I am 66, and I HAVE BEEN TAKING PICTURES since I was 15. and such a gift is earned and some would say, “God Given.” However, the beauty of the shutter is most certainly a matter of elbow grease as well as an eye given by God. My right eye once hazed over with a brown film called a cataract, so I switched to my left eye for sighting through the eyepiece. This took getting used to, and the problem then and now is that that brown film ever so slight, even less so then, and it prevented me from getting an accurate view of nature, for my forte is nature photography, and landscape. God had not anticipated that I would live into my 60s, and on the 11th of July, 2018, I will have the second man-made lens implanted into a tiny slit after the original defective lens is crushed and sucked out, one with nearly the precision of the lens God gave me at birth. Think of the eyes of the baby as it emerges into the world. When I thought of my wife’s eyes up until a few years ago, I would cry. My wonderful wife was born with defective lenses and eye muscles. Do you know such breathtaking miracle for her was shown her the world not experienced since her left retina was almost destroyed? She does have peripheral vision. She wears the most advanced contact lenses available. I will have the second man-made lens surgically implanted into my left eye, the first being implanted about five years ago in the right eye before my eyes began to grow cataracts. The manmade lenses for right and left eyes are not quite as good as God’s eyes because they cannot change focus, and I will wear specially fixed lenses with slight correction for distance and complete correction for close vision. I think that even the glasses are a lensmakers miracle. God’s eyes, the eyes God gave me, can change focus from a few inches to infinity in front of my eyes. But, as I have grown older this focusing mechanism has become weak, and in either case, with my natural lenses or with my new lenses implanted into my eyes, lenses so small the accuracy of my photographic lenses, both in size and accuracy, put these lenses by camera companies to shame. If every photographic lens maker could match the precision of lenses made for my eyes, each picture would match the beauty of the eye. However only would this happen if the sensor in the camera could match electronically what the retinas of my eyes can do? This may never happen.
In the case of my wife’s retinas, she was born with weakened eye muscles, weakened lenses, and with weakened muscles the propensity for retina damage; potentially nearsightedness to less than an inch. Her contacts are a great advancement, for with these her vision is the best since 1988. In the winter of 1988, my wife’s left retina experienced a vascular accident; this accident blinded her left vision to about 90 percent, wiping away the central vision. This vision can never be restored. but with the opticians careful crafting of contacts that correct much of the nearsightedness, she uses primarily her right eye. With the care of one of the most trained optometrists in the world, the best she has ever had, her contacts cover much of the eye, bringing comfort and much more precision than her old contacts. The old contacts were about $350 to $450 whereas her new contacts are about $800; the old optometrist charged about $80, whereas the new charges come with the expertly trained optometrist fitting these advanced lenses. Very few optometrists are trained to help people like my wife, and we are so very fortunate to have Dr. Hill in our area. His care has made my wife’s manmade lenses of as exacting specifications as the greatest of lens maker far surpassing Nikon, or Canon lenses for cameras, My own exacting lenses for my cameras, Nikon, Sigma, and Tamron lenses, do not even come close to the precision of our eye lenses crafted by some of the greatest lens makers in the world. Yet, we began this discussion with the comparison between God’s work, or natural vision, and artificial lenses for the human eyes. Without a doubt, both my wife and I cannot see without the human assist, and one still might argue that God bestowed the ophthalmologists, optometrists, and precision lens makers with the intelligence to help people like Marjorie and me.
Charles Taylor C2018
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Published by elgwyn
I was a University and college writing teacher, now retired, so I write poetry, and essays, mostly free verse poetry. I love writing. Computers, tablets, and smart phones are the norm. When one sees university campuses with students looking at phones while walking to class, one realizes writing can be blogging. I am an ordinary man writing for artistic pleasure writing, and simple taste-- blogs are an answer to high priced self-publishing. Walt Whitman had to print his paper books himself, because in 1855, and 1860 poetry did not sell. It does not sell now unless you have a Pulitzer Prize and even then the poet usually makes a living in other ways than writing. In all ages there have been writers writing out of their own needs, and blogs are an answer to get rid of high cost of self creativity. I am an older man with fewer computer skills than my daughter who has been at computers since she was three, so here I can satisfy my need to write without spending too much on self-published books. All three blogs let me reach an audience missed by books and stand a better chance to reach a wider audience. My two books, Winter from Spring, Meditations on Gratitude, as Kindle books and paperbacks did not reach as many people as I wanted, and blogs can let me avoid the printer. Layout and design is expensive. For me writing is more like the charcoal jottings of preexisting civilization made only for posterity. Blogs face two problems as I see it. They might be submerged into a chaos of too much writing, and they depend on electronic storage. Yet, how's that different from electronic books which must have specialized publication? Paper disintegrates, blogs can be physically stored and organized for posterity in data banks. All organization becomes chaos at some point, but charcoal images on cave walls still exist after the author scribbled eons ago. So what if I reach only a few interested people, but hopefully, readers will reach out to me. Writing is essential for showing the ways of culture before history knows those ways. To record each individual is essential especial for billions of people who need to know enough reading beyond pictures to save a planet. Writing without profit isn't new to me. I'm not seeking to impress the audience. Poetry in general never sells, and personal confessional, and emotional writing exists sometimes like journal writings only for the author. At least here is my hope for wider audiences. My writing is personal and informal, but my writing expresses some serious ideas like the writing of contemporary writers to rise above chaos in my own simple way, above self-absorption, a meditation, the simple writing of an ordinary man. I hope to find my own way out of my own chaos and make my record stand alone if even in electrons. Though I hope never to express nightmare in my poetry, fiction, or essays, some serious considerations are important to me after centuries of mechanized nightmare. The next decade is probably of the same failure in our world. This decade looks to be another time of diminished individuals and the next as well. We all wish peace and hope will become normal. It looks like if hope reaches each individual, not governments there is satisfaction in making means of writing available to many. My hope is for each human being to give their own expression out of the abyss. If humankind is to survive in any common way, we must each be able to express maturity and take responsibility in something beyond self. Electronic media offers people these possibilities so long as computers can store individual lives. Here people can freely see what I write and what others write. Though I hold an MFA in creative writing my simple vision never found a wide audience. I was disappointed about this earlier in my life, but now it's just what one expects of such degrees. I found happiness in family and especially in love of my wife and daughter. Writing can be more than a pastime now that I'm older. I approach seven decades living with some disappointing times, and some satisfying times. I'm like most people, and I've been married more than 37 years, and we sent a successful daughter into the world. We happily live in a country where even the poorest have food. Often as a young man when I traveled for nearly one year through Europe, where does a culture begin to feed and house so many people, and how do all these people live in harmony since World War II? Maybe it's been a question of survival. Writers can hold a little corner with blogging, blogging for harmony and peace. This is my hope. This is my question.
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