And now July

I can't deny, this has been an

amusing Sunday in the mode of the

recent past. While shaving this mor-

ning, I found myself endeavouring

to splash from a corner of my left

eye an apparent bit of English cock-

er hair, resembling a small dollop

of seaweed as I blinked the water

from my eyes. It turned out not to

be superficial, but something swirl- 

ing about in one's vision pool,

so to speak. After showering and

dressing, and refreshing my ban-

dagings for a surgery previously

reported, I thought to call a 

friend's mother, in medicine in

town, who said, oh yes, floaters;

of course, that could mean a

detached retina; you probably

ought to have it examined.

Not one's plan for the day.

Telephoning the ophthalmologist

on call for this Sunday at the

University hospital, I was cor-

dially invited in for a glimpse,

given that I could be there in

a few minutes and the day was

not terribly busy. 

In this entry I do mean to affirm

a boy's fascination with optics -

or rather, at least my boyhood fas-

cination, whether this is a prov-

ince of boys or not. I have a 

thing for lenses and their en-

thralling properties, their clev-

er behaviours, their offerings of

resolution. I admit, a large bit

of my interest in photography is

shamelessly devoted to exploiting

the delight of playing with glass.

Within a couple of hours, I was

back on my way home, having had

two tears in my left retina treated

by laser optics, to re-affix this

vital little tissue to the optical

wall where nature originally laid it.

I could not be more pleased to have

had this telephone conversation with

my friend's mother, whom I called

immediately thereafter, with an in-

vitation to come on out to this 

farm and take up residence for a 

while, just to notice what else 

might be escaping my notice of de-

tachment. 

Do you know what happens when

people speak to each other, divided

by a million dollars worth of optics

but no more than four or five inches

of space? I noticed, in a smashingly

exotic optical array from Berne,

Switzerland (exquisite machining),

an effect on the voice which the

lenses really do account for, in

part; and I noticed it again, in

the laser panoply of optics from

(can you believe it) Italy. First,

precision optics impress upon the

organs of discourse a great quiet

of concentration and an enormously

calmer rhetorical flow. Second, 

their existence as a barrier per-

mits the tenderest and softest

tones to intervene because the

impersonal aspect of the exchange

is so expensively protected.

Do you know this feeling, as you

focus your camera? You may very well

know it, macrophotographically, as I

do. But you may also know it from

framing a portrait; and you exper-

ience this envelopment in caring as

an element not merely of precision,

but of selection.

If no one living, knows about you

in this world, you may synthesise

this relationship with the inter-

vention of optics. I have always

felt a great debt to the optics I

was born with, however, and I was

glad that for the moments in which

their use lay in the balance, other

lenses configured a rapport I could

hear and with which, by the grace 

in part of their genius for intim-

acy, I can read in my own sight.