Diving into Depth

Some Pretty Sweet Fusion!
A nice soundtrack to today's post by Chick Corea & Return to Forever. I love that Fender Rhodes so much.

Anyway, a great weekend of being outside and soaking in my new view. I've gushed about it before, and I will again - having my eyes work together instead of against each other has made a massive difference in the way I see and experience the world. Before all the depth stuff, and at this point I'm kind of thankful that my brain has put depth in the back seat to allow me to wrap my head around this awesome advancement of a single continuous view of the world. I still have a hint of double vision at times, especially when tired, but my general experience is of a single, fused whole, like a dome all around me. I can see that my brain is really starting to FUSE TOGETHER the images between my two eyes even more than before. The amount of time I have double vision now is decreasing rapidly.

This has been like going from watching two old cathode ray TVs sitting side by side to sitting in the perfect seat for an IMAX movie. It reminds me of the experience of going to see "To Fly" or "Blue Planet" at the NASA museum in Washington DC.

Check out the first few minutes. When you watch this on a massive screen, that first excerpt of the moon landing sits square in the middle of the screen, using about 20% of the total screen real estate. Then the screen goes dark, and as you're staring ahead into the darkness you get a sensation of light coming from the bottom of the screen. Then you look down and WHOA - you are taking in this MASSIVE view across your peripheral vision of the Earth swinging up into view. I suppose that's a bit lofty and dramatic, but that's how it feels. I stop often to just zone out my view to the furthest perspective possible, and marvel at the clean flow of imagery from my left into my right eye. Suh-mooooove.

I would say that before surgery, my left eye contributed 5% positively to my eyesight (contributing some peripheral view to the far left side) and negatively impacted me by jeez I don't know 15%. My brain was confused by multiple images, wondering which was the correct one, and the overlapping images caused me to not see optimally out of my right eye. I literally spent my whole adult life trying to pretend my left eye didn't exist. People that know me notice I close my left eye a lot, especially when concentrating. I didn't wear a contact lens in that eye for years. It was just easier for me to get around to think it doesn't exist.

But of course NOW, I feel like my right eye is helping to elevate my left eye. Both eyes are working together, and the left eye is probably contributing 20 to 25% to my total viewscape, with my right eye taking up the rest. So, no surprise there that the right eye dominates, but the left eye is able to contribute.

I just lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling and saw all four walls around me. Outside, the sky feels like a massive dome. I feel more a part of the view as well. I feel somehow like I am part of the scenery more, less like I'm struggling to make sense of the imagery and muscle my way through it. I can exist in the space in a calmer way. All this language sounds a bit ridiculous.

The minor downside is that it is hard sometimes to focus on one area, like a screen. I am distracted by the images to either side, my eye jitter kicks up, and then it's much harder to read. I imagine this is all part of the re-learning process.

Speaking of which, I did have a bit of depth on saturday while outside. I did sleep better so I think that helped a lot. Plus I was outside, not spending so much time staring at a screen at the same focal length. Thankfully I have a window in my office with a long-distance view, so I will make an effort to take frequent breaks, stare out at the horizon, go visit folks instead of email them (heads' up, everybody), etc.

And I am done feeling sorry for myself about depth. The way I see it, it was ALWAYS a long shot. I figured before surgery that I would need to undergo months of vision therapy without any hope of gaining depth. Now I have demonstrated for myself that my brain can do it. And if it can do it once, it can do it again. I think things will really start to rock and roll once I get my contacts back in. I have been switching between the distorted view of my glasses (and lack of optimal peripheral vision with them), and walking around with no correction, where I can enjoy the Total Fusion Experience (TM) and full peripheral vision, but everything's blurry. I can imagine that the brain is struggling to reconcile all this data, and I can tell it's trying. So I have every hope that in a couple of weeks once I can wear my contacts again and work on seeing with depth. It's in there, I may need to help coax it out. So I am in the market for a vision therapist, with which to work on exercises for both depth retention and my nystagmus. If I still have to do the work to get the depth, it's still miles above where I was before surgery, since I now know what it looks like when I see it. I will get there! In the meantime, I am off to enjoy my prime seat in the IMAX theater of my mind. I think that needs a bit more trippy fusion music to go out on...