How do we choose to travel?
What is reliable in the rain?
What is our ultimate destination,
for this time, this journey, or
this day?
We move at the speed of life.
Depending on traffic, others
may chose to follow your path,
but not your direction.
© 2021 j.g. lewis
A little cold, little wet,
a little tired and yet
I am here. Still,
full of wonder.
The morning chill leaves
little to the imagination
and much less
to hope for.
Expected, perhaps, as it
always is, this time, this
season is only what
we ask of it.
11/21/2024 j.g.l.
The answers are far less certain
than even last week, to all those
perennial questions or solutions
you might seek.
What do you believe, or
what do you believe in?
Come Monday, you have fewer
questions than you had last week.
For a while there are less doubts
in what you believe.
Whom do you believe in,
and who believes in you?
11/18/2024 j.g.l.
Consider each moment
leading up to now.
Cause and effect
affects where you are,
whom you have been, and all
you are now.
Any possibility sustains every reality.
To doubt is to question;
to ask is to reply.
11/22/2024 j.g.l.
As of late, for reasons as varied as they are non-existent, I have not been writing in the manner of which I have come to expect of myself. I am neither as prolific nor as detailed as, I feel, I usually am.
My poetry, while still insightful, does not command the length or breadth I feel I am capable of. Revisions to a manuscript I have toiled away on for some time have become painful (perhaps a sign that the work is closer to completion than I care to acknowledge), and my mind wanders to another project that requires the same diligence.
My daily writing is less than it once was (I feel guilty about that), and even the scant sentences I jot down in my journal seem to only document my time here on earth. Nothing extravagant, nothing more than a slight glimpse of where I am. Nothing that memorable, sadly.
I’ve been feeling for months that I am ready to embark on another kind of writing but have yet to determine exactly what that might be. I am full or ideas, characters, dialogue and circumstance, but it doesn’t quite feel like it has the backbone it needs to pull me in a certain direction. I even, a few weeks back, bought a fresh new notebook to keep these thoughts separate from all the others. The notes I have included in this book are random, undeveloped, at times personal, and (as of yet) make little sense. I reread these notes, almost daily, and I am inspired enough to clarify or expand on certain streams of thought, but it needs a more definite direction.
Perhaps I do as well?
11/17/2024 j.g.l.
I'm like a pencil;
sometimes sharp,
most days
well-rounded,
other times
dull or
occasionally
broken.
Still I write.
j.g. lewis
is a writer/photographer in Toronto.
I wrote this five years ago.
In that time, my condition has changed but attitudes have not.
You do not see what I see. We all see everything differently.
We count on our eyes, daily, to navigate our way through this life. We count on our eyes to witness everyday events with friends and family, capture beauty, and see the dangers ahead.
Each of us interprets what we see.
This is highly personal.
You do not see as I do because I have a visual disability. You cannot even imagine how long it has taken me to say that out loud, even as I began to realize, or understand, what I am dealing with.
It is far more than pride.
By admitting I have a disability, I am confessing to a flaw. This is a hard thing to admit to anybody, let alone yourself.
It is highly personal.
When faced with diminished eyesight, at any level, you begin to think about how, and why, you use your eyes. My vision has always been important to me. My first career and educational training was in photography. I worked for many years as a photographer, then a writer, with a mid-size Canadian newspaper. What I saw became what readers of the paper read and looked at daily.
Even now, as a writer, my eyes are what allows me to place ideas, poems, and thoughts on a page. This is important to me.
My eyesight is now limited, in some way. I’m not sure if I can call it mild. At this point I still function well with most daily duties. I do not require a white cane (perhaps the greatest stereotype surrounding a visual disability), I can drive (save night vision, and my choice not to drive at night), and, for the most part, I get along well.
I have been receiving treatment, in the form of monthly injections, and have adjusted the prescription to eyeglasses I’ve worn since age five. Seeing things at a distance, or just the everyday stuff you associate with getting around, has not been substantially altered.
The difficulty I have been having is with my field of vision at close range – particularly when doing certain tasks, or multi-tasking at the computer. This, of course, begins to create problems with employment.
We all know most jobs now require an element of computer literacy and time in front of a monitor. Our lives are now, pretty much, reliant on a screen of one size or the other. We all text, we tap, to keep up, to communicate, to get our news and views, or do our shopping or banking.
I can do all of that, and with some consistency. I, however, have problems when running multiple programs on multiple platforms. This is a daily occurrence at work, and this goes past the eyestrain we all experience when you spend too much time in front of a screen (we probably all do).
My eyes do not react quickly, not as they once did, and this is not about age. This is more than a period of adjustment for me.
The greatest difficulty I encounter is that my disability is invisible.
Nobody sees how I see. Nobody sees that I have, or could have, potential problems.
Instead, I become the problem when I tell them I have a disability. I shouldn’t need to explain my impairment to the degree they are asking, and still they ask; or they ignore; or they doubt.
There is a stigma attached to the word disability. Many people believe disability means difficulty. I know this personally.
I continue to have difficulties with daily work required of me, even after months of adjustments and consultations, and appointments with medical professionals. Some of the measures have worked to a degree, yet some of the difficulties have not been about me, but rather the faulty equipment I have been working with. I question if the acuity of my vision will be further damaged by prolonged exposure.
This remains a contentious issue, obviously, because it has not been corrected. I, still, routinely experience eye strain, blurred vision and headaches like I have never encountered.
It hurts, yes.
What hurts even more is the lack of understanding, even ignorance, and attitude towards the disability I am facing.
We don’t see things the same. Some people don’t even have the foresight, or sensitivity, to look beyond stigma and stereotypes.
I’m choosing to look further ahead.
© 2018 j.g. lewis
I set the wristwatch each morning.
I notice
time calculates the depth of distraction.
An adjustment,
simply a few minutes.
In the digital realm consistency is provided.
Analogue time needs to be acknowledged.
A favourite watch keeps track of the nostalgia.
It is not always accurate,
but true.
© 2023 j.g. lewis
I can’t be the only one who notices the stray flashes from car headlights, shadows, and shifting colours of traffic lights mirrored in the morning’s gentle rain. Can we think of another way to describe time — the moments we live – as it routinely happens, as it so often does, and we pay such little attention to sidewalk snow as it melts, obscure reflections in storefront windows, a continual din of morning traffic or children making their way to school. Do we notice parents seemingly focused more on take-away coffee? Observations. Baseball caps and yoga mats, packsacks stuffed with what is required to make it through the day, this procession moves forward (as do I) of little consequence with the canopy of night shape-shifting into reality. A yappy attention-seeking puppy breaks up the minutes and seconds that have passed without notice. The animal barks like nobody is paying attention.
I am.
© 2023 j.g. lewis
Not a true day of sunshine since
the twenty-first day of December.
Three weeks since winter’s arrival with its clouds
of dysthymia and discontent.
A grey day, darker than most, today is
another period of insurmountable sadness.
Maudlin melancholy; I cannot say it doesn’t affect me,
as I know it does, as I know it must.
It is seasonal, this daunting depression,
days like today make you appreciate the otherwise.
© 2923 j.g. lewis
We cling to memories, even
subconsciously. Certain days,
and not always, continually play
with our unruled emotions.
Incidents of bliss, specific sorrows
or worse, leave lasting impressions.
It cannot be helped. We live through
experience: yesterday and today.
Reflected in our fragile faith is
a greater hope. We often do not,
or cannot, see past our cold,
current, restless reality.
It is not the truth that provides
our answers, but an unclear
deception of the question
lingering in our consideration.
Us fractured selves, not always
strong and stable, survive by
constructing our foundation of
what we see and how we know.
Hindsight is not honestly accurate.
May your need for yesterday
be slightly overshadowed by
the wistful wonder of tomorrow.
© 2023 j.g. lewis
I’m like a pencil;
sometimes sharp,
most days
well-rounded,
other times
dull or
occasionally
broken.
Still I write.
j.g. lewis
is a writer/photographer in Toronto.
