The Muse Newsletter
This Newsletter came about after someone sent $12.00 for me to write it. (Perhaps the Muse was behind that action telling me to put my butt on the chair and write it.) We all need a kick in the butt once in a while. Long ago a wise sage said, "Without vision the people perish."
​
We won't let that happen.
​
Visions will continue as long as creatives continue to pound the keyboard, painters continue to swipe their brushes across a canvas, and engineers, scientists, researchers, and doodlers continue to pursue their dreams. And we, the people will not perish from the earth through any fault of our own.
​​
The Muse might seem delicate and soft spoken, but she is one powerful lady.
​
Put your name on my list to receive notices on monthly issues. They cost one dollar a piece, or $10.99 for twelve and will be delivered by email.
​
​
emails will only be used to notify you and to send the newsletter.
How To Improve Your Vision
A Personal Account of the Art and Science of Vision Training
​
Introduction:
When an internet pop-up threw itself into my path and told me that we computer users are getting elongated eyeballs, I yelled, "Look near to far, folks, near to far!"
Not that anyone could hear me, of course, but I felt better after that yell, plus the computer didn’t hold it against me. The author of that pop-up said, "Look up once in a while."
I’m here to tell you there is more to the story.
​
If we are getting elongated eyeballs from focusing on our computer screens, it's time to delve into some corrective measures.
Some 30 years ago, I took The Bates Method of Vision Training. At the time I was having difficulty reading the Phone Directory (Remember those?) After the training I was able to read it without glasses.
Another testament to the training was that about half-way into the training, I went to dinner with 5 friends. The restaurant was dimly lit, and I was surprised to be the only person at our table who could read the menu.
Julia Galvin, a Bates Method instructor, said that perhaps Dr. Bates's method of vision enhancement is lost and will wait until it is rediscovered. It isn’t lost, but it isn’t well known or believed.
Bates was a bit pig-headed, Galvin said, and that can antagonize people. Pig-headedness can show, though, that pioneers in their field get fed up with the resistance they encounter, and that affects their attitude.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) was a wild proponent of the Bates Method and wrote extensively of his experience with it in his book, The Art of Seeing.
In his preface, Huxley describes how, at sixteen, he had a violent attack of keratitis punctata, which made him nearly blind for eighteen months. After that, he was left with severely impaired sight. He managed to live as a sighted person with strong glasses, but the strain of reading left him exhausted.
Eventually, he sought the help of Margaret Corbett, a teacher of the Bates Method. He found “Cobert’s teaching immensely helpful and wrote: "At the present time, my vision, though very far from normal, is about twice as good as it used to be when I wore spectacles, and before I had learned the art of seeing."
I remember reading Bennet Cerf's criticism of Huxley. Cerf said that while attending a Huxley lecture, he noted that Huxley could barely read his notes.
I wanted to tell Cerf, "Huxley is lucky he can see."
Perhaps Cerf didn't know Huxley's vision history. Or that Cerf knew Huxley touted vision training and was poo-pooing it. Often, we criticize when we don't know how many miles that person has walked.
First, consider this: Like other body parts, the eyes can heal.
This comment goes against convention which says that the heart and the eyes are not capable of regeneration. However, both of those claims are being questioned.
Huxley quoted Mathew Luckiesh, the Director of General Electric's Lighting Research laboratory:
"Suppose crippled eyes could be transformed into crippled legs. What a heart-rendering parade we would witness on a busy street. Nearly every other person would go limping by. Many would be on crutches and some in wheelchairs."
Huxley states that when legs are imperfect, the medical profession makes every effort to get the patient walking again and without crutches if possible. "Why should it not be possible to do something analogous for defective eyes?"
When I was taking the training, one goal of many vision training students was to pass their DMV's Driver's License eye test without glasses. (Remember, this was 30 years ago when you had to read on your DMV eye exam.)
I ended my training when I tested 20/20. I'm sorry, I don't remember if we measured my vision when I began the training.
Vision training, more than changing the eyes, is teaching the brain to see better.
We learn to relax into seeing instead of straining to see. Optometrists and Ophthalmologists, I'm not entering your world but into the world of senses, perception, education, and intention.
​
​What happens when a young woman sets out to find her purpose? "She will find it," so she had been told, "where tigers belch".
Chapter 1
You might think I spent the night quivering in my debris hut, listening for the footfalls of wild animals.
I did.
I'm joking. I slept like a relaxed dog with all four paws in the air.
I was on a mission and wouldn't let a minor inconvenience stop me.
Ahead was the goal of my life.
​
​I spent yesterday walking, but when a washed-out area of the path dropped me in an avalanche of mud, I slid downhill screaming and grasping at the vegetation alongside my slippery slide. My careening stopped short of a stream, thank heavens, for my hands were scraped and my throat dry from the screaming, but I survived to the tune of the screeching and flapping of a great flotilla of birds filling the sky in a paint brush smear as though I had touched the brush to every color on my palette.
​
I washed my hands in the stream and ate one of the tuna fish sandwiches I had placed in a plastic container to keep them from getting mushed. I drank my bottled water and gathered sticks and debris for an enclosure where I spent the night.
​
Now, I know you are waiting for me to fall on my nose, and I may—I slid down the muddy slope, didn't I? But what if we travel through life knowing it will turn out well for us?
​
I crawled out of my enclosure, stripped off my clothes, and bathed in the stream.
Figuring that the stream—which flowed at a pretty good clip—was pure, I filled my empty water bottles.
​
And when I put the bottles into my backpack, I found a surprise. (Did I tell you I had lost my backpack on the way down that embankment and had to climb, holding onto vegetation for support, back up to get it? I slipped back down again--but I had saved my backpack.) I had used this pack before and had left a pen and a paper pad in its zipped-up compartment—Good. I searched to see if I had anything else tucked away.
I found three sticks of gum, old and dried up, a chocolate mint from a restaurant long ago, melted, flattened, and re-set, but still in its foil wrapper. A few crumbs of left-over peanuts left salt in the bottom of the pack. I dipped a wet finger in the salt and licked my finger. It gave me the taste of having potato chips –a good after-taste to my tuna fish sandwich.
​
Okay, dry, dressed, fed, and invigorated after that cold bath I began skipping down the new path.
I felt that destiny thrown me onto this path. Besides, following a stream leads somewhere. Water goes downhill, not in circles, as I am apt to do.
​
What if I get lost, I think as I walk along—a moment of doubt. What if I run out of food or get eaten by a tiger? Well, I'd be dead. I don't know where I am now anyway. I might as well proceed. I'm determined.
​
I take off my tee shirt, dip it in the stream, and put it back on to cool my steaming body. I sit beside the stream, gather some reeds, and weave them into a ratty-looking hat. It protects my head, and the wet grass helps keep me at a tolerable temperature.
I keep walking; the sun beats down hot, and it is mucky under the forest's canopy.
Occasionally a monkey screams at me, sometimes they sing in a full-on chorus of screeching, but I keep on.
​
Another night in the jungle? What did I get myself into?
​
Suddenly I hear someone humming.
​
Am I coming upon an encampment?
​
I stop and hold my breath as I peer through the jungle thicket. I see only one hut.
Standing there where I am, hidden in the trees, I see an old woman come out of a shelter. Her white hair frizzes out in a tangle flowing down her back. She is wearing a sarong tied above her bosom. Her shoulders are bare. She ambles, carrying a jug to the stream where she dips it into the water. She hefts the filled jug out of the water and settles it on her hip.
​
As she is walking back to her hut, she calls out to me.
​
"Why are you standing there, gawking? Come on in out of the heat. I've been expecting you.”
​