Eyesight is remarkable. If you think deeply about it, you have no choice but to come to the conclusion that your eyesight is nothing short of magic. And if you consider the amazing variations of eyesight among other creatures—eagles and lizards and horses and so forth—the concept of eyesight become more than simple magic. It is the embodiment of an impossible-to-understand occult integration between the self and the external world. We can only imagine what it’s like to have eyes on the sides of our head. We have to wonder whether beasts with such optical configurations see in stereoscopic vision…which causes us (me, anyway) to wonder if that’s how I see the world. Do I see in stereoscopic vision? And if I had only one eye, would I see the world in two dimensions instead of three? I can answer that question, of course, because I have the ability to close one eye. Some animals are said to see only in shades of black, white, and grey; dolphins, seals, and bats, for example. That “fact,” though, assumes we “know” that cones have the same function in those animals as they have in humans. I have to acknowledge, of course, that medical professionals and other scientists know quite a lot about vision. So eyesight is not exclusively a part the realm of magic and the occult. Yet it bridges the divide between them. Consider that we sleep with our eyes closed, yet we “see” in our dreams. There is so much we do not know and so much more we do not know we do not know.
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A few minutes after 5 yesterday afternoon, just moments after the NOAA weather radio screeched a thunderstorm warning, I think my heart stopped. A booming crack of thunder as loud as any I have ever heard or felt shook the house, then instantly echoed as if bouncing off every cloud in the sky. Simultaneously, all the lights in the house dimmed. They recovered for a second or two, then went dark. Through a series of text exchanges, we learned that a tree in front of mi novia‘s ex-husband’s house was struck by lightning at roughly the same time my heart stopped pumping. Despite multiple attempts to report the outage to Entergy, our electricity provider, its online system did not acknowledge the power failure. Finally, I was able to report it to a telephonic automaton; the tone of its voice when it assured me the problem would be explored and resolved, was unconvincing. And, then, we waited. Sometime in the deep of night while I slept, many hours later, the power returned. This morning feels like another “normal” morning. But I hear growling echoes of thunder, reminding me that the power of Nature, unharnessed, dominates the trappings of control with which humans attempt to manipulate our world. Rain is falling again this morning, Nature’s attempt to wash away memories of yesterday’s and last night’s show of force. Even Nature, though, cannot erase such an experience. Only Time can do that. But Time only hides such ordeals; experiences etched into the fabric of the mind remain forever accessible. A little overdramatic, perhaps…but my creative fibers feel a little arthritic this morning, so a little stretching may be in order.
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The pains, usually in the upper right quadrant of my torso, once were extremely brief and infrequent. But they have been lingering longer when they occur, which is becoming more often. And they tend to be more intense lately. Despite all the X-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, etc., doctors have been unable to determine their cause. The guesses have included pleural effusion, abscess, and various other possibilities, all of which apparently have been ruled out. The discomfort they deliver is not intolerable; the pain is not excruciating. So there’s no real urgency to know the source, at least not to alleviate unbearable pain. But, still, I suspect knowing the root cause might be beneficial in other ways to the doctors treating me for whatever ails me. If the only way to find out, though, were to spend time in the hospital, I would say it’s not worth the time and effort. Medicine has not come as far as I would have hoped at this stage of human evolution. Drat.
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Are all cannibals strict carnivores? If the Sun had puppies, would they be hot dogs? Are moments in the Future properly called post-historic times? Oh, only if the moments are after we’ve stopped keeping written records.
