Strange Days, or Bookends With Nikki

Today, a friend took me to my eye surgery – the second cataract operation, except that these operations are far more. I’m 77 and have been wearing spectacles since I was 8 … some may remember those round specs (Harry Potter style) with bendable wire earpieces … but since my first op back in November, I’ve been without glasses. It’s been tricky at times as the difference between my fixed and unfixed eyes was considerable, but I managed to drive and read etc. Today, the world changed as the second eye was done – no near vision anymore! In about 5 weeks I’ll be seeing my optician to get what I need for the next few years.

If it wasn’t for Amazon and cheap reading glasses I couldn’t write this. I have to take one of two types of eye drops, but without those glasses I wouldn’t be able to tell which from which! Nobody tells you about that.

But that’s not really the story. This is just another event in a backdrop of change, the relatively recent loss of my life partner, the earlier loss of another love, living alone, getter really old and negotiating this newer, if temporary, vision.

All is a continuum of discombobulation.So, tonight, wandering around like an older person who shouldn’t, I managed, without burning myself or setting teacloths alight, to cook myself salmon with potatoes and caramelised endives … the sort of cooking I’d almost abandoned and which tonight I could barely see! 

And then it was to find something to watch on TV. Almost by chance I came across ‘The Zone of Interest’ a film I found absorbing, having lived for eight years in Germany, but that’s yet another story. What jumped out was a mention of ‘Lebensraum’ and its immediate connection in my head to what I had recently heard of on Radio 3 about America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ and the Monroe Doctrine. But I leave consideration of current evidence of political psychopathy to others.

Turning to the here and now, I switched to playing youtube while I loaded the dishwasher … Voices of Music’s version of Uccellini’s La Bergamasca always brightens my mood, but it is short and what followed, uncalled for, were reminiscences of those past losses – John Tams ‘Will I See Thee More’, Grieg’s ‘Wedding Day at Trollhaugen’ and finally Kate Wolf’s ‘An Unfinished Life’. Curiously, I found youtube’s selection was quite calming and cathartic; these are pieces of the never-ending closure of a chapter in my life. Long may they remain and keep me grounded in the love I have been granted in life. Then it was onto Max Richter’s ‘On The Nature of Daylight, Extended’ which is a good bookend to that chapter.

Frantic work since I returned from Ireland is at an end and I know I can rest at home for a few days and tomorrow will be the day that I know whether the second op has worked as I hope it has. I do have some things that I might write about, partly triggered by another programme I watched - The Secret Of Me – but for now I’ll bookend this ramble. This morning started with Radio 3 and the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5^th. I’ll finish now with Mahler’s: Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen from the Rückert Lieder, which I always used to listen to as I drifted off to sleep many, many years ago.

Just in case the above comes over as a bit self-indulgent, I haven't forgotten it's Burns Night tonight. So, here's Ae Fond Kiss to anyone reading this.