New Eyes -- New World

By Carli Muñoz

God, today is such a lovely day! Perhaps the brightest and bluest skies I’ve seen, at least since my good old psychedelic days over 5 decades ago. I’m experiencing this brand new perception from my study through an array of odd geometric shapes, visible from my comfortable thinking chair, artistically shaped by the seemingly unintended interruption of window frames, trellises, ornamental steel bars, and tree branches. I seriously can’t imagine what it would be like to look at that bright blue sky head-on.... surely artists like Leonid Afremov or even Van Gogh would have a hard time interpreting its brilliance! Ok now, back to reality, there is a dog shit reason for this; this morning is my third day since I had my second eye cataract operation.
Nevertheless, the experience is real! When I had my left eye cataract operation a few years ago, I noticed that there had been a bluish cast missing from my sight. Having been a film professional in my past life, I interpreted the change in light temperature. My ‘new’ (left) eye was then the ‘cool’ one with a temperature of approximately 5000 Kelvin and my ‘old’ right eye the ‘warm’ one in the 3000 Kelvin range. I actually made a practical game of such disparity by using one eye or another when discerning color or taking pictures. But the warm eye was becoming blurry and muddy by the day, so I decided to go ahead with a corrective right eye cataract operation.
Back to the romantic side of this experience, not to mention the placid effect of the local anesthesia at the time of the operation, two days later, I feel like a baby looking at the world anew.... with a brand new set of eyes! What a joy!

View from my thinking chair