nearly blind

Who would have thought that en eye doctor appointment could turn into such an adventure. The entire procedure at the office was not the wildest thing I ever had to go through. I had to stare into some machines, some with cute little pictures of a floating baloon. There were bright s in various colors, there were letters in various sizes. The ones I was able to read easily had a tiny 20/20 right next to them, so I guess I am pretty okay. The doctor told me I was fine. She then went on to drip various liquids into my eyes, and then she did some other tests which "did not hurt a bit." After the tests I was told what these little floaters were all about which I kept seeing in front of me. Apparently eyes age and so the substance within the eye becomes more flaky, which leads to these virtual artifacts. I am just getting older. That's all. I am otherwise fine.
I will return to this very friendly eye doctor in a year or so.
"You are like those three year olds," she said "first they come in screaming and then they do not want to leave." I had not screamed, but I really wanted her to put on that funny helmet again and to shine into my eye with this large bulb. I also wanted to see the little balloon again. My body probably just wanted some more novocaine. yey.
I was ready to leave the practice, just wanted to finish this silly article I had started in the waiting room. Hmm, except all I could suddenly see were these large blobs which were the illustrations, and between them this grey mush, which must have originally been the text. I could not really see.
I left the practice, found my way into the lobby of the old apartment building, looked into the mirror and even though I only appeared as a blob, I was a blob with completely opened pupils. They were big. I was a blurry squirrel.
The outside was absolutely too bright for my taste. I have no idea what possessed me to walk home instead of taking a cab. One reason could have been that there were just many yellow blobs on Park avenue, who knows if there were any cabs among them.
I entered the park. The sounds around me became what I saw. Never before have I perceived the park as being so noisy.
And then there were these really cute looking humanoid blobs everywhere. Really funny and many, many of them. I wanted to record a little blog entry, since I could obviously not write... so I was looking for something that might look like an empty bench. I somehow found myself in the Ramble, the portion of from which the city can not be seen. I pulled out my PowerBook, I opened it, and all I saw was this blurry thing of a screen. How was I supposed to record anything with this? The computer was somehow useless. I tried to look for the "access" control panel, found it, looked at it and only saw a large button that said "turn zoom off" underneath tiny instructions obviously for the seeing elite, not for me. I eventually figured out that the key-combination was apple-option-+ ... the screen zoomed like crazy, I saw 6 letters or so on my screen. I used the apple-option-minus shortcut to get the characters down to a comfortable walnut size. I am still at this point btw. stil typing as if I were an ant, jumping from key to key. Gigantic letters flash up on my screen. I can barely see.
I had to put my computer away. A blob dressed in white socks first passed me from left to right, then from the other side. He then sat very close to me on a bench and I could feel that he was ready to just grab my computer and run. Not something I wanted to risk, with my eyes squinting so I could see anything at all. The recording bit did not work anyway. I could not find a way to record with my osX. I could have probably asked the squirrel which later came to visit as I was sitting on a different bench. And you know what?, even if it had not been a squirrel, I would not really know. It was a blob.
I left the park around the corner of the American Museum of Natural History. I tried to pick paths which had no bipedal blobs on them and then almost closed my eyes and walked rather slowly. I made it to Amsterdam avenue at last and gave it up, just grabbed a cab. I am now at home. My screen has a resolution of 300x200 or maybe less. I will now close my eyes and wait for the blurriness to go away. I hope it will. I have deadlines to keep... hmm...