I spent a good deal of yesterday sitting in my recliner and reading. I read one physical book from beginning to end (Mark Haddon’s Leaving Home), abandoned two others (How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, by Edward Hirsch and The Doorman by Chris Pavone), and re-read an e-book I have read before (The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner). I also scanned Reddit repeatedly (r/AskReddit, mostly, because people tell such compelling little stories about their lives, even if many of the stories are either slanted or manufactured, but I also read Mastodon and Metafilter, for similar reasons. I read the New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, because I have cheap digital subscriptions for both, and I did four or five of my daily games, such as Spelling Bee, Connections, and World.

Oh, I did get out. I had a late breakfast with my adult kid, in a nice little coffee shop around the corner from them. We both sat there writing (they in their journal and their iPad, me in my current draft), and talking in between. Then I took the bus to the grocery store, got food for family dinner tonight, took it home, unpacked it, and returned to my armchair, having walked a good mile and a half.

A nap was taken somewhere in there. The cat sat in my lap much of the time, occasionally picking at me with his blunt claws so I would pet him. I told him he was the most beautiful boy in the world, which is a lie because the only really beautiful thing about him is his large, soulful, deceptively clear eyes. The rest of him is a little lumpy, and he is a bit of a pest because all he wants is to be fed, petted, and (occasionally) played with.

Overall, a lovely and rewarding day, lacking only one thing, and that was existing in the enormous, physically expansive, real world that is theoretically out there. Even when I was going to the grocery store on the bus, I was reading on my phone, holding the world at a remove, my head inclined toward that small screen.

Recently, I was thinking I should go to the eye doctor again. I had cataract surgery some years ago, and as a result got some side effects, serious floaters and some capsule opacity, but the ophthalmologist zapped the floaters and detached the capsule the rest of the way in 2019 and told me I was good to go.

But I have been noticing that it is very hard to focus on things at a distance lately. Theoretically I should have excellent distance vision, because when I had cataract surgery they destroyed my lens and replaced it with a man-made one. From then on, they told me, I would have to wear readers, but I should be good for distance.

I’m not, though. I really have to stare to make things resolve at a difference. It felt blurry, but not blurry as if my floaters were returning. It was more as if I had to concentrate, and I wasn’t used to that.

It doesn’t help that age is a real thing and so my eyes are dryer, redder, and more squinty as I get older. that’s a given. And I still plan to make an appointment with the eye doctor, because my right eye is really blurry.

But what I also realized is that, partly because I don’t drive any more but more because I always have my phone and my book with me, I just don’t look vaguely into the distance any more. Heck, I don’t even watch television. Instead, I stare into the inner metaphorical distance of the written world, sometimes for whole days at a time, like yesterday.

I take a walk every day, and that’s good. But it looks as if I’m going to have to take those walks without something to read or write in my pocket.

Especially because if I bury myself in stories, whether they are conventional thrillers, unconventional memoirs, newspaper articles, social media rants about baseball and politics, rambling discursions about ecstatic encounters with poetry, or fantasies set in vaguely Mediterranean landscapes, I am not looking outward, but inward. That can be mind-expanding, but it doesn’t do a damn thing for my distance vision.

Not to mention that if I read too much about current events, I can get awfully depressed about politics, which sometimes just doesn’t deserve my attention.

I need to be outside looking upward and outward, I think. Not down and in.