As a boy, I dreamed of growing up with a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses, the kind Clark Kent wore in the movie “Superman,” which we watched with mouth agape and eyes wide-open in the theater. Superman’s alter ego may look nerdy in those glasses but somehow he attracted that cute reporter called Lois Lane.
Not only did I want to have glasses, I was drawn to bespectacled girls in school who I thought destroyed their eyesight early by reading too much. I wanted to do the same: read and read until my eyes got a bit blurry.
I did the things that eye doctors would tell you to avoid. I read even when the light was poor, which was usually the case when we had no electricity while growing up in Mindanao in the ‘70s and the ‘80s. I read while lying down in bed, right after waking up. I’d grab a paperback edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Hardy Boys, or a volume of my mother’s Reader’s Digest from under the pillow.
Still my eyesight remained good, even after we had black and white TV which came as soon as we had electricity. It must be all the squash my mother always served us that gave me power vision.
If there’s anything to credit, clear eyesight helped me become a visual artist. Drawing with a pencil or ballpoint pen on whatever scraps of paper were at hand, I was amazed at the magic of the line, how it could make things appear with just a few strokes.
In nature, I noticed that certain colors look beautiful when put together, so I recreated those combinations with cheap watercolor on paper. You discover, too, that with only a few colors, you can create all others with the right blending.
Drawing, indeed, is a matter of seeing.
The artist should be keen about details, even the tiniest ones, so he could recreate them in his work. It has always delighted me to discover the beauty of Microcosmos. My brothers and I had a small magnifying lens that we would use to look at (or burn with the sunlight) everything from ants, to dried leaves, to pictures on bits of newspaper.
Learning film photography as a fine arts student in college made me appreciate the importance of clear eyesight. With my film single lens reflex camera, I had to choose the right focus, checking that lines of objects were straightened up inside the viewfinder as the focus ring was turned.
Recently, it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to do manual focusing on a digital single lens reflex camera. It becomes harder at night when details are dimmed by shadows. As a result, I often find my photos blurry, which could be embarrassing at times when you are asked by people to take their “group selfie.”
Digital technology, in fact, is to blame for the fast deterioration of my vision. After a few years of using computers, hastened more recently by my entry in social networks, it has taken a toll on my eyesight.
I can’t read the fine print on the warranty of the gadget I’m buying. I find it harder now to fill up small details on a drawing or painting. Many times, I’ve ignored friends because I could not recognize them at a distance. When people are far, my eyes also tend to split their image into two. I can’t read traffic signs ahead of me when I’m driving.
After getting my eyes examined, I found out I am farsighted and have astigmatism. So now, I carry two pairs of glasses: One for reading and another one to correct my blurry vision of distant objects. If it’s sunny, I add a pair of sunshades, which makes it three pairs of glasses all in one bag.
I came to realize how bad my eyesight was only when I began wearing glasses. It felt indeed like putting on new pairs of eyes, except that they’re made of plastic, are expensive and require maintenance.
Now finally, I got the black-rimmed glasses I wished for in my boyhood. But it no longer looks cool on me. It only gives away my age. And I have long dropped the illusion of being Superman.
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