Dante’s Inferno
One of my great fascinations with airports is the variety of places that are connected together by a single one of these. Last night I was in the world’s busiest airport waiting for two hours to collect the suitcase full of stuff I never used on my recent circumpolar wanderings. While there at one baggage carousel I noticed that suitcases were erupting from the floor of the terminal that had but a few hours earlier been in the Dominican Republic, Paris, London, Guatemala City, and a couple of places I had never even heard of. I wondered what brings all of those diverse people to be standing together waiting for their little canvas refuges in a mobile world. Holidays? New jobs? Marriage? Beginning of another school term? I know that I am drawn to far flung places so I can ‘collect’ them with photographs. For me travel is almost an entirely visual, nearly holographic delight. For some it is the taste of new food, or exotic music. For me it is eye candy.
I just added another reason to hop on planes fast. Surgery. Surgery? Yeah. I hopped on a plane yesterday so I could get back to a place where my health insurance works and have some surgery without being made destitute. Why else would I want to leave the cool floral paradise of summer in England and come back to Dante’s Inferno? I told my traveling companion that I had ‘obligations’ that I needed to take care of. She knew very well that I did not want to come home and instead wanted to rent a car and disappear into Wales for a month and then go the Lakes District of England. My ‘obligation’ was, is, to save my eyesight. She offered to go home and leave me to my Celtic wanderings. I knew driving blind in Wales was not a good plan. I told her I would see her through the London Underground to the airport and so I did.
My travelling companion became quite dependent on my eyeballs working and knowing where we were in the twisty labyrinths of medieval cities. She also depended on me knowing which of those little colored lines on the London Underground plan would take us to the Emerald City. I was not about to tell her my eyeballs were going off line and that I hoped I could make it home to get my eyeballs rebooted before the batteries went bad altogether. She knew about my on-going electrical challenges with computers and cameras. She knows nothing about what is going on in my eyes. She never had to share the angst with me. She did not sign on for that.
Some weeks ago I was in a magical brick cathedral in Rostock, Germany ‘collecting’ the place by taking myriad pictures of it. I was walking into the center of the sanctuary and did not notice a 5 inch step and walked down very hard onto the floor and jarred my head solidly; almost biting my tongue by stepping down so firmly. The next night I was in a theater and started seeing bright almost strobe like lights. A pit of dread ran through me when I realized these lights were not on stage or the ceiling but emanating from my retinas. The next day I started seeing chunks of things floating in my visual fields. Having been to medical school and having had retina surgery in the distant past, I knew I was in deep you-know-what. I debated aborting the journey and making an emergency flight home. I gambled and stayed the course for weeks, taking pictures, climbing all over everything climbable in these magical ancient cities, eating everything in sight, but having wisps of dread slither through my core every time I saw dark shadows on the world. The one prudent thing I did was to refrain from taking any exercise in the fitness facilities available to me. This was hard as I greatly enjoy hard exercise. Seeing unimaginably beautiful places in the world while knowing my vision could go off line at any second was an ultimate stressor. I probably was not very good company the past few weeks. Each minute I wondered if I was going to be forever cut off from the delicious visual feast before me.
I got home late last night after time jumping for weeks and had a fitful few hours of thrashing on the bed. At 8 AM I was on the phone to an ophthalmologist. My hyper-alert brain is still on 4 PM Soviet time so I was able to easily punch through before the office phones clogged up with people still groggy. By lunchtime my semi-amateur diagnosis was confirmed and tomorrow I will be having retinal surgery. Right now I am staying in cool dark rooms doing fiscal damage assessment of my weeks of overseas wandering and spending. On another hot day I will get to do an economic damage assessment for eyeball surgery.
We are told in the ancient writings of the Old Testament that there will be times when we
are lead by the hand and taken places we do not want to go. I would rather be driving around in Wales photographing castles than sitting in my house waiting for surgery. Yet, it has been during the unexpected detours, even times when I was quite lost, that unexpected blessings of the highest order occurred. The reality is that I am still seeing around the chunks in my eyes writing and sifting through my trove of images from paradise and have the good fortune to live in circumstances where it is possible for me to get on the phone at 8 AM and have been evaluated and scheduled for surgery by lunchtime. Refugees in concentration camps in Rwanda, Thailand, Darfur, and dozens of other places would simply go blind for sure. I am getting a second chance. I am reminded of GK Chesterton who often expressed great gratitude by wondering why he should get firsts, let alone seconds on the good things in life.
I am reminded also of the ancient verse that says, “I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good and not for evil and plans that will give you hope and a future” even if it means coming home to surgery instead of a welcoming party at the airport. Life is good. I have a bowl of hot split pea soup and oyster crackers I am going to indulge in.
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