Denis Lehane: All well in the land of the half-blind without glasses
Anyway, this January, seeing as how I’m nothing but a disaster on the land, I have resolved to rid myself of my glasses. That’s where my problem lies, I’m sure of it.
The idea came to me after the dinner on Christmas Day, when, with my belly full of turkey and Brussels sprouts, I fell into a deep and wonderful sleep.
The kind of sleep I had never experienced before.
And it was during this spell by the fire, with my feet up and my head down, that the notion of life without glasses came into being.
I saw the future, you see, and it looked far better with blurred vision. I would cast aside my glasses, and go about my business with my eyes, the way God had intended.
Perfect eyesight, if you ask me, is overrated.
What’s all the looking around for anyway?
We don’t need to see everything. In most circumstances, we’d be better off if we saw far less.
Take outer space, for example. For many years, fellows have been looking to the stars with the most advanced telescopes, and what have they discovered?
Nothing.
A whole lot of nothing.
The stronger the telescopes get, the lonelier the heavens are becoming.
Wouldn’t it have been far better if they had never looked to the stars in the first place, and we still imagined all kinds of wonderful things flapping around up there?
I’m telling you, ’tis too much peering and peeping we are doing.
Coming back down to earth, without my glasses,
I can see up to two feet in front of my nose. And for the most important things in life, that’s about as much sight as a fellow needs. Everything else is pure extravagance.
Seeing more than this only gives a fellow the opportunity to look into the fields and yards of his neighbour.
And this can be a right disaster for the struggling farmer, such as myself.
For there can be nothing like spotting a new improvement in your neighbour’s yard, to give you that sinking feeling about the situation back home.
There is nothing like the sight of a shiny new tractor arriving next door, to make you curse the old rusted David Brown parked up on the slope.
Far better to see nothing at all, than see such opulence.
Without glasses, nothing at all is exactly what I will be seeing. Better again, without my glasses, the farm work will continue here just as before.
Make no mistake, the cattle will still be fed. Round bales are large enough to be spotted even by me. I’ll dish them out just like I’ve always done. The cattle will not suffer, I’ll see to that.
As to the purchase of stock at the marts, that will be made all the easier now that I am half-blind.
Without my glasses, I will no longer be able to see them new-fangled information boards that have sprung up in every mart in the land.
Them yokes have far too much information on display, and are only leading fellows to bouts of confusion.
With my restricted vision, my focus can only be on the animal in the ring. The buying hand will still be flying.
“But there has to be some catch to going about the place half-blind?” you might say. “There must be some blind spot to the arrangement?”
Well, if there is, I certainly haven’t seen it yet.
