looking out the window” time you spend when you get the “warnings.” It’s like you know something’s on the horizon but it hasn’t come into view yet. It’s not even blurry. You know so little that you can still escape into other lines of thought or memory. I often feel, in such times, that if I can get into my creative zone, it’ll be the best thing for me. I don’t want to sit and wait for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes I rake or wash dishes. “Warnings” often bring on a restless energy that doesn’t allow you to sit. But today, I sat.

Then the second part of the news came.

When it comes, you feel like you’ve got a bigger picture, and in some ways you do, but in another, you’re more shocked or startled in that way that doesn’t allow you to think of anything else. The news fills your mind and heart; takes up every bit of room. Being unable to think of anything else, being in that churning, anxious place, is like a signal that you’ve got all the information now, but not the whole picture. The main fog is an internal fog. You’re just beginning to discover how you feel about the news you just got.

No, I don’t have cancer. My kids are fine. It's news about someone I love but not my immediate family.

Yet it's something that concerns me and that I must give attention to. This is just the way it is. The actuality of the thing. In my day of not doing anything, I’ll be open to all the guidance that I can get – the internal flow – the kind that takes all these feelings I’ve got going and does something with them. It works somewhat under the same guidelines I have about writing. If you write long enough, you might discover what you have to say.

So I can’t help but notice how funny it is that I started the morning with the idea of writing about blurred vision and in remembering how the idea was birthed alongside the clear vision of a beautiful fall day less than a week ago. As if something was saying to me…don’t get too enamored by clear vision. Remember…blurred vision has something to tell you too.