Cataract and cataracts

John Berger begins his short essay on cataracts with a definition: “Cataract from Greek kataraktes, meaning waterfall or portcullis, an obstruction that descends from above.” And later:

When you open a dictionary and consult it, you refind, or discover for the first time, the precision of a word. Not only the precision of what it denotes, but also the word’s precise place in the diversity of the language.

With both cataracts removed, what I see with my eyes is now like a dictionary which I can consult about the precision of things. The thing in itself, and also its place amongst other things.

John Berger, Cataract. With drawings by Selçuk Demirel (London: Notting Hill Editions, 2011).

I had cataracts removed a week apart earlier this month, and for the first time since elementary school I am looking at the everyday world without glasses. Waiting for the second surgery, I checked my vision one eye at a time to see the difference a cataract can make. The world my right eye showed me looked like someone’s dingy laundry — stains and blurs everywhere. Walking on a sunny morning a couple of weeks ago, with both eyes cataract-free, I began to tear up because everything looked so brilliantly beautiful: the sky, some trees, the pavement. Yes, the pavement.

But it’s hard work: the eyes and brain are intense collaborators, and by the end of the day, my eyes (now 20/20 in tandem) are fried. In the morning everything is sharp and vivid again. And with new eyes and a new Mac, fewer typos!

[My opthalmologist is an ace. As he was doing the surgery, he told me, “I’m being really finicky getting your astigmatism.” Finicky is exactly what you want in a surgeon, isn’t it? Or in any kind of work.]