I love curves … but straightness also has a place in my heart.  Take lines, for instance:

What does a vertical line mean?

How about a horizontal one?

Your meaning may be X while mine is Y.  All good.  I see the up-and-down as integrity, keeping my word, treating people well.  And the left-and-right as equality, inclusion and acting “on the level”.

Lines are everywhere, and so are my opportunities to reflect on the symbols they are for me.  May I spend more time thinking big and less thinking small.  I can live broadly and kindly, with big fat brushstrokes full of paint … or I can obsess with timid little lines of fear.

And then there’s architecture.  The Flanders region of Belgium is famous for its stepped gables.  From Google: “A gable is the triangular portion of a wall at the end of a building with a pitched roof.”

Here is the wonder of local gables.  Voilà …

This restaurant is about fifty metres from my apartment building.  Such beauty.  And steps to … where?

For you to respond

And me

I wonder if I’m on drugs.  No, I don’t think so.

On Thursday I had cataract surgery on my second eye.  So the right started the process that the left had a head start on.

What would be a good word to describe my head?  “Vacant” will do.  My distance vision is wayward.  I often stumble on the cobblestones and have trouble estimating the distance between me and objects, such as people.

After the surgery, my near vision was useless, so I bought cool orange-framed reading glasses at a drug store.  So I can see this screen.

The visual bottom line is that I will have excellent vision, with glasses for near and another for far, by August 15.  That’ll do nicely.

I woke up on Friday morning with my world feeling like an abstract painting … everything soft and blended.  I had a decision to make: go to Salvatore’s in the evening and sing … or stay home and lick my imagined wounds.

The ticking of the hours wasn’t bringing me closer to an answer.  I could feel passivity creeping over me … a yearning for the couch or bed.  But there was also a tiny spark: I want to sing!

What an excellent dilemma to be in.  Small or big.  Slumbering or alive.  Weak or brave.

I chose

Yes, I was worried about forgetting the words or singing out of tune as I sat talking in Salvatore’s before the eight or nine performances.  But I also smiled.  I’m here!  I didn’t give in to mediocrity.

I sang well … actually a song about singing.  I looked into the eyes of the fifteen souls in attendance as the words flowed from my mouth.  Many of them got the beauty of lyrics such as these:

When tyrants tremble sick with fear
And hear their death knell ringing
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?

Afterwards I had a lovely conversation with a young woman.  We talked of life, about our shared sadness of often not being seen as the divine beings we are.

She was both spiritually and physically beautiful.  I had the strangest thought as we spoke – one I didn’t share with her:

She’s like The Elephant Man.  Many people only see the body … not the soul inside

***

Now it’s Sunday.  I’m glad I’m writing again

There is much to express

My glasses.  I’ve been possessive of them for eight years or so.  They’re so funky.  They’re so me.  And wonder of wonders, I bought them at Costco!

There’s a “have to” here.  My glasses need to be vibrant, full of colour, unusual.  As I see me.  Often.

Well … the end is near.  This is the last full day for my Costco frames.  What you see in the picture is only one lens: I had an optician remove the left one after last week’s cataract surgery.  The new lens in my eye would have battled with the eyeglass one.  In the last few days, I’ve had fun doing a party trick: sticking my finger through the hole.  Most people laugh.  (I worry about the others.)

Tomorrow, around 2:00 pm CET, I’ll have an artificial lens embedded in my right eye.  And Voilà!  Old glasses bye bye.

My face adornment has accompanied me on many a journey over the last eight years.  Times of ecstasy … times of despair.  The funk has remained through it all.

In four weeks, my ophthalmologist Dr. Kose will know what prescription I’ll need for my new glasses – one for far, one for near.  I’ve already picked out my frames – not as strange but still vivid.

Can’t wait for the clarity and beauty of the future

“We Shall Overcome” was written by someone sometime in the 1900’s.  It has been sung as a protest against the oppression of any group in society: divisions of race, religion, language …

The song brings people together.

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome, someday
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome, someday

We shall live in peace
We shall live in peace
We shall live in peace, someday
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome, someday

We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid, today
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome, someday

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome, someday
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome, someday

***

I saw a marvelous movie a few days ago, directed by India Donaldson.   Good One shows the young speaking truth to power to the old, and the perils of relationship.  The story and the characters were real.

I read several reviews of the film, and one stood out.  Let’s just say I’m not going for coffee with the author anytime soon.

[Donaldson’s] debut length feature is, at its core, a character study that is interested in an immersive contemplative experience through the eyes of someone whose sensitivity might not be shared, not because of differences in what constitutes moral values, but because of a displacement in presumptions.  By reason of the object of perception not being equally perceived, different readings of it are born.  A decisive event in the movie articulates this difference in interpellation and renders what came before, our being with these characters and making our own assumptions after the time spent, something needing to be recontextualized.

It would be tempting to see in Good One anything but a reproduction of ideological discourses where the lines between good and evil are clearly drawn, and by doing so, something that voids reality from its complexities.  Nonetheless, its non-judgmental approach is more interested in exposition than it is in lecturing.  This is a story grounded in believable events and as such, said line could not be further from being drawn no matter how questionable some remarks might be interpreted.

***

Simple … Complex

Reaching Me … Not Doing So