A day that changes how We see the world

"The common ground between music and painting seems to lie in the organisation of their abstract qualities. In music, it's very clear, such things as the accumulation of sound, the dispersal of sound, the ebb and flow, the rise and fall, the contrasts and harmonies are arranged according to certain principles. In picture-making, the masses, the open and closed spaces, the lines, tones and colours can be organised in a parallel way. It's as though these relationships are built up in all their complexity in order to provide a vehicle for all those things which cannot be objectively identified but which can nevertheless be expressed in this way. Music articulates this indefinable content and it seems to me that this also applies to abstract painting, or at least to the best of it."

Quotation from artist Bridget Riley

Painting by Roy De Maistre, entitled

A Painted Picture of the Universe

I found this picture just now as I searched for an image in Google of "seeing in a mirror dimly." It reminds me of pictures I have been looking at all night on line--pictures of retinas and maculae. And it reminds me of Caleb's blue/gray/hazel (mostly blue) very large and gorgeous eyes, with, as one of the doctors who saw him today said, "quite long eyelashes." We saw THAT doctor after we had seen another doctor, who gave us the news that Caleb's left eye was "uncorrectable" with glasses, and he thought, after taking a good look, that Caleb had a detached retina, which he had been living with, and which had been getting worse, for a long, long time...probably many months. He pushed us off to Lee's Summit to the other doctor, who looked at both gorgeous peepers, and said, yes, it was true, there was not much peeping going on out of the left eye; said it was 300 degrees detached (as opposed to 360 degrees a-ttached); this doc called another doc, this one a retina specialist, who said though it didn't SEEM to be an emergency, he wanted to see Caleb on Tuesday to decide WHEN to do the surgery---surgery that has a slight possibility of a slight improvement in vision of his left eye, but probably not much if any; however the sugery could possibly stop any further damage. Caleb cannot see much more than what this doc called "hand movement." As I watched him give Caleb a vision test, I saw Caleb unable to detect how many fingers the doc was holding up in from of his face no more than three feet away; everything looks "black" especially in anything but the brightest light, and, in short, Caleb is nearly blind in his left eye and probably will not have vision return. The right eye apparently has a hole in the retina, but has self-sealed and no one seems overly concerned (but me, of course). How in the world could I be a good mother and not know this was happening with him? Apparently he didn't know if was happening to him either, though now we both can't figure out how either of us didn't realize it.

Three days ago, Caleb wrote a song with these lyrics..."The doctor says there's something wrong with my eyes; so I looked through his screens ...Maybe the world is supposed to be blurry..." Caleb is taking this all in stride, and we are both benefiting from the Cox-Johnson "bounce"--after the initial shock at the first doc's office, I said, "well, at least this will improve your blues playing." And coming home after treating him to a large steak that was, as he said, "the best steak I have ever had in my life," he and I theorized on the possibilities--he wouldn't ever be drafted; the second doctor said that a driver's license was no problem and in Kansas he could even drive a school bus with vision in only one eye; would this qualify him for some college scholarship help?; later in life when he gets married, he'll always have his wife sit or stand on his left side so no one can literally blind-side him...and he will always be her right hand man, he said. The second doctor made a real point of telling both of us not to be too upset about this---that apparently Caleb's right eye had been compensating so well that he had not even realized how bad his vision was in his left eye.

"Seeing through a mirror, dimly" took on a new meaning around here today. And Caleb's artistic eye is still very well intact. He has inherited some of it; has been nurtured in it by a Bohemian high school; was born with a will of iron and very little care as to whether or not he was "in with the in crowd" ever; and he has within his heart and soul the ability to articulate through music and poetry what the indefinable in life is, an ability that expands and deepens with every life experience. And I am glad for me and glad for him.

And we do request prayers.