Thinking about seeing in stereo

A thing which people who’ve never met me in person don’t know: I have strabismus. That’s the medical term (synonym: heterotropia), but most people would better know this as being cross-eyed, or having a lazy eye. My eyes generally point in roughly the same direction, but when I’m tired or I’ve been drinking, one of them tends to drift outward.

During childhood, I had three surgeries to try and correct the problem, two monolateral and one bilateral, for a total of two muscle tuck procedures per eye. (‘Muscle tuck’: the surgeon goes in and folds over a muscle to shorten it, stitching the fold into place, in order to try and force the eyes back into alignment.) Each surgery was followed with and/or preceded by some eyepatch therapy (to try and strengthen the ‘lazier’ eye) and by constant exhortations from my parents to pay attention to looking at things with both eyes.

Advertisement

Spelling away sickness

When the broader public thinks about paganism (if they think about paganism), most likely they think of magic and spells. I know I did: my first exposure to paganism was through a pair of Wiccan coworkers in the late 90s, right around when The Craft came out. And so even as I curiously picked up a copy of Vivianne Crowley’s Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Millenium and read Crowley’s calm explanations focused on personal transformation and self-exploration, I always saw Fairuza Balk’s crazed, too-eager eyes whenever Crowley said anything about a spell or incantation. 

Realizing the sacredness of the body

I’ve been struggling with my body the last few days. I’m just coming off a concert weekend (which had moments of profound meaning that I plan to write about soon), and that’s always hard: four concerts in three days is a lot of standing and interrupted eating schedules, and my body is fond of reminding me lately that I’m no longer in my twenties, that I need to move more and be mindful of what I’m eating. But these past few days have hit me harder than I expected: during the second concert on Saturday I was struggling not to pass out during a long formal piece, yesterday I had to skip participating in an anti-racist march I felt very strongly I should attend, and today I found myself on foot fifteen minutes from my house, suddenly and without warning unable to fathom walking the rest of the way home. This is almost certainly a blood sugar question; my mother is hypoglycemic, and the symptoms are pretty familiar to me from watching her.