I picked up a new pair of eyeglasses yesterday. The frames and lenses are new; the age of the face and its accompanying tired eyes contrast sharply with the spectacles. The look on my face is…what? Is it one of surprise? Surrender? Or does my face suggest resigned acceptance? The grey down vest reveals my sensitivity to an indoor temperature of 71°F—which feels, to me, brutally cold. Yet I know I would be far more uncomfortable if I were to wander outside, where the air is twenty-five degrees cooler than the frigid climate in my study. Perhaps that’s the message contained in my frozen face—stunned disbelief that a temperature which would feel warm and appealing, were I sitting on a Hawaiian beach, seems so monstrously unpleasant. Mi novia…she picked the frames…tells me I appear “professorial” or “scholarly” with my new look. I may need time to get used to the disguise. And I am sure I will need more time to adapt to the new lenses—better eyesight, I think, but vision that will require my brain to adjust to views that have not yet become familiar.
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Clocks tell me I must go! Just 12 minutes until my next appointment with my oncologist. Time looks different through these new lenses; as if I inhabit a place to which I am unaccustomed. I may write more before this day disappears into a jagged memory. Or I may not. I may simply withdraw from this little piece of the world for a while.
