The New Reading

When I was growing a brain tumor last winter, one symptom I experienced gradually was an almost complete loss of my ability to read.  I didn't think much of it while it was happening.  It had been eight or nine years since I'd had new eyeglasses, and I figured a new prescription would fix the problem.  When I got new glasses, including new reading glasses, and still couldn't read, I just assumed that the change was so dramatic that I needed time to get used it.  Very soon after that, of course, I was in the hospital finding out that it wasn't my eyes, and it wasn't my glasses.

After brain surgery, I had most of my linguistic faculties back almost entirely intact within a couple of weeks.  It was amazing, a miracle of luck and my surgeon's skill combined.  I still have some residual issues, though.  A number of my favorite blogs are now difficult or even impossible for me to enjoy because of typeface, colors, and various other layout issues.  Sometimes I have to pause a DVD in order to read subtitles, or if there's a sign or letter in the movie that the viewer is supposed to read for himself.  And while once I used to read so well that I could recognize whole words as quickly and accurately as individual pieces of fruit, no language that has to go through my eyes processes that quickly anymore.

There are printers that print images in layers, running back and forth over the same span of paper several times until an image becomes recognizable, then clearer and clearer until the whole image has been reproduced.  The way I read is sort of like that.  I can almost never read anything accurately on the first pass.  I often have to read the same text over a good eight times or so before I am sure I have gotten the sense of it.  Naturally, this slows me down quite a bit and is also annoying as hell.  Sometimes, though, it's also kind of funny.

For my Hallowe'en story, I opened with a quote from my friend Phyl that "Anything forever is hell."  She reminded me in an e-mail of what had given rise to this utterance, an experience she'd had with an acquaintance that involved seeing a movie about Santa Claus in his home environment.  She wrote, "Gold.  Green.  Red.  Elves.  Forever.  Every day."

I read "...Elvis...."

Then just this week I got an e-mail from Netflix telling me my next movie, Wristcuffers: A Love Story, was on its way.  I was horrified.  I thought I had accidentally chosen some boring thing about bondage, and since it's not as though I've been making it out the door to the mailbox every single day for instant turnaround lately, every new Netflix shipment is more than ordinarily precious.  All in a panic, I rushed over to the Netflix site and logged in.  Through some trick of fontography and layout, I was able to see immediately that in fact I was being sent Wristcutters: A Love Story.

Ah.  Now that sounded like something I would like.  (And I did.  Very, very much.)

Then yesterday esteemed correspondent Leslee of 3rd House Journal presented a beautifully illustrated post about "coloring outside the lines," which included a shot of a sign that I read on the first take with New England accent.  "PAHKING THIS SIDE," I thought it said.  Heh.

My own spelling has become even more atrocious than it was before.  In a recent post where I mentioned how my true love had decided Massachusetts should now just call itself "The Smart State," I misspelled one of the words in the title "gloathing" instead of "gloating."  It took me three days to catch it.  It was kind of my readers, especially those who don't agree with me politically, not to point it out and rub my face in it, but on the other hand, I do sort of like the word "gloathing."  "Gloating" + "loathing" -- I know there's a place in the English language for such a word, especially around election time.

This way I read now, and apparently write, it may be permanent, or it may be something I eventually work through.  As I said, it's annoying as hell.  But at least it offers added amusement value.

***

Note:  It is my practice to insert into my HTML titles or captions for each image I post.  This is how I attempt to make this blog accessible to the blind or otherwise sight-impaired.  To read these captions, you have to either have a device that will find them for you and read them out loud to you or, if you are a sighted person, just position your pointer over each image to reveal each title or caption in a little beige pop-up.

If you are a sighted person and didn't know this was my practice, you might be confused by the graphics I have included in this post.  As I explain in the caption for each, each one represents one way the word "happy" might appear to me as I read it and read it and read it again on my way to actually recognizing and comprehending it.

Comments

[kathy a.]

what a wonderful post. NOT the brain cancer part; but how well you illustrate what it means to your vision/reading now.

i totally liked "gloathing," a fine word. i assumed it was the product of your brilliant insight. accidents can be brilliant, too, so i'm glad you embraced this one.

[Sara]

Seriously, if this is the worst symptom I retain even permanently after having a melanoma the size of a golf ball removed from inside my skull, it's really not such a bad prospect. Annoying? Yes. Catastrophic? No. Silly? Often.

I remain the luckiest of women, honestly.

[laurie]

I read it as 'Elvis', too. And I misspelled bureaucracy this week. It stayed misspelled for two days until someone else pointed out the mistake...perhaps the post was so boring that most people didn't get that far. Sigh.

[Kay Olson]

I've completely reformed my views on misspellings. I won my fifth grade spelling bee. Yes, I'm still very proud. But since I spent more than half of a year writing all communication when I wasn't able to speak -- and writing much of that while laying flat on my back in bed, with the paper and pen down by my hip where I occasionally could not see the page -- I've changed from being a spelling snob. And a grammar and penmanship snob too.

For one thing, my pages and pages of communication were deadly dull: "Water please." "Any mail today?" Also, I realized how much time and energy doing everything just right/write takes, and it just wasn't worth it.

I always forget to add the HTML labels. I'm pasting up a Post-It right now to see if I can't get in the habit of that.

[Kay Olson]

Also, I thought "gloathing" was perfect.

There's nothing but age affecting my vision, but I'm not always the easiest to understand when I speak. My father is hard of hearing, especially in the morning when he has not yet put his hearing aids in. So we have some problems communicating sometimes. I once asked him to help me get some ice water and he wandered off and returned with a flyswatter, which confused me utterly. My mother, observing, was laughing and practically rolling on the floor.

[Sara]

Laurie: Elves, Elvis -- interchangeable, really, especially in a horror context, wouldn't you say? ;)

Kay: "Flyswatter"? Hilarious!

I imagine that having to write all your communications for a year, even the most quotidian, could give you a special appreciation for the new abbreviated language of electronic texting.

[The Goldfish]

In case you don't know this already - or in case someone finds this post who doesn't know it already, you can get round the befuddling formatting of blogs by clicking on your View menu and clicking Page Style > No Style.

Then whatever comes up will be in keeping with the default setting of your browser (which you may be able to alter yourself, I've not worked out how to do that in Firefox yet).

[leslee]

Oh, I love "gloathing"! Must find a way to use that. Alas, way too late and too tired to think of anything useful to do with it at the moment.

(I still think the sign actually has the top part of the R bitten off so "PAHKING" it is!)

[Sara]

Goldfish: Thank you, and that's a good point, but removing page styles actually makes it harder for me. It's a complicated set of factors, what makes one thing legible to me and another thing just a big challenging smudge on my screen. I don't want to write about it in more detail at this time because (a) it's tiresome and (b) I don't want to influence anyone else's stylistic choices. Every set of factors that I find difficult in combination probably forms someone else's perfectly balanced point of singing clarity.

Leslee: I just love that picture because I love the idea of nature as editor. And of course, that tree is a New England native, so it only makes sense that it would insist on the correct accent. hee hee

[ScriptorSenex]

Love your Blog. Loved this post. Love the fact that yoiu are de-tumoured or whatever the correct expression is. And I especially loved the idea of a word "gloathing" which will undoubtedly make it to my word blog - http://cjewords.blogspot.com/

[Sara]

Thanks for visiting, SS! I have no idea what the correct expression is either, but in spite of its nonspecificity, "happy" also works, at least in my case.

Thanks also for alerting me to the existence of your own blog. Everyone should rush over just to look at the adorable little "flittermouse" you have posted today.