Viewfinding

So yesterday J. (the other J!) led the writing warm-up in homeroom. She did an exercise to focus them on details and imagery by proving each student with a paper viewfinder and asking them to examine some object they had on their person, or nearby... many of the students did indeed pick up minute details that graced their everyday objects, which they had not noticed before. Since I was the teacher who was not leading, I also participated in this exercise. When J. had walked in (we get there earlier than the kids) I wanted to touch the viewfinders. I was intrigued by this exercise. 

I think if all of us teachers could just spend a week sitting in on each other's workshops, we would. Or at least I would. I love doing the exercises and activities that my peers have come up with. I alove writing with the kids. This may not be common to everyone though. I know some writers who hate FW and timed exercises because the pressure leads to performance anxiety and the words won't come easily. Personally I find that FW (and the like) really work for me. The inner editor is silenced! I work better under pressure. Unfortunately I also use this excuse as to why I'm a procrastinator in other aspects of my job (grading) but that's bullshit. Maybe grading just hurts less if you have to do it quickly without obsessing. My problem is that i still obsess, but then I must obsess quickly. 

Anyway TANGENT. I really want to concentrate on those viewfinders. I have used these before to pick out details in a photograph, where you lay the photo on the table and move the little frame around. When I do large watercolor / acrylic washes, I'll use the frame to find the areas that contain the most interesting patterns to cut out and repurpose. But for this exercise the students were holding the viewfinder up to their faces, like a camera or a telescope. 

So you can picture it better, it was just a little frame make of cardstock. The opening was a rectangle about two inches wide by one inch high. I tried to do the same thing and immediately discovered that the viewfinder was actually way larger than my field of vision. When I held it up to my eye, the viewfinder disappeared. I sat there for a second thinking, hey this is kinda cool, moving it back and forth and watching it disappear. Jill's cool vision tricks. Then I thought to myself, holy crap, my visual field is actually smaller than that. 

I have a document. It's probably close to 20 years old now. It confirms the shape of my visual field, as much as a visual field can be measured. It's jagged. Like an irregular polygon. I had somehow imagined it would be round. {shrug} Eyeballs are round. The visual field chart is a series of concentric circles, like a dart board. To get that kind of record, the docs, or their belabored technicians, have to perform a visual field test.

I hate visual field testing. Every time I go to the ophtho, they want to do a visual field test. It's one of the reasons why I don't go. I know. Bad me. Bad. These tests involve the tech sitting on one side of a concave plate (okay, in my memory it's concave. It might actually be just like a big drawing board) through which they can shine a tiny light, like a laser pointer. They ask you to focus on the light and, without moving your eye at all, tell them (or hit a buzzer or whatever) when the light disappears. Then they mark the spot on the other side of the plate with an instrument. From the way it sounds I imagine it's a pencil on a sort of metal arm. I can tell it's a pencil because of the sound the multiple erasures make when I say shit! I moved my eye or Sorry! My vision jumped. I hate and dread these tests. First of all, the impulse to track a moving object with your eye is nearly overwhelming that it is so difficult to hold the eye still (shit! I moved my eye) Secondly, trying to hold the eye still (as they ask you to do for most of the damn ophtho tests) causes my nystagmus to go batshit crazy (sorry, my vision jumped). Basically, the more they ask me to hold still, the more I shake. 

The last time I went back to the ophtho was to get reading glasses. I could have go to a regular eye doc and lied but I knew I was supposed to go to a specialist and I hadn't been in ten years and they would probably just refer me anyway once they had a look at my eyes. The poor bastard who had to do my field test was a total newb. Like, literally, it was the very first test he had done on anyone after getting out of medical school or something. I felt so bad that he was getting me. After about five minutes of mutual frustration, he was like I don't think this test is really beneficial for you. I was like amen brother! I don't know if he genuinely felt that way or if he was just trying to get out of performing a difficult procedure, but I didn't care. My visual field isn't degenerative. Plus they have other crazy tests now where they can track your eyeballs with computers and stuff. 

So, the viewfinder. I have to move my personal viewfinder around and around an object, a person, a street to get the big picture. I want to make an analogy here, about how I'm so detail oriented and tend to lose the larger perspective easily... but it would all wrap up too easily. There's no metaphor. It's just a paper frame. I'm finishing this blog entry while I'm supposed to be supervising students in the park. There's some awful folk duo.... I mean... the songwriting.... it's .... they tend to like cute themes. Every so often I look up. The students are chatting. They have their notebooks out. Typed pages are being passed around. The ones at my table are playing Exquisite Corpse. One girl passed me a note about a sonnet crown. Seems like learning is taking place. I feel a little antisocial about blogging while they're doing a team-based exercise. The band is so bad. And loud. I'm dragging. These kids are so good. I'm totally being the pinnacle of leadership. I'm going to miss these kids when they go. They are going to spoil me for future students.