READING WATER READING SNOW is a little reflection of the 'accomodations' I've accomplished over the years to manage moving about on and over this planet...it's interesting to me, of course, so I wrote about it!

READING WATER READING SNOW

When I was fifteen years old, my dad commenced to teach me to drive. About four months later, he decommenced...it was too frustrating for him!
It happened that, whenever I turned Right, or made any judgment calls about anything, any thing at all, on the Right, I'd scrape the car, or bump it, or go over the obstacle instead of around it. He never could seem to get me to drive in a reasonably straight line!
A short hop to my optometrist confirmed the problem as, well, a Problem...I tested as Lacking Depth Perception In Right-Sided Visual Fields. More testing by an optomalogist set the diagnosis: Lacking Depth Perception In Right-Sided Visual Fields. Etiology: Unknown. Problem Known! But, not Solved...

I was given sheets of eye exercises, which, being the obedient, adaptive young teen that I was, I observed faithfully morning and night. 'patching' was discussed, but not recommended. surgery was not indicated. No solutions were in sight, so to speak. I was going to have to learn to "accommodate"...

My dad said, "I'm not teaching her to drive. She's going to crack up the car." So, I did not learn to drive...public transportation became necessary, and I got good at it! I also adopted an attitude of political correctness about cars, and how I didn't want to add to world pollution, and so on... Also, when I was old enough to buy a car, I couldn't afford a car, since I was always poor. These were better excuses, I thought, than the Depth Perception Bit, which I wasn't sure about, since I had always perceived the world the same way, so I didn't know what the 'right' way even was!

When I was thirty-three, I finally Iearned to drive, because my friend Pops said, "That's silly! You must have depth perception. You ski, right? You must see the contours of the snow on the right, or you'd just be falling down the hill all the time!" I didn't have the heart to explain that I was 'accommodating' on the slopes, because I wasn't quite sure I could explain how I actually 'accommodate'...In fact, I wasn't quite sure I'd been 'accommodating' all the years since age fifteen, since I didn't recall anyone telling me quite how to do that! So, he taught me how to drive. I passed the tests. I got my licence. My dad drove out my First Car, and even co-signed the loan! Problem must be solved, Right? Wrong.

See, I knew I still definitely was Not 'Seeing', to the Right, the way other folks were..
I knew I was finally, truly, 'accommodating'...
I called my ways of 'Seeing', (to myself; having long ago given up trying to explain the Depth Perception Bit to curious or alarmed folks!), "Leaps Of Faith".... Here's how a 'Leap of Faith' goes:

I get a visual handle on the terrain ahead using my left eye and turning it more toward the front of my head, by turning my head, of course... Then, somewhere in my brain, I scribble the whole picture together and 'move' ahead into that space...I'd get more scientific about it, but I can't. That's exactly and all I do! I have to do it really fast, I guess, but since I've done it all my life, it's not too hard.
I even have to face the pitcher directly, to be able to see the ball coming at me. It looks 'funny', but I can bat the dang softball that way. I never even see the ball go by, if I stand the way everybody else positions on the plate!.
So this 'Leap of Faith' business works for me very well!... most all of the time...

Except, actually, when I'm in a craft on the surface of rapidly-moving water...and when I'm ski-ing fast down a hill....
Then, all bets are off! I may make it. I may not.
So far, I always have...and, I wonder, my own self, at my strategies!

Here's what I do...(or, more precisely, what I Used To Do, since I haven't been ski-ing down hill or rafting white-water in over ten years):

I put my self in some space inside of me, where I am One Thing With The Water. where I am One Thing with the Snow...

I know that sounds all hokey and weird and new-agey...but that's exactly what I do, because I have to, or I'll crack up on some rock in the river! or fly into a boulder on the slopes!

Reading Water:
It feels like I'm not me. I'm just a bubble, a bit of water, and can be exactly like water...can be moving and changing, can feel the rocks, can pass them by or flow over them without injury...I am the Water-Course-Way!...doesn't that sound Crazy? But, I 'read' the water that way, more accurately, for sure, than with my eyes...I have to!

I even went down-river once upside down in a kayak without panic at all, since I feel so 'water', when I'm in water. I just opened my eyes under the river, 'seeing' where the rocks and the fish were! I assumed I'd 'see' any dangers and stay clear until I could be arighted! When they flipped me over in an eddy, with their scared-to-death faces, I just took a nice deep breath, and said, "It's beautiful down there! I think I'll be a scuba diver!" They all fell over in the water laughing with relief. I was just so calm and happy. It blew them away!

Reading Snow is a bit harder. Water actually looks so Alive. you can easily 'see' its every sinew quiver and respond... Snow, actually, looks, well, Dead.
It just lays there on the terrain. all quiet. all, potentially, deadly.

So, I try to read the sun and shadows instead on the long angles down the slope...I try to 'see', How Did This Particular Snow Settle When It Fell?...
only, it's hard to Be Snow. so still, so Still!... And, my body is moving too fast to 'accommodate' accurately! Exciting! But, Scary!

I never did become a 'good' downhill ski-er...

So, that's how I 'accommodate' to not seeing the world, apparently, the way other people do. if, in fact, they do see it differently than I...
I suppose I will never know.

Eyes are windows to our very souls when you look inside them deep...in mine, there is something else as well.
There is a Flaw that I cannot decipher, because, I know no other way to 'see'!
Not Seeing Normally is Natural, for me...
Making Leaps of Faith, day by night, year after year...

Reading Water. Reading Snow.

I 'see' the Rocks ahead.
I ply the Paddle.
I edge the Ski.

The Rocks flow by...