Occasionally. In the morning. I forget to put in my contac. I only wear one. My morning is not particularly hectic these days. But somehow, between temperature control, cheerios, my sneezing and utter denial of every responsibility except what’s on my laptop, this task slips into the rarely swept fake-gemstone-floor of my Bulgarian bathroom.
You might say its part of my routine, right? Well, I’ve never been very good at routines. I am simply not methodical. Because of my eerily effective memory, I don’t OFTEN forget things, but I certainly never do anything in the same order.
But I digress.
In the flat (I just love calling it a flat 
), I can’t see for more than about ten feet so it’s not until I realize the stoplight is only a orangeish blur on my way to work that I realize my mistake. But the other night before bed after removing my contacs, I stood on our building’s stairway balcony. It’s so simple and cement and ugly that it looks like its still under construction. There is no rust-colored fire-escape ladder. No room for a table. No wire curly-cues. But it’s the only real place of quiet refugeand with a little imagination, it can be exotic.
As I looked down into the back parking lot alley, and all that was below–the cars and gravel and cement and garbage and broken bike and cats–I realized that it all looked much more beautiful than ever before.
Because without my contacs, it was blurry. Unclear. Like Bulgarian coversations. Like poetry. Like the future.
I’ve always been so big on communication and defined lines. I TELL people when I’m hungry. I TELL people when I’m happy. I want them to tell me too! Signs provide me with a sense of relief. (Thank GOD we’re going the right way–because what if we weren’t!!) Instructions! Let’s follow them! I am obsessed with maps and street names. I adore non-verbal cues. I am fond of feedback.
As Natalie Goldberg says about her free-writing class: “. . . encouraged my writing students to just write and read: No good. No bad. After their initial enthusiasm . . .this non-criticism became unnerving. . . . . . .their main model was getting “corrected.” When I didn’t (say anything), there was empty space. That was scary. What was there to hold on to? Nothing.”
And this country’s not big on it either. They are masters at the blank face. And I’ve realized that I want so badly to know EXACTLY what’s going on–what the recipe says, every feeling in my husband’s head, what you don’t like about my guacamole, the actual address of the restaurant–that perhaps I am missing the bliss of the blur.
