Visual Obsession

I have 20/20 vision. At a distance. I can see a tiny bug or dust mote and follow its flight or float. I can read road signs. I enter a big box store, and I can find the right aisle.

But with clarity provided by man-made lenses, I have also lost something I loved, but never knew before just how much: I cannot shift my eyes out of focus. 

I don't remember learning to tie my shoe laces or to read, but I remember stumbling upon that trick as a child. Once I learned how to let my eyes shift, I'd do it again, and again and again. I wanted to see the world in shapes and colors, let them swim together and apart, meld and separate.

In the last two weeks, I have asked my camera to do what I can't. I have, as is my wont, become obsessed. Everywhere I look, I aim and shift myself and camera settings, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but always with childish pleasure.

It's a silly thing, but in a time of stress and worry, of endings and beginnings, a small thing can weigh much. And this discovery does.