Visiting the Optometrist

My Eyes Just Came
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

Life is full of happenstance joy pebbles. You just have to know where to look. And knowing how helps too. Like airborne everything, greatness is all around you if you look at it right. Or left. Or refracted-like. This morning for instance, I looked left and saw Phil Lesh strolling down the sidewalk. Lesh circa 1972, mind you.

And yesterday, I looked right. Right into a thrift store where, upon entry, I was not stench-steamrolled by mildew horror and where the audio cherubs were one step ahead of the game. Lennon was imagining one set of things, I was imagining another, and the clerks couldn't be bothered. In the meantime, reality and unstables named Chapman were barred from entry. (Retail penance for bouncing flesh checks.)

Today, I looked right with my eyes covered, because memories are fluid and experience cannot be captured in snapshot lineage and because sometimes the visual is the least important part. Blindly, I looked. Without knowing, I saw. And all this as I walked into the cranial observatory, arriving at just the perfect moment. There, I watched Rumplestiltskin spin history into gold and before I could say either of our names, the screen faded to black.

As it did so, my eyes opened for the very first time. And instead of reading Fin, I saw that the final shot said Grateful. And I was. Like the gratitude flung at Sicilian grandmother cream puffs, I realized something more moving than stop drop and roll. I finally saw, saw truth and it was brown because it was whole. I saw like really saw the way you do not with your eyes but with your soul. I saw the Is and Was and my genuine fortune like never before. Doc said I'd been wearing the wrong prescription this whole time.