June 22, 2008

• Corneal scarring 2: Losing depth perception

  Previously on Onigiriman...
  

  "Back then, it was what it was, and you learned to live with irreparable scars and injuries. Indeed,
  after a week or so, my vision seemed to revert to normal. I thought it
  had healed itself, as any scar would heal, and I continued on with my
  merry summer of '73.

  But life, as I was to learn, was neither so simple nor forgiving."

  A few years later, I began to notice that I had trouble gauging depth. I had knocked over more than a couple of beers, but I attributed this clumsiness to being drunk. I mean, what else would I attribute it to? Then one day I went to Westwood to see a movie with two of my buddies, Cary and Sam. We were a little early and so we were strolling around the shops and small malls. At one point, we were going to leaving a shopping area that was on the second level. I strode forward and found myself tumbling down a short flight of brick steps. My friends rushed to my side.

  "Ray, you okay?" They asked as they helped me get up. "What happened?"

  "Yeah, yeah. I'm okay." I assured them as I brushed myself off. But when I looked up I was shocked. "Steps?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I fell down these steps? I don't get it. I could have sworn it was a ramp."

  "Dude, if that's a ramp..." But before Sam could finish his sentence, I went up the steps down which I had stumbled. I had to see again what I thought I saw. When I reached the top of the steps, I looked down and in front of me--Huh?--was a short flight of about 5 steps. I don't get it, I said again to myself. I swear I saw a ramp. But when I took astep side ways toward the center, the steps magically turned into a ramp. "Woah!"

  "Woah, what?" Cary asked.

  "Shit, you know these stairs? If you stand right in the middle, the lines kinda blend together and they don't look like steps anymore."

  

  As Cary and Sam came up to see for themselves, I explained to them that from this particular point of view, the vertical space between the bricks looked like one continuous line making the steps look flat, and thereby appearing like a ramp. But when my buddies stood next to me, they laughed.

  "Have you been drinking already? These look like steps to me, no matter where you look from."

  "No, seriously. Stand in the middle. Doesn't it look like a ramp?" I said flustered. How could they not see it?

  "Ray, the only way this is going to look like a ramp is if it was a 2-D picture."

  A wave of events suddenly washed over me, blending together in a very intertextual manner--irreparable scar on cornea, the belief that the scars had healed, knocking over glasses of beer and now this. Was I perceiving the world in two dimension? Was I looking with only one eye? Leave it to my friends to help me put things in perspective, even if it was only a two dimensional one.

  With this new insight, I began to figure things out. I fell down the steps at dusk when there are no real shadows. I had knocked over beers only at bars where the light was dim. Did that mean, perhaps, that during the day I would consider other factors unconsciously to calculate distance? The shadow of the can of beer is three inches, and the can itself is five inches, A² + B² = C².  Ah, Pythagoras, who knew! I also began to think that some of my other senses were heightened. I have always been able to hear things that others could not--In a car with the stereo up high, I always heard a siren well before other passengers. My olfactory senses seemed pretty sharp even though I was a smoker. I mean, I could smell rain before it actually did--I learned later that it wasn't really rain, but bacterial spores that are emitted after a long dry spell--not an unusual situation in LA--when the humidity rises right before it rains. Or something like that. But the point being, I could smell things others seemed to miss.

  More importantly, I realized that my brain was playing tricks on me. I went to the optometrist to get new glasses soon after. They took photos of my eyes and they asked me if I knew that I had a scar on my cornea.

  "Yes, I found out a few years ago."

  "Do you not have trouble seeing? It's the size of a poppy seed."

  Now what the heck would an optometrist know about poppy seeds? I thought for a moment but was soon overcome by the realization that the scar had grown from a grain of sand to a poppy seed. Oh crap. I am seeing the world in two dimension. But what intrigued me most is that I had not even realized it. My brain would take into account any and all sensory information, then adjust my 2-D world into a 3-D one. The only time it would fail me, I deduced through my own--albeit unscientific--observations, was when I didn't have enough information, like when there were no shadows to measure. Or when I had headphones on and could not hear other sounds.

  Or when I watched 3-D movies?

  Cont'd next post

  • 2:34 PM
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