You look out and you know that what you see isn’t really what is there. but you have glasses on (perhaps not so rose-colored) and baggage in the way, and everything is obscured by filters you just can’t quite see through. One or two, you hear the eye doctor in your head, and you want to say none, none is better. But none isn’t a choice.
And then sometimes, you squint and your strain your eyes because you know that what you see is there isn’t what is there and you blink and you rub your eyes with your fists and it’s like one of those optical illusion pictures where you see the old woman when who you want to see is the beautiful girl.
And then, then. One day when you aren’t even meaning to look, not really, you open your eyes and everything has tilted. And it’s all still there and it’s all still the same, but everything is different.
I described it once this way. That I was at a brick wall, immovable. And I saw no way around the wall even though I knew the only way forward was past the wall. And it was impossible. Any way around, over, under, or through the wall was simply an impossibility. And then one day I was around and the wall was behind me.
Was the wall ever even there? Maybe it was like the old woman and the path ahead was the beautiful girl.
I know you can’t make yourself see what you don’t see. The best you can do is keep going and slowly, gradually, like sand crumbling from the rising tide, you open your eyes and things tilt. According to wikipedia, the tilt-a-whirl operates on the unpredictable nature of chaotic motion.
I’ve done a lot of rubbing my eyes and blinking the last few weeks. Talking and talking and talking. To everyone who would listen. And I would hear them tell me what the world looked like and I didn’t see it. I don’t know if what I see now when I open my eyes is what they see, but I know that it’s different than it was before.