<\/p>\n
Monet Refuses the Operation<\/strong><\/p>\n
Doctor, you say that there are no haloes<\/p>\n
around the streetlights in Paris<\/p>\n
and what I see is an aberration<\/p>\n
caused by old age, an affliction.<\/p>\n
I tell you it has taken me all my life<\/p>\n
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,<\/p>\n
to soften and blur and finally banish<\/p>\n
the edges you regret I don’t see,<\/p>\n
to learn that the line I called the horizon<\/p>\n
does not exist and sky and water,<\/p>\n
so long apart, are the same state of being.<\/p>\n
Fifty-four years before I could see<\/p>\n
Rouen cathedral is built<\/p>\n
of parallel shafts of sun,<\/p>\n
and now you want to restore<\/p>\n
my youthful errors: fixed<\/p>\n
notions of top and bottom,<\/p>\n
the illusion of three-dimensional space,<\/p>\n
wisteria separate<\/p>\n
from the bridge it covers.<\/p>\n
What can I say to convince you<\/p>\n
the Houses of Parliament dissolve<\/p>\n
night after night to become<\/p>\n
the fluid dream of the Thames?<\/p>\n
I will not return to a universe<\/p>\n
of objects that don’t know each other,<\/p>\n
as if islands were not the lost children<\/p>\n
of one great continent. \u00a0 The world<\/p>\n
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,<\/p>\n
becomes water, lilies on water,<\/p>\n
above and below water,<\/p>\n
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow<\/p>\n
and white and cerulean lamps,<\/p>\n
small fists passing sunlight<\/p>\n
so quickly to one another<\/p>\n
that it would take long, streaming hair<\/p>\n
inside my brush to catch it.<\/p>\n
To paint the speed of light!<\/p>\n
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,<\/p>\n
burn to mix with air<\/p>\n
and changes our bones, skin, clothes<\/p>\n
to gases. \u00a0 Doctor,<\/p>\n
if only you could see<\/p>\n
how heaven pulls earth into its arms<\/p>\n
and how infinitely the heart expands<\/p>\n
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.<\/p>\n
~ Lisel Mueller<\/p>\n
found at the excellent panhala<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My eyes are getting worse. \u00a0Not just the worse that comes with age but the worse that comes with a degenerative eye disease called keratoconus<\/a>. \u00a0I have had keratoconus since I was a teenager, and I’ve become well used to seeing the halos and double images, blurring and other illusions. \u00a0My eyesight varies with weather and rest and a multitude of other factors but unless I’m wearing my hard, gas permeable contact lenses, my eyesight is pretty bad. \u00a0Not debilitating, but far from good.. \u00a0At a distance, even with glasses, I can’t make out faces, and that combined with my aging memory serves to create weird situations, when I call one person by another name and so on. \u00a0I’m not that old, only 42, but old enough to notice how things have changed.<\/p>\n