Mote

Friday Fragment #50

My glasses fell from the pocket of my jacket as I ran for the train. I rely on glasses for screen work – mostly picture editing and virtually everything that involves reading or writing. I might also require them to read the number on the front of a far-off bus or the display screen at the train station and so I keep them close-by and available, often tucked inside the pocket of my jacket or bag. I’ve never kept them in a case, just like I’ve never owned a wallet to enclose all of those transactional bits of paper, plastic and metal we get by with from one day to the next. A pocket does the job: I’ve never cared for an extra container to place inside that which already contains. My glasses fell and I heard them hit the ground and immediately knew their distinct sound. I heard their weight, the lightness of their frame and the many more delicate sounds of that second’s passing: the bounce of one arm, then another, and the gentle smack of two lenses as they fell to the pavement. I pulled up sharply and looked back to find them four or five steps behind me on the floor. I cursed and hurried back to where I could see their orange and black form, and bent down – at great cost to my back, loaded mule-like as I was, with two heavy bags of photography gear carefully counter-balancing on each shoulder – and picked them up from the ground. I reached for my phone. My train would be departing in four minutes. I kept the glasses in my hand and set off once again, at speed. Any witnessing bystander would have been unable to unequivocally determine whether I was walking or running. Many hours later, when the day was almost over, I sat down at my desk to reply to the first of several emails I had chosen to ignore that afternoon and spotted a mote, suspended, there in front of my right eye. It moved as I moved and impaired the black and white clarity of what was brightly lit in front of me on the screen. I removed my glasses and the mote was gone. I pulled open the desk drawer, found a glass cloth and took it to the right lens of my glasses. I held them towards the screen and saw two tiny blots still marking the glass. I opened the drawer once again, found a small black-capped bottle of cleaning solution and sprayed the lens, front and back. Once more with the cloth, once again to the light and still the snicks were there. I ran a fingernail against the glass and realised that the surface was not dirtied, but cracked. I ran the nail again, back and forth, resigned now to their permanent imperfection. I gave them one last polish with the cloth and returned them to my face and the mote was there, bottom-right once more. I figured that we can choose to either accept or refuse these little imperfections. I could regret not using a case – the container I had rejected. I could scold myself for the lapse in punctuality that caused the run for the train and my glasses to fall from my pocket. Or I can live with that floating speck, something tiny, barely noticeable, hardly a hindrance and not remotely a hardship and be grateful that this form still has function, that this correcting piece of glass can quite magnificently still enhance and enable me to work. I was grateful that the crack wasn’t greater. I remembered that the last pair of glasses I had lost had also fallen from my jacket pocket and in my rush to recover the frame I hadn’t noticed that the lenses had dislodged and remained on the floor. I once picked up my father’s spectacles, prescription, heavy, made of glass then, not plastic: thick with grime, nicotine-stained and vaguely kaleidoscopic before the eyes of his curious children. A week has now passed since the glasses fell, since that floating speck first appeared, gently obscuring, but no longer obscure.

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