Leafy Perception and Sorting out Detail

When I first started this blog, I alluded to, and then briefly wrote about my experience nearly losing my eyesight.

At the time, I was aswirl with fears and recalculations of life and trying to come to terms with it all.  As for many people, sight is my dominant sense.  I am a teacher, a reader, a writer; a filmmaker; and a musician whose greatest strength might be sight reading.

And I am a gardener.  Who studied it seriously enough to make it an avocation, and who chose not to make it a vocation, but relies upon it as a form of meditation.   So it was not the generic laments of "how will I read?" or "how can I create images on film?" or "will I be valuable, can I even function happily, as a musician who cannot read music?"  Each of those had their own levels of solvability.

It was when I looked across one of my garden beds out front, thinking I would scan for weeds, and realized I could not even differentiate the leaves of the wanted plants, that I was whalloped.

One of many amazing things about the human eye (and our brain) is how we can see this, this image as recorded by a camera, but then also instantly and seemingly simultaneously scan for up close detail.  Standing from this point, I can look into and across the top of the foliage and identify where errant grasses and weeds are.  Kind of hard here, even if you click on the picture and open it up bigger.

So I have to approximate what our eyes can do.  Kind of like I needed to that day I stood a few paces away from the bed out front, and had a rapid, blistering series of realizations.

Like our amazing eye/brain communication, I was simultaneously realizing "Hey, I can't see the weeds!"  and "Hey, I can't see...much of anything.  Green.  That's it."  All the while moving in closer and closer...

The killer was I got right in on top of the leaves.  Which, in that case, were siberian iris, ornamental grasses, and regular lawn grass grown tall enough to flower and go to seed.

Not that I'd know.

I was done for.

***

I take a lot of close up and macro images.  For all kinds of reasons:  they rarely fail to interest me, it's a shortcut to helping make a picture "work," it's the only way to be sure certain details my eye-brain is registering are being communicated to the viewer.

When I lost my eyesight--when it went fuzzy, when I watched it glaze over and out--I didn't just lose a type of input.  I lost an important physical metaphor for sorting and thinking.  Learning and practicing are complex things, and putting learned practiced knowledge and ability to work creating is yet another complex something.

When it comes to camera images, you can sort manually that which your brain does intuitively.  See that picture there, with the angelica and the purple iris in the foreground and the peach and purple iris in the left background?  Pull it up large.  Let your eye scan over it.  Decide what it in sharpest focus.  In photography parlance, you are identify just what plane in the depth of field was made to be the center of attention.

In overblown fiction parlance, a character hones their eagle eyed attention on the pointy sharp edges of a loosely fronded angelica stalk, and notes the sharp contrast between edge and the surrounding air.

Either way, you just sorted detail that was already sorted. Look again; that picture was not taken by having the camera a foot away from the angelica.  The camera is at a distance, and zoomed in on the angelica stalks.  The fence in the far background is over 10 feet away from the angelica, and not a soft wash of grey, but series of sharp edged planks with clearly visible graining and splinters.  WHEN one's attention is upon it.  This angle/lens choice removes the option of paying attention to that.

So, you sorted a further level of detail from a collection of input that had already been pared.  That's a lot of thinking.  That's a lot of deciding where and when to pay attention.  

All of the levels are important.  When you stand back from the garden, there is a flow, a rhythm, both in the moment and over time.  There are colors to mix/complement/contrast, smells to consider, heights to account for both in terms of visual pleasure and plant survival.  Whose pleasure and whose survival, of course, being another set of variables.

***

So when I think about the ability to scan a planted area and pick out the wanted from the not wanted, feel the rhythm the planting establishes and determine if there are any breaks or hiccups, imagine what the textural and color palette will present in the future and if amendments should be made accordingly, I occasionally think of what I imagine a perfumer does.  How they select their elements to play together in the moment and over time, in what proportion...and how they must reach in to "pluck" that which does not belong, whether instinctively (thanks to long experience) or by careful process of elimination.  Or guesswork, which will lead to learning.  In my imagination, it is instinctive--but as a gardener I know that sometimes it is long experience which leads to the non-thinking but correct gesture.

On the other hand, as a musician, I know that the "right" gesture can be the result of training, or instinct, or a combination of both.

I also know that my ability to garden was ominously threatened by the prospect of losing my sight.  Which at the time reminded me of the dreams I would sometimes have in my youth about losing or seriously injuring a finger, as my instrument requires the use of all fingers on both hands.  

Perfumers must hate having colds, right?  Or the threat of brain trauma leading to anosmia?  Or even the temporary anosmia that can result from certain illnesses or conditions?

all photographs author's own

Fata Morgana, Trompe l'oeil, and other visions

Would you dine in the dark?  Complete and utter darkness?

You can.  I could have.  Dans le Noir, a restaurant you may already heard of, seats and presents food to you in total darkness.  In London (previous link) or in Paris (LA Times article here).  Cell phones confiscated, no luminous watches, etc etc.

Are you game?

I find myself saying "no way."  The sensualist in me is completely trumped by the Security Monster.  The same SM that says "no way" to things like skydiving, or bungee jumping over the Snake River, or attempting to reason with an angry teenager.  It's not that I am risk adverse; I cross busy streets on foot all the time, and this even though I was once hit by a car as a pedestrian.  I have participated in a water rescue.    Etcetera, etcetera.  It's just...and this is very important...I simply don't see why I should actively and knowingly significantly increase the odds of risk to my life with no meaningful reason.

The ability to say "I did it" does not qualify.  And I don't personally feel any rush of "feeling alive" by bringing the very issue of being alive into question.  Near death experiences?  I've had a couple.  No desire to go there by choice.

Hold, you say.  We're talking food here.

Precisely, I respond.  Ingestion.  You know, like the word on certain poisonous material containers:  "Do not ingest"?  Like in, say...botulism?  Whoops...people do inject that these days.  Let me stick with ingest...as in...food poisoning???

Am I being too cautious?  Perhaps worried to the point of pathology?  Maybe.  But I know this:  one of the things my senses do for me is tell me when there is danger.  And while YES my olfactive powers are quite important when identifying food danger -- reinforced every time I do a refrigerator clean out, or use the classic line "smell this milk..." -- I still rely on, and apparently give great weight to, my powers of sight.

It's not just the issue of seeing whether or not the food is blue.  There's the issue of being able to see the server.  Of how clean the room is.  Of whether my table mates are trying not to snicker.

Funny thing...I've had nearly orgasmic experiences with food.  When that happens, the functionality of my eyes approaches something like 0%.  But that is voluntary.

Control issues?  Maybe.  But I don't think so.

➴➘
I was sitting on the lakefront with a good friend recently.  The friend is recovering from surgery for a detached retina.  The weather that week had been very hot, and very humid, with the high moisture content making for unusual sunny day "fog" swirling at the water's edge.  There we were, with the heat and concrete behind us, and what should have been a cool breeze in front of us.  Instead, it was hot.  And wet.  We walked and talked.  A cool breeze snaked onto the shore, then went away.

We sat down.  I waited to catch the cool breeze again.  I did...but then something even more impressive: a fata morgana.  One, then another.

The first illusion was the consequence of the air being dense enough to collect a shadow of a building from the sun setting behind us.  The second was classic, cause by a boat emerging from the thick haze.  I first saw it as a Viking longboat; my friend saw something else.  We both caught a second something, and then it took firm shape as the modern vessel it truly was.

It was quite the sight.  And richer for having been shared, both in the vein of human friendship, and in the way that it helps to have a fellow witness to an odd experience, so that you know later you weren't simply crazy.


➫➫
When you look at the juice of a perfume and it is pink, or blue, you know that chances are it was aided and abetted in its color appearance.  When you look at it and see dark amber, the harder core among us are going to start wondering about issues of "turning."

Perfume is frequently colored to make it "palatable," or "attractive."  (Sometimes I wonder about gender coding, but am not yet ready to get into that.)  I have no idea what color some of these products would be if they weren't altered; given their opacity, there is probably no dramatic transition from pre-coloring to post-coloring.

I'd sit in a dark room and spray perfume and smell it.  Sure, my eyes could give me warnings that a given juice might have spoiled, might have mysterious "bits" floating about in it, could be the color and/or viscosity of anti-freeze.  But I remain open to the idea of smelling it "blind"... I think because in the end, I accept that I am smelling without really using my eyes whenever I smell a perfume.

That is one of the joys of it, of course; it forces primacy onto a sense that generally either takes a back seat to other senses, or is inextricably linked with another sense (taste).

➽➽
I did almost lose my sight once.  I've written about it before.  Almost exactly two years ago, I noticed as I created the link.  It was summertime then, as it is now, and I'm guessing there is something about this time, when summer is poised both at its height and also with the first hints of the transition to come, that both temporally and figuratively remind me of that time.

I wondered at the time if somehow I'd develop a keener sense of smell as a result.

I think I've only developed a keener appreciation.

I'll take it.

Along with an appreciation for abiding friendships, for the concrete ability to visually discriminate, and for the magical ability to be transported by a fata morgana.

Woodcut image, "Fisheye," from Samantha Shelton.
Woodcut image of God's all-seeing eye found on this Crystalinks page.
Paris trompe l'oeil architecture photograph taken from this Archelogue blog discussion.
photo of a fata morgana from the CUNY Offshore New Harbor Project blog.

Morgan Le Fay
from Project Gutenberg

Morgan Le Fay perfume
available at Luckyscent

Hind Sight...Fore Sight...and not much in between

I had one of those "a-ha" moments today, which I allowed to roll around in my head a bit because it seemed so logical and delightfully metaphorical.  A reading of my past that seemed to provide insight and new knowledge.  But, like many of these moments, it also seems like the kind of handy b.s. you spin in grad school/art school because it feels good, but might not really go anywhere.

Let me segue to the lead:  Last summer, I spent most of my time largely sightless.  Last winter, I quickly descended into the third ring of manic obsession, and became a perfumista.  HO! thought I as I brushed my teeth this morning, you don't suppose the loss of my vision led me to expanding my use of my sense of smell?  do you??

*****

About a year and a half ago, funny things started happening with my vision.  I thought at first that I had a problem keeping my glasses clean.  Then I realized that I had trouble spots even when wearing contacts.  By that time, my eyes felt a bit...well, itchy in an irritated way, and I decided it was my *eyeballs* that needed cleaning.  Indeed, my eyes, especially the one, had started producing extra goo.  So, clear it off or out, and move on.

Wrong.

I was driving to work one morning and it dawned on me I only had about 50% of the available area of vision out of my left eye.  It was a beautiful spring day, the kind when the trees have truly leafed out, and suddenly it's green, green, green.  And I had trouble seeing the trees.  (Which meant--slowly dawning on me--that perhaps I wasn't in the best shape to drive.)  No matter, just two weeks left until the end of the school year.  So, I perservered...

And ended up not seeing at all in one eye, and only somewhat in the other.  Turns out my eyes really WERE irritated.  By amoebas.  Living.  On.  My.  Eyeballs.

Things you need to know about me:  1) I spent precious free time studying to be a master gardener--and loved it.  I rescue plants, for heaven's sake.   2) I have spent considerable time and energy as, and still identify myself as, a filmmaker.  3) I read and write for a living as well as for joy.  4)  I live a not so secret life as a decent amateur musician.  I play flute, so of course I rely on printed music.  And am a demon sight reader.

Erm, noticing a pattern of dominant sense here???

****

So there I am, at the bathroom sink, concocting my would-be brilliant moment for the day.  And the bookend moments replay themselves: 

• Last spring:  me, going out to garden, thinking that if I can't read, or play music, or take a picture, I can at least trim a shrub and pull some weeds.  But I take clippers to branch, and realize 1. a safe cut is a somewhat iffy proposition, for both the plant and my digits, and --worse-- 2. I have no way of calculating an artful cut.  I can't judge the effect of the cut I'm about to try, can't use depth and periphery to look at overall effect, can't even think of its effect on the branch.  The best I can hope for is cutting a random branch without causing harm to limb, phyto or mammalian.
  
• This spring:  me, walking up the front path, seeing a grass frond sticking up among the irises.  I think.  I instinctively reach in, am right, and yank it up (roots included, natch).  The impact of what I was just able to do flummoxes me, and I nearly cry.  

And I think, duh. 

****

Oh, but wouldn't I love to let it lie right there.  But I don't think I can.  Because, truth be told, I tend to operate in waves.  Highs and lows of energy.  Intense projects, then intensely down time.  (Oh, filmmaking was SO good for that.  Academia, of course, had a built in rolling terrain of activity.  Music, too, for that matter.  No wonder I didn't ultimately like HR.)  Intense delving into learning about things.  (I did so love being a documentary researcher.)  And, from childhood, a collector and a saver.  

Ultimately, it was probably just inevitable that researching my grandmother's Norrell would lead to a collection of decants, full bottles, partial bottles, duplicates for swapping or gifting, a penchant for saying "chypre."  (My kids speak French, so they got me to say it correctly.)  I am simply left wondering if I should invest in a small refrigerator to hold them properly, rather than the shelves or boxes that do such a nice job for the books, the vintage jewelry, the vintage dishes, the vintage tools, the rocks from places I've been....