Planet Eyeball

 

[medical photo of an eyeball on a computer, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash]

                   

My retinal specialist/surgeon took a picture of my healing eyeball yesterday when I went in for my two-week check-up. Those are my eyelashes and up to the left is where the retina tore and has been lasered.  I imagined writing something all deep and insightful about the eye, how I'm looking at me looking or the eye is not like a planet but, rather, a planet, the planet, a globe of blood vessels, the macula, the retina, the optic nerve. No ableism here. Even if you can't see, you can see. 

Take a look.

Before I got my eye put out -- (336)

Emily Dickinson

Before I got my eye put out –

I liked as well to see

As other creatures, that have eyes –

And know no other way –

But were it told to me, Today,

That I might have the Sky

For mine, I tell you that my Heart

Would split, for size of me –

The Meadows – mine –

The Mountains – mine –

All Forests – Stintless stars –

As much of noon, as I could take –

Between my finite eyes –

The Motions of the Dipping Birds –

The Morning’s Amber Road –

For mine – to look at when I liked,

The news would strike me dead –

So safer – guess – with just my soul

Opon the window pane

Where other creatures put their eyes –

Incautious – of the Sun –

[medical photo of an eyeball on a computer, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash]

Ahoy!

The eye is healing, and I am grateful for that. The “bubble” is slowly dropping and my two eyes are working better together, but I still can’t read very well from a book or even on the computer unless I hold things right up close to my right eyeball. I’ve probably not read fiction now for the longest period in my life. No kidding. It’s been a weird few weeks. I’m depressed and trying to rest. I meditate daily and depend on the two Marias to help me with Sophie. Ave Marias. Carl’s been a dream, dropping in the eye drops four times a day and coaxing me out on walks. My sons sent me a box of chocolate covered strawberries today for Valentine’s Day and a note that made me cry. They are, seriously, perfect in many ways. Sophie is good. The world is weird. 

Read the rest HERE.

Eye Can See All Obstacles In My Way

 

The good news is that I was in the hands of a very capable retinal specialist who was able to repair a tear in my retina yesterday morning. I don't have any restrictions in movement except for bending down or lifting weight over 20 pounds or exercising for a few weeks (the last being, as those who know me, music to my ears). I have a very gnarly left eye and feel vulnerable and disoriented. I feel as if I were on the other side of a ViewMaster, the tiny figure that is being looked at, clicked on, passed by. It’s also as if I were looking out at the world from inside an aquarium, the surface line of water sloshing across my eye, dark on the bottom, light at the top, shadows.

Read the rest on my Substack, if you'd like. 

Occhio, Oeil, Ojo, 眼, глаз, عين eye

 

Who among us — the myopics — knew that we walk around with elongated eyeballs whose vitreous can dissolve or liquefy, and in so doing pull down blood vessels to which it might be adhered or even tear at the retina itself causing a hemorrhage, a flooding of the eye cavity on the inside even while the eye on the outside is looking out the window, its host body sitting in the passenger seat of a car, headed to a nearby park to go on a hike on a beautiful Sunday afternoon? This is what happened to me, and while I am grateful that my retina is not detached, I must have surgery on Thursday morning to address any possible tears or rips. My capacity to learn new words never ceases to astonish me — or not “my capacity” but rather the capacity — retinal detachment, retinal specialist, vitreous, vitrectomy, vitreous humor gel, endolaser, gas-fluid exchange.

Read the rest here.

Apotropaic Devices: I Will LIft Up My Skirt

 

Tonight I watched a recording of a lecture titled "The Vulva's Pilgrimage: Understanding Medieval Genitalia Badges." I bought a ticket to hear this lecture from The London Drawing Group, so in lieu of listening live at some ungodly hour, I received the recorded version and watched it tonight after dinner. The pandemic has made possible a number of things for me, and, no, I'm not going mad. While I've begun a number of crafts and even dabbled in art for the first time in my life, I'm not yet casting vulvas. Yet might be an operative word there. 

Continue reading here.

Shower Blur

I’ve sat down about twenty times this past week, intent on writing something anything but then I just don’t. What is there to say? Why say it? The word meaningless comes to mind or less meaning and I think of coded language.

The rest is on Substack. 

Here you go.

Cue Mrs. Braddock's Laugh Post #4,567,234

Visit my Substack, if you're so inclined:

 https://elizabethaquino.substack.com/p/post-2020-georgia-proud-boys-repugnakins?r=1fjqd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

Day One 2021

 

Good morning! The picture above is from last night when Carl, Henry, Oliver and I went to Santa Monica and watched the sun go down on 2020. Sophie was at her father's place, so the evening wasn't perfectly perfect, but it was pretty close to perfect being with three men that I love on the beach that I love. When the sun dipped below the horizon, everyone cheered. We drove home and built a little fire in the fire-pit in our backyard, roasted marshmallows and played a game on our phones called Psych or something like that. We drank champagne and whiskey and beer together and laughed and argued but mostly laughed, and it was about the most perfect New Year's Eve I could ever imagine during a pandemic or otherwise, to tell you the truth. I wrote down a few of my current fears and burned them in the fire, and when I went to bed my clothes smelled like smoke. When I woke this morning just before sunrise, my hair still smelled smoky and the moon shone in a band through the back door blinds. I stood there in my mind in the moonlight the year behind us with many ways forward, the rest of it, life, seen through the eyes of the heart.

Happy Two Days After Christmas

 

There's been a lot of sweetness.

And a lot of Dumb and Dumber.

Reader, what's happening?

Bead-maker, Sea-shell people: Chumash

Dear Inhabitants of this Land,

This is me at this time: a 57 year old white woman living far away from my ancestors (primarily Southern Italian, Syrian, a smattering of Scotch and English) on your land. I know only a small bit of how I got here and what twists of fate and circumstance and stardust and love brought me, but at present I feel lost and broken and confused and overwhelmed. I feel obligation to my family — obligation so heavy that you — inhabitants of this land — are just shadows on the periphery. 

Read the rest, if you'd like, on my Substack.

Stopping and Watching the Leaves (Cimbrian Women)

 

I bought a big Christmas wreath today at a neighborhood Christmas tree lot. I was driving around the big shitty, thinking about the coronavirus and the vaccine and why people are so stubborn yet so hopeful and my tiny little mother mind™ whispered its disappointment in the spoonful of sugar mentality of my countrywomen and men who are most if not all all geared up to be cured by this thing and my tiny little mother mind™ is just sighing and trying not to let the old ghosts run down its labyrinthine corridors with all those little doors behind which are all those little experiences. My tiny little mother mind™ thinks gently about the idea of Terrible America being capable of pulling something like this off given what’s just happened in the last ten months, gently because twenty-five years have taught me to approach gently that which is impossible, the better to hold and bear it along with all the good and beautiful. 

To read more please go to my Substack.

Respite

 

You haven’t seen much of me lately, and I’m sorry for that. I can’t say why, exactly, I haven’t visited and written. 

Read the rest at my Substack.

Thanksgiving

 

Henry and Oliver, Yosemite 

2011

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer. Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need. Take only that which is given. Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share. Give thanks for what you have been given. Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken. Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, 

Braiding Sweetgrass 

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Dysfunctional Resilience

 Last night I was reading in bed and I heard a crackling sound and then again a rustle and I thought it might be Sophie but I didn't feel like getting out of bed so I kept reading (Homeland Elegies) but that was it, the guilt was creeping in and then I heard coughing a tiny cough a choke, really, so I lay the book down and got out of bed and walked down the hall the short hall and into the darkness of the room where the lady lay the princess lay gurgling. I don't know how to write anymore and remember writing these tales before when I used commas and semi-colons and short muscular verbs. Now it's all run-ons and no punctuation and stream of thought because after nine months of being at home and teaching on Zoom and doing all the usual things with Sophie like marveling at her hair and feeling her grace and changing her diapers and managing her medication and arguing with her insurance company and paying Nice Neurologist to write me scrips and listen to my suggestions for what we should do next, well, there's no other way to get it all down. I flipped on the light and Sophie's lips were dark were they blue? was she breathing? had she had a seizure? where's the pulse-ox? Let's make a long story short (the requisite shall we?). Sophie is ok so no worries all is well thank god (where is god?) and I sat up with her all night, you see, because I knew in that moment that had I not gone into her room at that exact moment she might have died. It feels good to type that out here in the public space that is this old blog for you dear Reader some of you well over a decade. I just knew in my bones that this is how it will happen but that it did not happen not happen last night. I sat up all night and then I fell asleep and woke with a start at ten til nine and Sophie was still sleeping Sleeping Beauty right next to me her lips red red rosed. I had to teach at 9:30 on the Zoom and one of the Marias was coming at 9:00 so I got up from the bower where we lay and made coffee and opened the door to one of the Marias who would be taking over for me. Where was I? My friend Noa from days gone by calls this all of this dysfunctional resilience and I call it a tale, a happily ever after, thickets of thorns and brambles and words and thankfulness to be alive, even now with no punctuation.