Blindness

Once, a friend of mine introduced me to one of her friends as the tech guy. Her friend looked me over and said, “You look like a tech guy,” and smiled before we did shots together. I told her it probably because of my glasses. “No, you just look smart,” she said. I nodded, finished my beer, and ordered another one.

I can’t see without my glasses. The world is blurry when I take them off and clear again when I put them on. Writing, for me, is like putting on my glasses. My thoughts and feelings come into focus. I write because I want to remember the past. I want to remember what I felt and saw, what I thought was worthy of writing down. Otherwise, I’m blind. I move through the world in a blurry fog of shapes and colors. Sometimes I wonder if that’s not the perfect metaphor for humanity.

Remember when Rick Perry started to wear glasses? He tried to look the part, and in a way, he succeeded. I read yesterday that because of the coronavirus, black people have lost over 45k years of life. Latinos have lost over 48k. White people have lost 33k. Meanwhile, the Europeans have banned Americans from entering their country because of how our government handled this crisis. I write this down to remember it later.