i must admit that i am despairing a bit over hitting 42 in a couple of weeks.  i love birthdays, and generally love to celebrate life as it cycles on by, and i do my best not to put too much emphasis on the numbers.  they are only numbers, after all, and 41 has been a great number for me. this one seems to be affecting me on a deep level, however.  filled with questions about where i am and where i am headed, and why i seem to be headed there alone, at least in the romantic partnership sense.  aches and pains, a mild case of ennui.  none of it is unexpected, and none of it is all that extreme.  the sun came through the clouds today, and the puppy i am sitting had a great walk around the neighborhood.  tomorrow morning i will head to china beach for my first bay swim in a long time.  i can appreciate the reflection this time in my life is calling for.  it's still winter.  spring is on it's way.  i can accept the changes that come with time.  except the failing of my eyes.  

i despair a bit more over the slow but steady the failing of my eyes.  i've always had a challenging relationship with my eyes.  i finally got glasses in 5th grade, after years of pretending i could see just fine.  i am extremely nearsighted - my vision is -8.50 in my right eye and -9.50 in my left.  without contacts or glasses, i could hardly read a book if it was held up to my nose.  because of my terrible vision, i have always felt my sight was both precarious and precious, and that feeling has only increased as i discovered and continue to grapple with the only calling i've ever fully stumbled into, the world of photography.  until i turned 40, contacts and glasses had been my salvation.  but like they say, the day i turned 40, my eyes started to go.  in the other direction, farsighted.  painfully.  quickly.  computer screens and that pesky little lcd screen on the back of my nikon are becoming more and more difficult to see clearly.  reading glasses help a bit.  it's time for a trip to the opthamologist, certainly.  on a friend's recommendation i just ordered aldous huxley's book learning to see, which is both a meditation on vision and a set of techniques to help keep it.  i know rationally that becoming farsighted doesn't lead to blindness.  but i have had such a tenuous and strange relationship with sight.  and i have always had a deep and secret fear that i would of course wind up blind.    

i've been thinking about all of this a lot lately.  wondering, worrying, dreaming about it even. but also curious about what the gift is.  the blessing inside the curse.  the wisdom that always comes from the difficult stuff.  what would be the worst thing for me?  not being able to see; it's hard to begin to imagine what that would be like.  a completely different world.  almost completely abstract to me.  the only thing i could even begin to imagine is that i would not be able to do that thing which i love so much, which has brought me so much joy and connection, so much understanding of myself and the world around me, so much of how i define myself as a human being.  without my eyes, i would no longer be a photographer. right?  

except.

ruminating and pondering and wondering, i remembered a story i heard years ago, i think on this american life, about a blind photographer in new york city.  i couldn't find that story online, unfortunately, but in my internet roamings i found a whole universe of blind photographers.  blind photographers!  i started here: http://blog.blindphotographers.org/.  i found some incredible stories, and amazing pictures.  by visually impaired and totally blind photographers.  and a whole lot of thought and wisdom and different perspectives about sight, and creativity, art, and humanity.  and photography.  one quote that has stuck with me is something simple but true from victorine floyd fludd (what a name!), who said "a good picture comes not from the outside, but from within."

i don't ever want to lose my sight, for sure.  but simultaneously i am more interested in the process than i am in the form.  my sight is just part of my experience, even of the visual experience.  the whole of life is a process of life-death-rebirth, of losing and finding and losing the way again and again, of encountering the same things over and over but differently each time.  perhaps if i lose my sight, i will learn to see in another way.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1897093_1883576,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1899017,00.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10238900-1.html

http://blog.blindphotographers.org/f-stop-beyond-with-alex-de-jong/

http://www.disaboom.com/blind-and-visual-impairment/blind-artist-wins-new-york-city-photography-contest-exposure

http://gothamist.com/2005/09/10/ralph_baker_refusing_to_be_blind_photographer.php