Opera glasses ain't just for operas anymore

Tonight my friend invited me to a show in someone's house. It was a mix of dance and theatre and other performing arts. Each performer took the stage, just 15 feet away from me, but I couldn't see a thing. And as the rest of the audience laughed at everything happening onstage, I sat there wishing I could see what was so funny.

I see lots of performance, and this happens all the time. And while I've learned to bring binoculars to big theaters and outdoor spaces, this was a show in a living room—we were right there, so close to each other. Wouldn't it have been weird for me to whip out these opera glasses to see something 15 feet away? Even in a huge auditorium, someone sitting nearby will poke fun at me: "What are you trying to do? Read the tags on the actors' trousers?" And then I either have to make that person feel like a jerk by outing myself as visually impaired, or sit there feeling like a freak for being kinda blind.

Then there's this thing: My being a man peering at a bunch of female performers through binoculars has this other creepy connotation. So opera glasses or no, I am damned.

Thankfully my friend gave me the play-by-play of what I missed after the show. And in some sense, I'm not actually missing anything. I just see it differently. 

Illegible + Unintelligible = The Same Sandwich

My favorite neighborhood eateries are run by artists. Each establishment offers its own aesthetics through a certain curation of cuisine and atmosphere. There's usually good music playing on the stereo, local work by a roster of painters and printmakers on the walls, and bulletin boards plastered with tons of flyers for community happenings. The food and drink these places present are little works of cheap, culinary art, reliably tasty and satisfyingly filling. And among the art adorning the walls are some bits related to the food, most notably the menu and a mish-mosh of notes tacked onto that menu as addenda. It's truly beautiful. And utterly unreadable to a visually impaired person.

I use "unreadable" as an umbrella term that has two distinct parts. One part is "illegible", meaning that I can't read it because the writing is too far away, or the fort is too irregular, thin, or faded. This is an optical thing, meaning the part of vision that happens in the eye can't distinguish the images being presented to it.

The other half of "unreadable" is "unintelligible", meaning that my I can't process what's going on because having all these add-on notes and things arranged in a nonlinear, scattered fashion makes stuff hard to read, even when the font is legible. This is a cerebral thing, related to the part of vision that happens in the brain not distinguishing the information being presented to it.

Low vision can be a cocktail of optical and cerebral malfunction. People who were once blind and then obtained vision often cannot deal with the brain part of seeing, even though their eyes have been made to work fine.  My situation is less extreme, and I've taken to snapping pictures of menus. I use my phone's screen to magnify each menu item, but then sometimes can't make sense of what I see. Meanwhile, everyone around is ordering, and pretty soon it's my turn.

"What''l you have?"

The same sandwich I had last time.

Marooned in Manyunk

My friend and I took the train out to Manyunk. If this was NYC or Chicago, a trip like that would be a simple ride on the subway or L. But this is Philly, and that means taking SEPTA's Regional Rail train.

We stood in a long line to buy our tickets, and then had to jump out to make our train on time. I had a disabled fare ticket, but my friend was charged extra for buying his ticket on the train. "You know if you'd bought this as the station, you'd have saved money." Oh yes, we knew.

We sat and talked, and I let my friend keep track of the stops because I couldn't see the map or the display that posts the stops, and the conductor was little bit mumbly. Then my friend said, "This is Manyunk," and we hopped off the train...but it wasn't Manyunk! So we pried the door to the train open and got back on. By now we were getting to be good friends with the conductor.

Something like that is actually less likely to happen when I take public transit alone. I work harder to know where I am andin this post and also in this other post, that can be a lot of work. It's so much work, that I'll gladly give it up to someone who can see to tell me where I am. But yeah, even the sighted make mistakes sometimes.
, as I've written

Superpowers Beat Paper

I often write the word "dis/ability" with that slash in there to designate that those of us with disabilities sometime possess abilities that other lack. Call them superpowers. I do.

My friends Beth and Meridian. circa 2001.
FYI: This story is not about either of
them, nor about Beth's piñata, seen here.

Playing piñata is a unique sport. There's a spirit of cooperation—we're all working together to smack that thing, to bust it open so that we can get at the good stuff inside. But there's also a little competition in that some of us will hit it, some won't, and ultimately one person will deliver the final plow that sents bits of paper and candy flying everywhere.

Piñatas possess a special place in my heart. When the blindfold gets wrapped around my face, the broomstick placed in my hands, and I'm spun around to stagger toward that swaying paper mâché target in the air, I feel at home. And I feel super. Over the years I've cultivated an advantage in learning to use my other senses like superpowers to find that piñata in the darkness behind the blindfold. I get my bearings in space, feel the air and objects around me. I listen, I hear. I even smell and taste. And then I swing.

At one person's piñata party, I did this a little too well. I was the first at bat, and also the last. That's right—I took down the piñata so fast that no one else even got to play. In the moment I felt great because the "dis" was diminished by the "ability" and I got to flaunt my superpowers. But in hindsight I'm flooded with remorse, for I ignored Stan Lee's Law of "With great power comes great responsibility," like every good superhero must.

So if you're reading this birthday girl, I owe you a piñata, and several chances for you to swing.

Seeing Song #2: The (blind?) mouse played a daffodil

Yesterday's post summoned the chorus to this song:

I can see them, they can't see me,
I feel out of sight,
I can see them, they can't see me,
Much to my delight.

I always imagined the singer hiding up a tree or in a thicket, concealed from the view of these færie-like animals dancing and playing music. But now I'm envisioning the animals in this song all wearing dark glasses beyond which they can see little or nothing.



After all, there have been songs about blind mice.
Who's to say that any of these animals can see?

Blind Love #2: I'm sort of seeing someone

Sometimes I'm dating someone. Sometimes I'm not. And often we're somewhere in between.

In that in-between state, someone I was dating once said, "I was across the street from your house. I could see you, but you couldn't see me."

This difference in vision explains a lot. About seeing relationships differently. And about existing perpetually in the in-between. Seeing someone...sort of.

Wrong Hunch

I have a new friend who tends to hunch. I thought that her stooped posture was maybe because she's tall, but then I found out she's extremely nearsighted. Guess my hunch was wrong about her hunch.