Off the eye chart & Off The Map

"Please read the smallest line you can see clearly," said the eye doctor's assistant.

"What lines?," I asked.

"Can you see this light flashing?"

"What light?"

I have some prescription eye drops to relieve the inflammation of my lower eyelids, and I've ordered new bifocals with a "tweaked" prescription. The drops are very creepy as the instructions read:

Tilt your head back and with your index finger, pull the lower eyelid away from the eye to form a pouch. Drop the medicine into the pouch and gently close your eyes. Immediately use your finger to apply pressure to the inside corner of the eye and continue to apply pressure for 1-2 minutes.

Just reading the instructions made me queasy. I was still seeing magenta, yellow, and purple spots from when the doctor looked into my eyes. Inside there, I bet he saw the auditorium at Eastridge Elementary School.

In the upper primary grades of the mid-Sixties we studied Our Senses. We watched black and white filmstrips in our classroom about Our Nose and Our Ears, with the teacher's pet advancing the frames, and the highest reading group taking turns reading the script aloud. For Our Eyes we had to go to the school auditorium walking in two single-file lines, the Girls Line and the Boys Line, following the Supreme Line Leader For a Day, who was following the teacher in her shirtwaist dress. We walked with our hands clasped behind our backs so we wouldn't pinch each other. The teacher set up the film projector, and we were zoomed into what amounted to High-Tech Multimedia Learning! Our Eyes was a color film, with a couple of frenetic splices! The more informed about the workings of the human vision system I became, the more queasy I felt. After the film, we all stood up (too quickly), and filed out of the auditorium into the hallway. The single-file lines walked off down the hall behind our teacher, but I leaned against the wall and fainted, sliding down the chilly pale green cement block wall onto the swirled linoleum tiles. No one noticed. I recovered to find myself alone, and made my wavy way to the School Nurse's Office. Please don't mess with this mama's eyes, or make her study optical diagrams!

First time I met my future in-laws, I was wearing those doctor-issued black plastic shades with cardboard earpieces after my first eye exam. I've always sort of blamed my marriage on those cheap sunglasses.

Saw a wonderful movie this afternoon, "Off the Map", with Joan Allen and Sam Elliott. So many of my own themes cropped up in the movie: solitude, New Mexico, depression, letter-writing, sailboats, credit card debt.



Much of the movie is about a child, but it is not a kid movie. I love the artist using a rusted out bus for a studio. For years my New Mexico artist fantasies have involved using an abandoned Sinclair gas station at an isolated road junction for a studio. I've always wanted to be Sam Gribley in My Side of the Mountain. I've often wanted to returned to La Junta, the meeting of the Rio Grande and Red rivers near Questa, New Mexico.

If you enjoy the movie, you might like to read Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. You might also read And Now Miguel aloud to your children.