Not Quite Face-Blind, Not Quite Blind

Last night we opened CONES to a big and friendly crowd. I can't really see anyone during the show (and if you've seen CONES or kept up with this blog, then you know why), so I invited everyone to come say hi afterward. Even when people I know come up to me one by one, it can take me a moment to figure out who folks are, especially people I don't see often. The irony is that I've written this blog and made this show about being in between sighted and blind, and immediately afterward everyone gets to test it out—each of them once, me over and over again.

A few months back I wrote about prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, a neurological condition that I do not have. Here's another podcast about face blindness from the excellent Aussie/Kiwi programme Paper Radio. In this one a guy name John shares firsthand accounts of the split between intelligence and emotion that comes with face-blindness. Again, even though our conditions differ, I relate strongly to John's experiences, especially in his having an undiagnosed condition and then discovering what it is, and also about the process of passing and having a coming-out ceremony.

• Download audio

CONES runs for two more nights in Philly. Details here.

A Battlefield of Bad Eyes

"If blind students can earn college degrees, surely we can make arrangements so that myopic children can see the blackboard without resorting to glasses. They can be allowed to sit in the front rows, the teacher can write larger, the blackboard can be better lighted." — Donald S. Rehm, The Myopia Myth, 1981, 2001.

In building out a science report scene for CONES, I researched some stats on eyeglasses. Though the numbers don't always add up and vary from source to source, the consensus is that most adults now wear glasses, and that the number of North Americans with myopia (nearsightedness) has just about doubled in the past 50 years. Most sources agree that the uptick in myopia is due to people spending more time indoors looking at screens, and that more "traditional" activities (i.e., hunting and farming) would be a way for people to prevent myopia.


What people disagree on is what to do to treat myopia. Modern optometry leans toward "correction" through prescription, and a lot the websites advocating for this are run by prescription lens companies and optometrists who do not mention vision therapy and lifestyle changes that could help strengthen the eyes. Meanwhile, more people are asking, "Do glasses make my eyes worse?" The optometry professionals at the top of a search results who say, "No," primarily defend glasses as a solution by citing age-related presbyopia, or farsightedness resulting from the harding of our lenses (the natural ones in our eyes just behind the cornea). But what about the myopia that more and more of us are experiencing earlier in life?

Donald S. Rehm, an engineer and founder of the Myopia Prevention Association, has an interesting treatise on how corrective lenses can make myopia worse. Rehm presents some good optical science and relates it to eye physiology to demonstrate how lenses typically prescribed for nearsighted people can do a lot of damage in attempting to correct a person's vision. While Rehm's view (and earlier, Dr. William H. Bates, who advocated for getting rid of glasses) is unpopular in mainstream optometry, it opens up many questions that many conventional eye doctors have long been silencing: Why has myopia been on the rise? And why do most people with myopia need to get stronger lenses every year?

My experience as a person with myopia is that optometry has been a battleground between these two camps. People like Rehm and Bates (who don't fully agree with each other), or vision therapists like Meir Schneider, are cast to the fringes for their outspokenness (and it doesn't help that most of these guys' websites look like they were designed by 8th graders in the mid-1990s). Many other functional optometrists share these dissenting views, but have learned to keep quiet about it in order to continue working. This is very upsetting to those of us with severe myopia, left as casualties on this battlefield, not knowing whom to turn to for support. This blog and the piece I'm making are a step toward finding that support.

"31 Eyes"

I have a confession to make: This is not the first blog I've made about vision. It is the second.

In 2010 I wrote a month-long blog called 31 Eyes (one for each of day of the month) that featured daily tips toward improving one's vision. See it here.

I based a lot of 31 Eyes' material on the work of natural vision therapists like William H. Bates and Meir Schneider. Today in rehearsal we looked at one of Schneider's "Yoga for the Eyes" videos. This one:


It's amazing to revisit this work and to remember how helpful it was in bringing relaxation to my eyes as well as improvements to my vision. 5 years after making 31 Eyes and 18 years after adopting Schneider's methods, I say watch this video, have a look at the blog, and try these exercises. We might also be doing some together during the show.

CONES on the Radio

Jonathan Pfeffer recorded me for the NPR show The Pulse. Listen here.

Unproofread = Unprofessional?

I've started sending things I write to proofreaders. This cone dystrophy of mine is a recipe for tons of typos. But I may need proofreading for more than just the things I write.

A snippet of CONES premiered at FringeArts' last night alongside other works in progress. They'd sent me this tech schedule:

 ...which was a little small, so I enlarged it on my screen:

I noted "3:30" on my calendar and asked my ride to come at rehearsal at 2:00. She watched a run and at 2:30 we packed up to hit the road before 3:00, but with bad traffic we loaded in at 3:35. The tech folks asked for my lighting and sound cues, and then told me that my tech time had been from 3:00 to 3:30.

How did I mess this up? I'd registered what I'd seen in the email and confirmed the time with collaborators. I felt unprofessional and undependable, but I swear I'd read 3:30. So I re-examined the original email and scanned around a little more to discover this:

Zooming in earlier, I'd only seen the end time for my tech slot and thought it was the start time.

Stuff like this always happens and I often feel like a goat at a banquet. Do I need a secretary to handle all my scheduling and other affairs? Or do I need to tell everyone, "Hey, I can't see so well. If I screw up, it might be due to that, not me just being a flake."

Last night's saving grace was that the power went out and the whole show happened with the audience shining 100 flashlights onto the stage. Everything looked great and the piece about vampires and vision loss especially benefitted from the circumstances.