Perspectives

'Why don't you get contact lens? or laser surgery?'. A familiar refrain when you've been wearing glasses since you were eight. What can I say - I'm lazy? I like them? I'm less likely to get thwacked in the face? All the above? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I went out with this guy, who wore lens - which I didn't realise and when I asked the naive question why?.... he very gently pointed out to me that if I were to take my eyes off his face for a moment and look around the pub, I'd see the obvious. I'm Indian, and subtlety isn't obvious enough for us, so I only said 'Oooh!' when he pointed out that I was the only one in that room wearing glasses. Hmmmmm. A crowded pub on a Saturday night in Islington - il disastro! Guess it was a good thing I was already there with a date.....

Since last weekend, my pity for all those sods who succumb to the dictates of societal vanity knows no bounds, because now I can finally articulate why I'll never give them up. With them, I see what you see... (well, mostly anyway). Without them, I'm in a magical world, ruled by soft focus and blurry lines, where anything might happen, but you'll never know what that might be like. Not without taking away the 20/20 vision for a flawed lens. Ah - but you can't, can you?

I look up breathing in the rain, and the leaves melt into one another like indistinct pixels on a colour palette, a filigreed cobweb canopy. A sudden faintly apologetic shaft of sunlight, and I feel like I'm underwater. A pond bottom dweller looking up at the algae and assorted pond scum, jostling each other to deny the diluted sunbeam. Weightless, insubstantial and safe in my quiet little haven, unaware of anything above the water line. My new perspective broken into by a human voice.... a question that begged an answer that required vision. Out came my glasses, and my pond surface became an awning, the sheltering leaves with distinct edges, clearer, but less evocative, less magical. I could have stayed submerged for days.... still, watching the haze of moisture morph into a veritable army of slender needles as they race towards you is exquisite... although I would have felt a greater satisfaction if I could have actually caught more than three and a half shards of rain on my tongue. Now see, if you had imperfect vision, you'd have just seen dawdling figures on the heath getting soaked instead of calling the men in white coats.... it IS all about perspective.