April 20, 2020

In Dependence

Not since I was nine. That was the last
time I could see my way clear to anything
without the aid of a certain subset of
professionals who make seeing – its
science and technology, its hardware the
antidote to the softening lines in my field
of vision – their business. I am grateful,
of course, to have traded a very different
dependence for this one, but the way
I see it, it's all dependence. There's no way
around that. It all depends on how you
look at it: either you depend on the
technicians and their wizardry, dependent
as they are on a certain chain of supplies –
which is anything but certain but certainly
appears so – or you depend on someone
to take care of you and in such dependence
you accept a certain diminished capacity
to render care yourself, for yourself and
others. But even in the former case, you
are still dependent; there is simply the
illusion of its having vanished. It is slight
of hand; it is a magic trick – a useful one,
no doubt, but the least I can do is see it
for what it is, and myself for who I am.