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 have no space in my heart for war.
   I am fearful, and saddened, by continued conflict on foreign soils that I have grown up watching on television and reading in the news. I cannot get past the hatred expressed by bombs, and guns, and the death of innocents unable to defend themselves.
   I am distressed by the threat of war. I have no space in my mind to even try to comprehend such action.
   I have no room in my heart for war.
   I do, however, have the greatest respect for those who have served this country, or made the ultimate sacrifice, so that I, that we, may live as we do now.
   It is not hypocritical.
   It is honest.
   I grew up listening to the horrors of war. I grew up attending, annually, Remembrance Day ceremonies. Armistice Day, as observed by commonwealth nations, marks the end of the First World War. We learned of the war, and those that followed, from a very young age, in textbooks, through the media, or from our parents.
   The stories were not lost on me, but truly didn’t sink in until the end of my teenage years.
   As, then, staff photographer at a mid-sized daily Canadian newspaper, I was assigned to cover the annual November 11 ceremony at a cemetery on the outskirts of the city.
   As a photographer you learn to hover on the edges of an event. I, not wanting to disrupt the ceremony — and wanting to pay respect to those who were there for greater reasons than I — tucked myself behind a tree, attached my telephoto lens, then watched and waited for the right shot.
   The crowd was not small, rain threatened, and veterans still stood tall in their uniforms, blue blazers and berets, medals displayed proudly. Their postures straightened as a bugle played The Last Post.
   I watched as a man in a wheelchair began to shudder, his head bowing down. I then watched as the soldier next to him reached over and placed a hand his shoulder. I was watching through a 200 mm lens, the complete picture of the scene and the crowd was not important to me.
   The sound of the bugle fill the air. I pressed the shutter button a few times, capturing the intimacy of this small act, then my eyes began to cloud with tears. I lowered my camera and broke down.
   I tried to remain silent behind the tree. My eyes were no longer fixed through the camera lens, but sweeping the crowd. I watched aging veterans, wives and widows, and sons and daughters honouring family.
   The impact of the wars, on me, was felt more deliberately than ever before.
   After any event, as a photographer, you search out the subjects of your photograph to get names (and correct spellings). This particular photograph would not require the soldiers to be identified as I shot mostly from behind and they were simply the two men, in a crowd of many, who were not identifiable, as such. I could have easily offered a cutline in the next day’s paper identifying the men as “veterans”.
   I did not think it as respectful, or I wanted to know who these men were. I had been profoundly affected.
   When asked, both men proudly provided their names, ranks, and details of where they served. I was also invited to the Legion Hall where a simple lunch was planned.
   I went, and I sat and listened to men who were not regaling themselves of war stories, but sharing memories of friendship, of comradery, and of duty.
   I have no place in my heart for war.
   But I have room to remember those who defended this country and others; proud soldiers who defended the lives of others across the globe. The numbers have dwindled over the years.
   They were fathers, and husbands, grandfathers. They meant something to their families, and to me.
   I still tear up on Remembrance Day.
   Some years I will watch the beautiful ceremony broadcast from the National War Memorial Ottawa. I have visited the Cenotaph in Winnipeg, on Memorial Boulevard, and sat through the ceremony. There is nothing as dramatic as the cannons going off as a sign of respect, heightened by the silence between each shot.
   I cannot help but stop for a moment each Remembrance Day, wherever I am, and offer a silent prayer.
   I have no room in my heart for war, yet, if I am to claim peace the most important goal, I am also to acknowledge, and dare I say, respect, war, and Canada’s peacekeeping role throughout the world.
   No, it is not hypocritical; it is the reality we are faced with.
   War is a reality we are all forced to live with, sadly.
   That should not stop us from hoping, for praying, for peace.

Lest We Forget.

© 2018 j.g. lewis

And how would it feel if it happened to you?
Would it, or could it, alter your point of view?

It is not, clearly, all black and white.

Through murky shades of grey we wander,
or trespass, across the lives of others.

Shouldn’t all human beings have human rights?

History; a planet rife with examples of abuse.

Anti-Semitism, tongue-in-cheek criticism,
revealing more truth than dare. Ignorance.
Insults uttered without conscience or care.

A sad state. I cannot contemplate
moral devastation, in other nations, but I must.

It is where we live.
This globalization, this imbalance, this hatred
rooted in religion, race, gender identity, or disability.
Discrimination. Disgrace.

When does hate speech become free speech?
Who will decide, who will judge, those who
blame and shame others, unknown
and unknowing.

Imbalance, injustice. Hallow eyes do not trust us
when we are all one; aren’t we? Do you see?

Is that not what you believe?
Shouldn’t all human beings
have human rights?

Let your voice rise above red-hot rhetoric, and
assaultive language. Be honest. Be humble

Speak out for those who cannot speak up for themselves
for one day you may find yourself among them.

Who, then, will stand up for you?

© 2018 j.g. lewis

I capitalize the Moon. Proper noun, proper sphere; a sign of respect. I write about the Moon.

I write about what I know.

This Moon tonight is the only one I truly know. Yes, this magnificent universe, and possibly the one beyond, has many moons, but this Earth has only one. The others (181 and counting) appear to us only as stars, small planets, space junk, and such.

Our Moon, full right now, is the only one I care about. I do not have the need, or the bandwidth, to concern myself with any, or all, of the others. This Moon alone is above my reach, but never beyond my imagination.

Planetary science has nothing to do with my Moon, it is all about the dreams and the space allowed.

At the age when I viewed the first Moon landing only on television, and not outside with the naked eye, I realized the Moon was never as close as it appeared. From that time this orbital delight has become a fascination to me. As I grow older, with each orbit around the Sun, my allure (some may say obsession) with this Moon has only become heightened.

By high school, certainly by my time in the compulsory rocks & stars university course, I was pretty much done with a practical scientific view of the element. Even my view of the Moon through photography has been more of art than of science.

Should I choose to read of the Moon, my preference has been poetry, where the words have not only been more accurate, but deeply personal. The Moon is routinely a theme or topic of many favourite poems, as familiar as love and heartbreak, pain and persistence, and so often intertwined.

You learn about yourself, as you learn of the Moon. Life lessons are to be learned.

Of Shakespeare’s 160 sonnets, four, I feel, mark the passage of man, through life or the ages. These four sonnets, I believe, speak directly of, or to, the Moon.

Thus I pass by, at any age, in any phase, as does the moon; dependent upon the light of others, always a part of the landscape, noticeable more at night, and consistent if not dependable.

I respect the Moon as I respect myself, and, even then, not enough.

© 2018 j.g. lewis

 

Sonnet 35
William Shakespeare

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authórizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—
Thy adverse party is thy advocate—
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence.
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
   That I an áccessory needs must be
   To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

Forty years ago I may have been more interested. Call it timing, or time of my life, but I really don’t care about the legalization of marijuana.

As of today, consumption and sale of pot is legal in Canada, the fulfillment of a 2015 election promise by now-prime minister Justin Trudeau.

It’s a pretty big thing to some people; they were lined up at stores in Newfoundland at midnight to be the first in the country to purchase the now-legal weed. Other people will wait until morning, or until they are of legal age. Some people won’t bother.

It’s a personal thing, like beer, wine or spirits.

It is also now, like beer, wine, and spirits, a taxable commodity (some may even call it a tax grab), promoted by governments as a move to kill the lucrative black market trade and take the drug out of the hands of organized crime. Governments claim control of the substance will also better keep it away from minors (a time when many of us were introduced to weed).

I grew up through the ’70s, reading about the power and pleasure of marijuana in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine, and listening to the comical side of the sub-culture on Cheech and Chong records. I don’t really remember the first time I smoked pot, and was essentially done with it all by the time I was in university (a time when many discovered bud time).

I do remember the last time I smoked a joint, years ago, as a totally pleasurable experience. I’m just not into it now. It’s a personal thing. I do believe part of attraction to pot was the fact that it was not legal; temptation never tastes as sweet as it does from a forbidden fruit.

There been a lot of talk, for years and of late, about the lessening dangers of marijuana. There has been a lot of talk about whether or not the dangers even existed.

While Studies have shown, apparently, that marijuana is not addictive, there will be those people with an addictive personality who will still ignore responsibilities, escape their reality, and even isolate themselves from friends and families.

Others will (continue to) use marijuana as a social drug, and enjoy a Saturday evening with a couple of friends and a few fingers of dope.

Governments are now, already, projecting the millions of dollars of revenue expected to flow into its coffers. History is rife with examples of how governments capitalize on vices. Sin taxes remain one of any governments greatest addiction.

We can only hope newfound revenue will find its way into drug education and treatment plans. In the days leading up to legalization, there certainly hasn’t been enough education on the facts and folly of a drug that was, just yesterday, considered contraband.

We can only hope the increased revenue will actually provide governments with funding to do something about society’s real problem drugs, like the opioid crisis and its increased body count.

© 2018 j.g. lewis