Low-Grade Anxieties

Perceptual Changes

I remember often telling drawing classes that shutting one eye would flatten the scene making it easier to see the clear boundaries of objects without the competition of two views. What we used in the Illusionism class to create the appearance of reality were spatial signals that needed just one eye and were processed preconsciously. This was brought to mind by the illusions I’m working on in my painting. My sensitivity to spatial illusion is stronger. With only one eye the whole world is flat so the effectiveness my illusions is becoming more real enabling me to push them further than I’d envisioned. I knew I was successful when I caught myself holding the brush sideways to work on a plane that appeared to slant back from the painted surface. I’d fooled myself. The illusion of the slanted plane affected my behavior before what I know reached consciousness. This turned out to be a problem. My primary spatial reality is now based on one eye. The illusion I paint looks as real as reality. As the illusion gets stronger, I make more mistakes. Too often as my instincts turn my hand to the perceived angle of what I paint the result is a long mark where I’d pushed the brush sideways against the surface try to go deeper into the pit believed to be there. Before the mind is conscious of it, the body responds to the environment it sees. What I like about illusionism is its power to stimulate at that level. The unconscious adjustments that occur automatically are what creates the feeling of a scene. Without that feeling of space and separation between things, I’ve made many accidental marks with my brush on furniture that I thought was farther away. Coming to grips with all the difficulties of losing half of my vision, I’m also discovering some interesting new sensitivities particularly in my work. I’ve been able to take the illusions further than I could see before. Details look sharper, mistakes easier to spot. I’m grateful for these unexpected benefits and open to the possibility there may be more. My brain has been hard at work compensating, creating a sense that I see a whole scene even though most of the left side is missing. Filled out with what it does see and has seen recently it’s a relief not to be aware of the void depicted in the drawing below. It’s still greyed out and inaccurate but not empty grey. The brain’s remarkable ability to reprogram itself, to adapt its circuitry to the existing situation begins its adjustment immediately. Learning is what’s its plasticity is made for. This situation is giving me plenty to learn.

Impermanence

Half Light

Fail, fail again, fail better. Samuel Beckett When I lost all vision in my left eye in mid-December, everything got harder, and I was making all kinds of mistakes, but the overriding issue for me is having half the light. It’s like one of my windows is boarded up. I assume that down the road I’ll get used to this, won’t remember what full illumination felt like, but not yet. Pema Chodron used the Beckett quote as the title of a commencement speech published in book form with the same title. Understanding the importance of failure as well as success needs a broad view of failure. All my harshest life events felt like a failure at some level. Self-judgement chases me around like an angry terrier. Chodron defined failure as when things don’t work out the way you want them to and losing sight in one eye is a big one, not a part of my plan. I was painting a detail when suddenly I had trouble focusing, distracted by a series of flashing patterns made of light with big splotches of color bursting all over. It felt like there was a film over one eye distorting what was coming in. I tilted my head to the left hoping the film was on the surface and it would slide off. It didn’t. I thought if I lay down maybe the fireworks would settle. Most of it settled down into an empty grey area with one tiny patch of image coming in which gets smaller every day. The next day the ophthalmologist said a stroke in my eye had starved the receptors and the vision wouldn’t be coming back. Learning how to live with one eye wears me out. Just like expecting Michael to come in the door after he died, I keep expecting the vision to return, keep having the urge to save a certain part of the painting until I can see better. Daily life is darker, my sense of vulnerability stronger. Adapting will take longer than I originally thought. Loss of normal depth perception makes it difficult to judge how far my brush is from the painted surface and I lower it very slowly to avoid a big splotch. I still catch myself waving my brush over the work thinking I’m already there or making a mark where I didn’t intend thinking I was farther away than I was. Frustration over my many mistakes is daily. But I’m learning techniques to compensate. If I turn my head to the left my good eye can focus on the details. Unfortunately, the instinct to turn the head towards where I’m focusing keeps fighting my efforts. So I move the piece to the right. I begin 2026 and the rest of my life blind in one eye. The process of adapting to this is my opportunity to fail better. It’s challenging. I always look at life’s hardships as having something to teach me, I hope as I learn from this it will increase my compassion for other people’s challenges.

Bookmak 2025

Afterlife

When I was a very small child, I didn’t understand the fact of being a separate person. I repeatedly asked my mother “Why am I me?” who never really understood what I was getting at, but being a separate individual confused me, and I thought there had to be a reason. Though I never found an answer or an absolute reason for being, I have thought about the idea that being separate felt unnatural to me which feeds my current sense that we’re not as separate as we think, and that our consciousness may return to its original unity. In an interview about his recent novel “Secret of Secrets”, Dan Brown stated firmly that though once he was sure there was nothing after physical death, after researching this book he was convinced that individual consciousness survives the death of the body. He said that interviewing people that had had Near Death Experiences, they “walked the talk”, that the experience changed their view of death completely and restructured their lives accordingly. Having watched many videos of people talking about their NDE’s since my husband died, I’ve been impressed with their sincerity and desire to help others understand that we are more than our physical body. Sri Yogananda stated that “Death…is an experience through which we are meant to learn that we cannot die.” One reason I’m receptive to that idea is because I always felt that what looked out from my physical being was the same consciousness as it was when I was a child, an unchanged witness within that lies beyond this particular personality and physical body. No scientist has been able to locate a place for consciousness there. Basically, science can’t prove there isn’t anything after bodily death any more than that there is. In his novel Brown reviews the many factors that suggest a non-local consciousness and studies that support the idea of the brain as more a receiver/transmitter, a vehicle for consciousness to use what we learn, a portal to a larger stream of consciousness. In an article published in Frontiers in Psychology the authors suggest that none of the primary materialist theories explain consciousness as well as a non-local approach. To think of consciousness as fundamental, pervading everything, makes room for experiences that don’t fit materialist models. A growing number of scientists are looking at the intersection with quantum non-locality in their exploration of consciousness. What creates subjective experience is one of the hurdles a materialist model can’t get past. Art as the expression of subjective life is testimony to the importance of the qualities of being and not just the facts. Though the brain is involved in what we experience as consciousness, it can’t explain everything. Consciousness as the foundation of reality is an area to be explored that would benefit from more art to help us see it.

Nudge