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ACCESSIBILITY
Technology has afforded those of uswith impairments the abilityto more fully participatein the world around us. However we can never lose sight,a painful use of the phrasein my case, of its imperfections. Perhaps it is merely anticipatingthe future of our species, as whenthe phones captioning decideda somewhat elided Marsha and Barrywas in fact Martian berries.As…
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LOOKING UP
I have discovereda small advantageof slowly losingmy sight. Each daythe imagein the mirroris less clear, wrinklesdisappearand I don’tlook quite as old as I knowthat I am, andyou’re lookingbetter as well.
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I WAS, BACK THEN
Fifteen years ago, I tell them,I was invincible, nothing bothered me,nothing held me back and eventhe few surgeries were shortrest stops on a runner’s highway. I knew it would last forever, Iknew I was kidding myself. Now, aging, I am held togetherby titanium and injections,trying to fall apart withas much grace as possible. My little…
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STET-US QUO
The mind can bea brutal editor, revisinghistory, rejecting memorieswithout a substantial rewrite. My step sister, many yearsdead remains five, thatyoung face engraftedon the woman ravagedby unrelenting cancers. My first wife of 30 yearsis mostly faceless, themental pictures and dreamsedited until only sheis unrecognizable. And in moments of reflectionI am no longer adopted,the step-siblings were,but they…
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DEGENERATION
I feel like I ought to beliving in Texas againfor everything, they say,is bigger in Texas, and youdon’t argue with a Texan. So much in my life is bigger now,a computer monitor that wouldpass for a moderate sized TV,with font so large a single pagefills the screen, and the tabletthe size of, but thank Godnot…
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A VISION
He loved the simple irony of it all. His vision was failing in one eye, likely might in the other, from macular degeneration. There was a hole in his vision thanks to his macula and geographic atrophy. And being a man of words he knew the best way to describe that spot, that hole, was…
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IT IS TIME
It is time they said, but they never said what it was time for, although they seem to know. It wasn’t like he was going anywhere, confined to this chair, a quadriplegic. He was the chair really as he had no way of moving it. He had no way of moving anything except by putting…
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STRANGE BEAUTY
There is a strange beautyin the slow loss of sight,for there is a progressivetransition, a discoveryof much that went unheard,unfelt, missing in the glareof the need to see, to categorizeand organize, memoriesneatly arranged in an arrayof curated visual files. But without sight what oncewas cast aside as noise isan intricate tapestry of soundand undistracted, you…
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LAMBERT FIELD
The gravestones, in random shapes line the hill the morning chillcreeps between them and onto the runway until washed awayby the spring sun slowly pushing upwardas the jet noise washes the hill unheard He passed away quietly in his bed ending his dreadof the cancer slowly engulfing him his vision dimmedby the morphine that pulsed…
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ACUITY
Acuity is such a strange word,sharp on the tongue andin meaning, but also a markof what once was, what willnever be again, replaced perhapsby a visual vacuity, comfortableword, no sharp edges, vagueimages floating behind a gauzeseeping slowly into a scrim,knowing the stage will soonenough go dark, despitethe ever brighter lighting.But replaced perhaps byever greater auditory…