What I saw during Lasik Eye Surgery

I just experienced one of the more extraordinary things in life, Lasik eye surgery. After more than 20 years of corrected lens wearing, I now have 20/20 vision. Science is real.
Here are some drawn and digitally altered images in attempt to recreate what I saw through the steps of surgery. While I had anesthetic drops in my eye so I couldn't feel any pain, I was awake and still able to see what was going on.
The hardest part was anticipating bright lights coming into your eye and not being able to blink.
After taking numbing eye drops and lying on the exam bed, the machines moved into place over head and bright lights zoomed in on my face. The surgeon placed a patch on my left eye and a speculum opened my right lid, clockwork orange-esque and there I went...toward the light.

Then, I presume, they suctioned my eyeball because I lost partial vision but could still see the ceiling lights in my peripheral vision. The strangest twinkles of blinking blue and green dots appeared for a few moments across the black patch. I read on another blog that those are blobs of your veins???
I think this is where they cut open my cornea as well. I felt pressure and encouraging words of "Good job, Jean" from somewhere behind me. Then I saw a green dot coming towards me in between red dots. I was told to keep looking still at the green dot. Or maybe this happened before I lost vision for a few moments? I can't remember already. Maybe it reappeared?
  There were a few fleeting moments of a faint burning smell that I was told beforehand is NOT my eye burning, but the intensity of the laser machine. Then, they folded my cornea flap back in place and I think added some fluid to the surface of my eye. It looked like someone was brushing clear nail polish over my eye and lightly dabbing here and there.
 
Then they repeated it on the other eye. After less than 10 minutes, I sat up from the bed and they asked me what time the clock said. I could read it just fine.
I was driven home and took a long nap. The end. Now I walk around smiling at everything! Absolutely Amazing!
Did I mention science is real?

50 yards from Crazy

At the end of May, I rented a yurt in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This was to be a business trip to work on things. I left on a Monday morning, grabbing antihistamine and one last iced coffee in Skokie before getting on the highway. After hours with my thoughts driving across what would be Governor Walker's Wisconsin, I found myself at the edge of Lake Superior in a remote old growth forest where the signs are amazingly still in English. I found no one around except a man and his dog several hundred yards away at another campsite.

This would be my home for 3 nights: a round wooden frame hut with a canvas skin. Inside were bunk beds and a table and chairs. The yurt had plastic windows looking out from a tangle of branches at Lake Superior's shore.  I stayed there by myself with no electricity, sleeping with heat from a woodstove (it got into the 30s at night), and all the food I would need packed in tupperware. I made instant coffee on a miniature propane camping stove. My diet consisted mostly of bananas,  pre-cooked pasta, rice and beans, a jar and half of peanut butter, and an enormous bar of dark chocolate.

 In the stillness that was my circular hut above the waves,  I watched the energy of the peanut butter turn directly into lines on paper and rocks. Peanut butter turns almost directly into words here with little interference from myself. I tried letting art happen like freckles. The yurt started working its winding spell turning around my thoughts. With no other people or any electronic source of sound to drown me out, I belted out fake opera singing all day long at the little table and chair. At one point, I could have sworn I achieved throat singing. Perhaps this two toned sound in my throat is only possible when no one is in earshot of it circulating round and round in my corner-less yurt universe.  I've decided that all of these uninhibited aural and visual experiences I had should be attributed to the intoxication that can only come from isolation.

No one told me that I've been 50 yards from crazy all this time. Just put at least a 50 yard radius between me and any other human and I dip down into my own universe. I can't think of a time in my life I've been at least 50 yards away from other humans, strangers or not, for an extended amount of time.  It became completely dark around 10pm each night but I continued to work on the floor next to the woodstove, a modest heat source that was occasionally fueled by bad-drawing-kindling. The flies would flitter and dart around the plastic walls of the Eveready 6 volt battery lantern making it look like a candlelit room. Spiders and other things with legs would meander across my drawings.
With no electricity to recharge devices, I used 3 different cameras until they ran out of power. I worked at documenting everything as if I were a spy on myself. In between naps and long hikes, I found a distinctive slab of rock about a quarter mile away from my yurt at the shore of the lake. I ended up embedding my endless pages of torn up handwriting onto this rock...as you do.  I worked all afternoon on my second day adhering the paper to the rock. I made several trips back to observe this installation I'm calling "Rock Written." On the day I left the yurt, I took one last walk to my writing on the rock. While looking closely at how the paper was holding up to the wind and the waves, I noticed fresh cigarette ash resting in a crevice next to the paper. Was I being watched from the trees? Who was here?!?! Does someone know I was singing all day? Did someone have a moment with my writing this morning before I came back? Did they sit inside the paper circle? Were they just passing by and flicked their ashes on my rock? Did it blow in from some mysterious ship sailing by? I left the writing on the rock to decompose and drove home to Chicago that Thursday afternoon.  Since then, I've been staring at these photos on my computer trying to decide if what I made was remarkable or not. I've also been wondering about the choice and act of being alone and the feeling of being alone. Was I really in isolation for 4 days and is that rock still holding my words?

My July River that I Skated Away On

Question: What's beyond graduate school? Answer: Things you've been wanting to do for a long time. I began "post-grad school" by running for the 3rd time on the Jungle Rot team in the Great Lakes Relay. I had some extra beautiful blisters this year which was one way of keeping me from trying to do everything as usual. I HAD to relax. I did just that in Traverse City immediately after running almost 30 miles across the state of Michigan with 9 other fabulous relay team members. I spent a couple days with one of my favorite gals in the world, Chelsea Bay Wills, by throwing a bridal shower for her and getting to know other great people in her gorgeous Northern Michigan world at Left Foot Charley Winery.  The yellow paper drawing pictured here was our attempt to figure out how we all know each other. All lines point to Chelsea! It was great to visit the ever-growing artsy corners of Traverse City, including a gallery where a special dress was being made and some jewelry was being custom made for a special occasion...

 I soon traveled down to suburban Detroit to try out motherhood for 10 seconds. Elliot looks uncertain in his shopping cart seat. Stacie and Greg graced me with their Royal Oak hospitality and a trip to Hamtramck for meat (oops!) and Polish beer... and later a Gillian Welch concert randomly enough in Royal Oak, Michigan.

The best additions to metro Detroit this year.

The grand staircase with cheese being made below.

 Then, I drove on the hottest day of the year yet to Pittsburgh to see an old college friend Becky and her husband Jon. I was told that if I got into Pittsburgh fast enough, I could ride in Jon's cheese delivery truck. That's right, I sweated through 110 degrees in a car with no A/C to see sweaty cheese balls. All the while, I had a wine bottle exploding in the back seat -It was so hot that when I presented a bottle of wine to my hosts, I had discovered that the heat in the backseat of my car had uncorked the bottle-I did end up getting to witness local cheese, Arsenal Cheese to be exact, get delivered to bars around town after all. It was worth it!
 

The street where Arsenal Cheese is made and Becky and Jon live. The white truck is the delivery truck! I should also note their was no hipstomatic filter used to create this photo. This part of Pittsburgh is naturally hip.

Jon, the cheesemaker, samples his cheese at a local bar.

Arsenal Cheese is a prominent item on this bar's menu!

My great great great great uncle Franz?!

We escaped to air conditioning for a large part of my time in Pittsburgh. I had a personal tour by the great art educator, Ms. Becky Utech Gaugler at the Carnegie Museum, giving special attention to the decorative arts collection and to a special Dutch painter Franz Hals. Who needs Vermeer when you've got Franz Hals?! I took note of the peculiar similarities of Vermeer paintings and Pittsburgh backyards.

The cheesemaker and art educator in their backyard.

Little Street by Vermeer. (Not in Pittsburgh)

It was such a treat to stay with friends who make their own sinks in a house from the 1890s. Becky and Jon rock! Eat local cheese!