Sleepus Interruptus and a Trickster Eye

Awake since 1:30 am. Mind full of things - don't know why I woke up but it's a WIDE awake.

I was initially pondering my "lazy" eye. And I just read a friend's blog about choice wrt to many many issues including our ethnicities. She is very wise and a much deeper thinker than I. Coincidentally another blog of someone dear to me (also wise and deep) was about choice, so I guess these things are gonna happen in threes.

My right eye likes its independence. It looks at whatever it wants whenever it wants. Only when I close my "good" eye do I see what my personal trickster has been up to. I know it's said many elsewheres that tricksters end up only fooling themselves, nonetheless, my Indy Eye just keeps on.

I should clarify, I also know what my prefers-to-be-a-cyclops eye is looking at when I receive all manner of looks - curious, quizzical, friendly waves, etc. - from people I didn't think I was looking at. Here's an example of how it gets me jumbled up aka tricked. I was at an Art Event a couple weeks back, talking with a friend and another classmate smiled and waved at me I thought "Ahhh Coyote Eye my clever friend - getting me into trouble"

I did not choose my wonky eye - strabismus did. My brain at the age of - oh, yeah, birth - was not a seasoned center of dispute resolution. Both eyes campaigned hard, but could not reach an agreement, so my brain, like King Solomon, chose instead. The right optic nerves perforce began what is close to a half-century work action. Kind of ironic really: right eye - work action (left-wing joke - sorry).

Living with this eye is an interesting adventure. Reportedly, it would work very well in someone else's head, a head with optic nerves o'plenty. Apparently the technology for a successful relocation does not exist yet? According to my eye doc anyway, but he's a big bag of himself and, I suspect, a stupey pants.

So depth perception is fun. When I knock over stuff (like my tea last night), drop stuff, run into stuff, try to grab something, drop a wheelbarrow on my forehead (it is possible), give myself a black eye - well guess what, sometimes it is not a success story. And what is even more interesting, some people have called me careless, accident prone. Yes, I find all kinds of tiny little bruises peppering my arms and legs (and head) from time to time (aka most days) and instead of a compassionate response, I don't know something like "you Ok?" I am instead greeted with shaking heads, stares of disbelief and a perception of me as a tainted specimen. A factory second as it were. Why do we most often go to a negative ascription of character when witnessing an action that falls even slightly outside the usual?

I did not choose this. In the big scheme of things it is not a dire issue, it is a minor flaw, I can't even bring myself to claim it as a disability. Still it has shaped me, my life, my interactions in this world.

What is a dire issue for example is the ubiquitous practice of raping of women that STILL goes ignored. I can even say it is a sanctioned even encouraged act of violence because it is so prevalent - someone must have said it was ok to do. It is a weapon of war. And this war is ultimately a war against women. I'm pretty certain this is not what women have chosen. But it is an act rooted in the objectification and commodification of women. So long as men see women as property, as an object, as less; rape will continue.

So, it finally dawns on me that in one of my favourite movies "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", said seven joyously sing a song about the Sabine women - a kind of older brother DIY instruction on how to get a wife. Seems to me that the Rape of the Sabine women was not a joyous event. I can't watch this movie anymore. It's so depressing and discouraging seeing how entrenched rape of women is, in this world. Course now the earth - mother earth - is being systematically raped, has been since "progress' (the noun).

So again, we make what difference we can. Teach our children to have respect for all peoples. Teach them alternatives to violence, give them, encourage, lots of choices. This is not what some people might call spoiling a child, it is instead part of nurturing. Nurturing compassion for and in a child (and in ourselves) makes our world a little less violent.