May Eye Survive (for now)

I'm back. Can't say I'm better than ever. Can't say I'm no worse for the wear. But I've returned from a distracting week. My eye swelled from bacterial conjunctivitis munctasepular visualdronitis. Something like that. It still itches but the swelling has virtually vanished. What a troubling somewhat familiar experience. I've had a sty before, but not to this degree. My initial thought was that I had somehow mistakenly stored some pretzel salt residue in my eye socket. This brought on a extensive attempt to remove the imagined crystal chunks through rubbing, through flooding, through having a coworker search my eye for the morsel. I now know that all of my efforts aggravated the hell out of my brewing eye staff poisonfection. It's funny when I attempt to self diagnose, or even fit my own take into the doctor's treatment. I get lost in this swirl of pretend medical jargon. The doctor on the other hand is much more direct, "yep that eye sure is swelling [pulls up my lid] it's bacteria alright, here's the medicine that should clear it up in a few days, the best thing you can do is wash your hands." Wow. Thanks doc. I gladly pay for that service and much love to the North Seattle medical center for there extended support network to help the uninsured and impoverished in the area. Truly a community endeavor. Makes me happy. But man, my language seems obliterated in the directness of such a no-nonsense doctor (Doctor Jaffee was the name no less).

It's funny to me how I feel much more inclined to consider the role of vision in my life when it's jeopardized. Like when I first woke up and was the swell of my lid. Understood that it was curving over my line of sight. Knew the extent of its puffiness and the need to intervene. The eye spoke for itself all over me. Then as I had to restrain myself from touching it, from irritating that poor vision giver any further, I came to appreciate the lack of restraint I often have when I feel like my body is in ship shape. The tender care and consideration of infection. The greater regard. I even began to ruminate on blindness. Maybe triggered by my own irrational fear that at any minute I would be sightless for good. I thought about it whenever I had a painful, I feel all my eye, kind of blink. Imagining the door to vision sealing shut for good. I started to wonder if maybe this attention to my eye would eventually turn out to be an overall blessing. A lesson in cleanliness sure, but perhaps a new motion towards bodily vulnerability and transformation. That's vague. I haven't found a new way to accept what my body is capable of, like cancerous cells swarming all over me, multiplying me into nothing. No not that. But witnessing a major, uncomfortable movement of a body part from one shape to another is crucial. I mean I was mostly grouchy at first, needy too, just ask my loving galfriend ("no face smoosh kissing you plaguerat!"), and I couldn't embrace the idea of drawn out healing, of restoration. Fix me now. Maybe that's why we are a panicky culture when it comes to illness, we understand doctor's have extensive training and when we get a chance to see one the expectation is a cure, sort of, well a solution I guess, temporary or permanent. I don't know what all I mean, but I do have an appreciation for the potential flimsiness of medicine of treatment. I mean holy hell look at this article about the helpless quandary behind diagnosing Alzheimer's disease http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/health/18moral.html?hp

There is so much obvious aging, so much latent illness, so much that can "go wrong" with our bodies. Careful, that'll kill you. How to go about aligning with that dreaded potential? How to turn it into a message of mutability and inevitable disintegration. We hold onto our physical form, it's really our only anchor sometime, solidness makes thought meaningful in some sensational way. Witness and actor in bodily experience. Don't ask me why I watch sports! Ha, all over the place here. My eye is fine now. I daresay I will forget about this eye until someone is talking about eye problems, or I start to feel that seed I mistake for salt brewing inside of me, a new bacterial junction brewing, bubbling upward. Well, I hope I marvel. I hope I smirk at what's inside my body, what is in fact me that is out of control. That is cropping up, that is waiting to turn deadly. I hope it freaks me out, but I hope it feels familiar. I hope I know it's me. The fragile me that hides behind this veil, perhaps a thick dark curtain depending on who you are, depending on your fear, your regard for your self and your skin, your society, but I want to see that fragile me, that reminder of my temporal existence. May I hold onto myself, may I look through my eye while I can! May I feel myself rot away, feel the snuffing out of me looming all around me and laugh! Laugh that I am involved, that this quivering jumble of formed me is always undergoing something new. Never a static flesh!!