Larry Marder's DEJA VIEW!

First I told myself  "I'll finish Here There and get 'em done."
Next I pushed it back to until I get all the coloring and new pages for Beanworld 3.5 in the can.
Then I thought I could go the distance and get Something More finished first.
Wasn't gonna happen.

What am I talking about?
Cataracts.
I had 'em.
Bad.
My cloudy eyes weren't going to carry me through to the end.


I was told almost 8 years ago that I'd need to have my cataracts taken care of within five years.
I held out as long as I could.
It was okay to lose my night vision.
I even could handle the "cloudy look" of people's faces and not being able to see virtually anything or anyone in large gatherings and public places. After all I could still draw all day and night.
And then--I couldn't.

I knew by the end of San Diego Comic-Con that I couldn't get by any longer.
It was time for me to face the facts.
My eyes were in need of repair.

Now, I'm a total wuss when it comes to my eyes.
An eyelash caught in my eye or a bit of grit under the eyelid and I'm not a happy camper.
Never could wear contacts and never once considered having Lasik surgery either.

So the idea of having the lenses in my eyeballs, y'know the ones I was issued upon birth, being taken out and swapped for something man-made quite frankly gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Everyone told me: Don't worry about it.
It's a cakewalk.

Well, it was.
Easy as pie.

Out came my old clouded up natural lenses and in went my super duper 21st century lens implants and the world became new. Like Dorothy opening the door onto Munchkinland kind of mind boggling new.

Incredible.
Amazing.
Astounding.
Astonishing.
Uncanny.
All those Marvel Comics title adjectives.

So now I can see distances never dreamed of before.
I'm experiencing colors in ways I haven't in years and years.

I've worn glasses since about the time the USSR put Sputnik in orbit.
All my life I've pretty much always been the most near-sighted person anyone-I-know knows.
No longer being myopic is downright bizarre.
I don't need to wear glasses anymore to see things super clearly across very long distances.

This is weird because prescription lenses for extreme nearsightedness greatly reduces the size of everything that is looked at through those lenses. For all my adult life, the things I see have appeared much smaller than they actually are. All of a sudden everything around me is huge. This is taking some getting used to.

Things up close are a different matter.
I need reading glasses to, well, read.
And draw.

Since my ocular implants I've been experimenting with different magnifications at various close distances.
Plus my eyes are still healing and adjusting and changing every day .
And I'm on quite the regimen of eye drops.

It's only going on two weeks and it takes anywhere from a month or three for everything to settle in.
My brain is processing huge amounts of sensory input every moment of every day.
Plus my body has a lifetime of habits that are no longer functional.
There is no need to hunch over a book or drawing anymore.
But my body still wants to do it even though my eyes need to be at a different distance to see correctly.
I'm constantly discovering all the new distances and postures that will make seeing-sense from now on.
Particularly on the Cintiq.
The pic above is my first attempt to draw on it.
I think it looks like I drew it.
Hope so anyway.
I'm still not over how much larger everything appears on screen--particularly the desktop icons and the Photoshop palettes.
I wasn't expecting that.

Anyway, that's where I've been and what I'm doing after my cryptic post a few weeks ago,
Every day I learn something new about how to see.

My motto as voiced by Beanish above is:
One day at a time.
One step at a time.

Book Four?
Ready or not, here I come!