I went to the optometrist's the other day so that I might be able to get new tiny plastic disks to shove in my eye. According to the doctor, my cataracts are "ridiculously bad." I'm sure that's a medical term. Despite the fact that neither he, nor his clinic perform Lasik surgery, he strongly recommends the procedure once I turn 25. The idea of being able to roll out of bed in the morning and being able to see more than larger, colorful blurs without having to poke myself in the eye is an exciting prospect, and I understand that the procedure is relatively safe. So I'll let someone shoot a laser in my eye to fix it.
Which leads me to a tangent on interesting contradictions! What the doctors plan to do is shoot my eye with an Excimer laser, which is basically a real-life disintegration ray. The light beam is designed to disrupt the molecular bonds that make up MY FUCKING EYE. So the doctors are going to make my eye better by selectively destroying it on a molecular level. But the idea of destroying something to make it better is not new. Martial artists who practice breaking things with their fists have stronger bones in their hands because when they hit something hard enough, it damages their bones, and when the body repairs that section of bone, it makes the bone denser than it was before, making the fist stronger through damaging it. Nietzsche's truism "what does not kill me makes me stronger" is derived from this notion but applies to psychological trials so that when life gets painful, but we overcome our trials, we become better for having faced them. This positive destruction is often linked with the icon of a crucible, in which metal is melted down so that the imperfections rise to the top. The imperfections are skimmed from the top and the metal is stronger for having undergone the process even though it involved its liquidation. It is an heroic image to think of someone going through some sort of trial as being put into a crucible, so that he or she may come out of it stronger than before, as if they have transcended somehow into something greater that what that person was before. But I'm not sure that I really like the idea of my eye being dropped into a bowl of molten metal.
Coo Coo Kachoo mother fucker,
Zac
2 comments:
1) eye in molten metal. unpleasant. but not as unpleasant as having the eye removed so that can be done.
2) Nietzsche died mad & syphilitic. A vasectomy won't kill you. These tend to confute the cliche historically, psychologically, and physiologically (and of course it's pure bullshit philosophically, anyway).
3) I hope it works. I hear they've gotten quite good at destroying only the inconvenient bits of the eye, these days. (the laser operator, when his wife discovers he obliterates living matter for a living, can reply in his best Austrian accent, "The were all bad.")
Cheers!
PGE
Are you sure about that first one? Because I'm pretty sure having my eye removed and then placed in molten metal would be bad, but having molten metal poured into my eye while it's still in the socket would be far less pleasant.
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