July 15, 2008

• Italy has been remarkable, but I did lose my glasses in the Adriatic Sea.

  While I have impressed the Italian peninsula with many other instances of my frequent and flagrant violations of common sense, this one most clearly heads the group.  It happened at the first beach we went to, and only a short time after we arrived.  Since without my glasses the world looks like it does in a car during heavy rain when you don’t turn on your windshield wipers, it didn’t take much motivation to keep them on while I waded out to join the others.  After all, it is very hard to interact with other people when you are incapable of seeing their facial expressions.  Besides, my last few pairs of glasses stayed on my face so well that I could do push-ups with them on. 

  These glasses, however, were different.  Once the water was pretty deep, and I tried to stay above a wave, off they came and quickly they sank into the dusty abyss of the Adriatic Sea.  Now you must understand the context in which this event took place for me.  The first thing I do in the morning is put on my glasses, and taking them off is the last thing I do at night; they are practically a part of my body.  Thus, I reacted in the same way as I would if my arm would have fallen off, by entering into a state of infinite panic.  It was like I was Sauron and the One Ring had just been cut off my finger; my source of life, what I used in every moment to apprehend the world around me, was now in a vast and dark body of water. 

  The Adriatic is much too salty to use your bare eyes to look for things, so I had to buy some goggles to commence the search.  I’ve before noted that it’s something of a conundrum to look for the very things that help you see.  The goggles helped a good deal, though, but since the water was still very dark and thus visibility minimal, even with the goggles, it seemed like an impossible task.  Regardless, I began searching, and soon found that the sea did not want me to have my glasses back, as it had boobytrapped the area with anemones.  Since they were at various places and would sting me occassionally, looking for my glasses was somewhat like a game of minesweeper.  A beach we went to later had sea urchins covering the sea floor, and since they are black and spiky, they even looked like minesweeper bombs.  And because of the possibility of stepping on one of them, swimming that day was actually much like a game of minesweeper.

  I did not find my glasses, though I did look for hours and swallowed a lot of sea water.  As we left the beach, I contemplated the irony of the saying that everything is 20/20 in hindsight.  Hindsight was the only clear thing at the time; the rest looked like a surrealist painting.

  Alas, I got glasses from an Italian optomotrist the next day, and people now have facial features again.  But now I must go, and I again note that I only have a short time I’m able to check things here, so I am sorry if I cannot get back to you!  Farewell to you all, time is a thief, live your days well!

  • 7:53 am
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