BLOGAHOMA

For a long time I have ruminated about my monocular vision. Should I feel somehow cheated or is it a blessing in disguise. On top of one-eyed I am farsighted with astigmatism. Eye doctors are my best friends. Every two years my prescription has changed since I was 4 years old. That’s 30 eye exams and new prescriptions. I have memorized the eye chart. My left non-functioning eye sees only the top letter. The right does considerably better though with out glasses vision is blurred with halos.

One-eyedness has not stopped me from being an artist. It has stopped me from driving. I took drivers training years ago but when I took the test I didn’t see all the signs I should have and felt the roads would be safer without me behind the wheel. I failed driving twice but passed parking so I have remained parked.

Although I have read novels my preference is short stories, poetry, articles or nonfiction which I can ingest a little at a time. My right eye gets tired. Sometimes I prefer to put on the headset and have the articles on the web read to me while I scan which acts as a double sensory retention. And I love being read to. I have had the opportunity to hear the great ones…. Toni Morrison, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Alice Walker among them.

I know from reading about monocular vision that I do not have the usual depth perception.

Monocular cues are cues to depth that are effective when viewed with only one eye. Although there are many kinds of monocular cues, the most important are interposition, atmospheric perspective, texture gradient, linear perspective, size cues, height cues, and motion parallax.

Unlike most of the movie audiences I am not looking forward to the age of 3D movies since they are set up for those with binocular vision. When an object is coming toward me it is another story. An sport where a ball or object is directed toward me immediately puts me in harms way, baseball, basketball, tennis, volleyball etc. etc. Those have hit me in the head way too often. Those sports are ones that I suck at, really. Swimming is also a problem as it requires taking off of the glasses and I am left in a blur. On the other hand if I am aiming at a target, lets say bowling, I do not suck quite as much. Actually I like bowling for that reason. My high game…. 167!

So what is the upside of monocular vision? Hard to say. I have a keen memory for what I see. I can draw/ sculpt from memory. Once when I was on a jury I came home and drew caricatures of the jurists from memory. I am also hyper aware of colors and patterns. It’s possible that similar to how ADD processes information, objects in a room all come into my sight at the same time without executive order of importance allowing an more interesting and creative view of my world. In addition I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t a tetrachromat.

“A tetrachromat is a woman who can see four distinct ranges of color, instead of the three that most of us live with.” It seems I can see the subtlest of variations of a color sometimes to the annoyance of others and to myself.
I would assume my my monocular vision has rewired my brain,  to wish for the use of both eyes would probably be a mistake.
The song Spider Web by Joanne Osborne says it best…

The world is made of spider webs
The threads are stuck to me and you
Be careful what youre wishing for
cause when you gain you just might lose
You just might lose your…
Spider web

Water Allotment

post by Muriel Fahrion

Not so unusual for pipes to freeze in January but it is a rare occurrence in Southwest Oklahoma, yet it happens. Yes, thank you, we did leave the faucet dripping but nontheless when the temperature plummeted to single digits the pipes froze. Our pipes are only minimally buried due our granite rock mountain terrain and any dirt we do have is not very deep. Optimistically, we believed,  just give it a day and it would thaw. January 2010 has turned out to have record cold temperatures for our area so unfortunatly it is day number four without water. We bought several gallons at the store but it amazing how much water we use. We resorted to melting down ice cubes from the freezer but that disappeared pretty quickly. We would have melted snow if there had been any left but it was gone after a 2 day thaw after Christmas.

Yesterday my husband, Michael, ventured out into the frigid air to borrow more than a cup of water, multiple gallons in fact (that is after the car’s steering decided it would unfreeze first). We have no large container with a lid but after asking several neighbors he found  the folks 2 house up who were not only willing to lend us water but also had a large container with a lid for the transport.  Handily these good neighbors also keep numerous plastic jugs to evaporate the chlorine before they fill their large aquarium. So armed with water from his hunting gathering expedition we were ready for a few more days.

The big container was to flush toilets that we replenished with gray water from doing dishes etc. We use a large stewing pot to boil the water and then to wash dishes. There was a baking soda technique I employed yesterday in the water just to see what those seriously green people were doing.  I washed my hair in the sink but once again catching the water I wet my head with to then rinse the soap out. Although we generally pay  attention to the weather currently I have been the suns cheerleader encouraging to rise to the occasion and bring us thaw. Michael has taken the neighbors up on letting him use the shower. I am using the “spot cleaning” method with a wash-bowl as they would have done before indoor plumbing.

The Lessons…. To conserve water is really a personal choice. For us it is not about the money savings since we never use over the minimum allowed so using less would not reduce our water and sewage bill. The experience of having no running water does show us that we can be resourceful and not complain about it. It proves that being friendly and helpful yourselves means that neighbors are very willing to come to your aid when you’re in a pinch. And when the water does return to liquid form we will greet it with a shout out.

I was surprised to read some of my FB friends disparage 2009. Yes there can be years that fall in the negative category no matter how you look at them. With so many years behind me now I understand that the mix is what life is about. A little sour with the sweet. To arrive at the net happiness derived you add up the moments. Photos, letters, Twitter, Facebook, but mostly my blog documents many of those moments and puts the year in perspective. If you graphed my year it stayed in the positve range with a few plunges that marked the passing of people in my life.

I lived 2009 with all the being I could muster up at any given moment. So I say, 2010 bring it on!

It happened that (one of several) serendipitous events for me this year was the interview, via Skype, with one Kirsten Dunst on Friday afternoon. Yes, THE Kirsten Dunst. It began with her friendship with Leith Clark the editor-in-chief of Lula: Girl of My Dreams the International very hip fashion magazine (out of the UK).  Leith and Kirsten discovered that they both loved the early childhood toy, Strawberry Shortcake and friends on which, as most of you know already, I was the concept artist, creating no less than 32 characters for the line. It must have been Leith that found me through the internet and  then she contacted me for a possible interview. I said yes, because that’s what I do, especially if it the publication is a brain child of the Strawberry and Care Bear generation. It wasn’t until a few months later that she said Kirsten Dunst was to be my interviewer. And I responded “which Kirsten Dunst?” I had in fact seen her in a few movies but it never occurred to me that it would be THE Kirsten Dunst but I came to find out that Kirsten is also a writer.

And so it came to pass yesterday, she at her office and me at home in my easy chair, dogs at my feet, Skyping from my Macbook. The interview, from this side of the screen, went great other than both of us energetically wandering off topic. Nonetheless a great connection personally though the digital connection had a few hiccups. Kirsten had me laughing and talking as if we just had not just walked or talked into each other lives.

I will only say that I was completely smitten by Kirsten.  And I will be listening to some of the music she recommended and watching some more of her performances on DVD. She suggested watch her in the “Virgin Suicides”. So I’m off now to the Hastings Video to pick up a copy.
…. I am back. Hastings does NOT have a computer base with searches other than by title. Nuts right! So they hand me this big telephone book sized reference that has movies listed by performers. The young man assisting me was dumbfounded to find Kirstin Dunst had 2 columns of movies to her credit. I was able to snap up Spiderman 1 (used) for $2 and the Virgin Suicides (new) for $8.

Would you like to know what we talked about? Well, you will just have to wait and read the article when it comes out, stay tuned. Oh yes, for all you Shortcake fans their will be a wonderful treats in store in the next Lula edition. Lula is a gorgeously put together magazine with a very creative edge.