Fixing My Gaze by Susan R. Barry

Author:Susan R. Barry
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Basic Books

Tracy’s comments helped me to understand my own experiences, for there were many days when I felt both exhilaration and exhaustion. My old way of seeing had given me the world in smaller doses. With my new outlook, all of my senses were awakened. The world was keenly present. While I used to play the piano once a week, I started to play every day, pausing often in the middle of a piece, captivated by a given theme or combination of musical intervals. Like my view of the coats mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, I saw much more texture and shape in the objects around me. I felt as if I could touch and manipulate everything with my vision alone and finally understood what philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty meant when he said, “Vision is the brain’s way of touching.”

But on many days, I also experienced sensory overload. I used to come home from work and immediately tune in to the radio to catch up on the news. In the early months of my vision therapy, I avoided the news altogether, listening to familiar music instead. I worried that I had lost concern for world affairs but later realized that I was perceptually tired. Now, my ordinary day was like a day in Disney World, a strange foreign city, or a tropical forest.

Once my vision changed, I was so preoccupied by my new sense of the world that I took on fewer responsibilities at work. I justified this by reminding myself that I was also caring for aging parents and growing children. Yet, in the past, I had willingly juggled many demands. What I was experiencing now was different. Most people learn to see when they are infants, at a time in their lives when they are cared for, are free to get cranky, and enjoy lots of naps. I was relearning how to see as a responsible, contributing adult. While I went through all the motions at work, I desperately wanted to be left alone, to be quiet and reverent, to take in one long, delicious look after another. I disappeared on long, solitary walks. I was at a loss as to how to explain this to my colleagues and friends.

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