I LIKE SUNGLASSES. Not, please understand, because I labour under any illusion that they make me look cool. Not even my new supersized LG fridge can achieve that miracle. No, I like them because they make the world look cool. (I’m using the word cool there in terms of the recognised vernacular slang for neat or keen or groovy, as against any apparent lowering of the global temperature, which would in any case confound the proponents of global warming.)
I’ve worn glasses since I was about ten years old. I remember the first time I put them on being amazed by the sheer amount of detail I could suddenly see. These panes of oddly curved transparency resolved the world around me into sharp outlines and recognisable features. Even looking down, I found I could now see individual pebbles on the ground and the texture of tarmacadam. Leaves on trees ceased to be impressionistic blobs of fuzziness and became individually distinct marvels of creation.
I don’t know what prayer is to most people, but for me the simple ability to see and appreciate the details of the universe are as close to a spiritual experience as makes no difference.
Don’t worry, I’m not living in a state of perpetual ecstasy or spiritual transcendence. I’m a grumpy, cranky git at the best of times, but I’m trying to say that when I do count my blessings, which I try to do regularly, I include the gift of sight among them with a touch more gratitude than those of us who have been blessed with perfect 20-20 vision might do.
The thought that the technologies of glass-making and lens grinding from the time of Euclid in ancient Greece through Ibn al-Haytham (or Alhazen as European’s called him) the Persian Polymath in Basra, through the developments and refinements of Kamal al-Din al-Farisi through Keppler and Huygens combined with Newton’s exploration of the world of optics and the discoveries of Galileo and innumerable other great minds through the ages have culminated in the twenty first century being able to grant with almost supernatural casualness the gift of clear vision to almost anyone is, you will admit, a bit uplifting.
So, from an early age I was impressed by the additional levels of detail and information that my glasses gifted me. That interest in detail inspired, to a certain degree, my interest in science. Science is basically a mental lens on the universe that allows us to see the details that the eyes can’t otherwise perceive.
It takes us down through the microscopic, through cellular structures, through atomic theories, into the subatomic world of quantum mechanics and the granular chaos of the theoretical stuff of space-time itself. It takes us up by way of geology and geography and astronomy into space and out through the solar system into the galaxy beyond, and out again into the intergalactic vastnesses all the way to the fringes of the universe and the beginning and end of time and space. It takes us into the physical structure of our brains and the mechanics of perception and memory. It explores our origins and our natures and reveals our underlying commonality with the beasts and the birds and the planet we live on. It takes us to places where our minds can only boggle and to ideas that put our entire existence into cosmic perspective.
All of which, I think you’ll agree, is pretty cool.
But too much detail can be dazzling. It overwhelms the mind and can give rise to disorientation and confusion and, counter-intuitively, a loss of clarity. Which brings me back, somewhat circuitously, to sunglasses…
Growing up, I didn’t wear sunglasses for a long time. The only ones available to me were the standard polaroids or else the kids’ cheap plastic glasses which probably did untold damage over the years to retinas unable to cope with the unscreened UV coming in through the dilated pupils of unwary eyes. Neither of those options was any good to me because, with my short sightedness, wearing sunglasses relieved the glare but left me without the clarity of vision I had become addicted to. So I preferred to put up with the glare of bright summer sunshine through my standard clear prescription lenses. At least, I could see, even if I was squinting like a demented gargoyle.
But then I got the option of prescription sunglasses free with my standard specs. I will confess that, having done without them for so long, I was ambivalent about getting them. I mean, the whole Miami Vice thing was so eighties! Ok, so maybe CSI Miami reinstated the look, courtesy of David Caruso, but even so I had the Irishman’s horror of being thought of as trying to look like I was with it, or even that I might think myself hip to the groove. It’s ok for you young hepcats, chicks and dudes, but I have a gravitas to maintain. Not to mention my street cred..
It was the driving that made up my mind. Sunlight, even the bright glare of an overcast day reflecting off the road, was giving me headaches in the car, and I was spending increasing amounts of time behind the wheel. For safety’s sake, I opted to get me a pair of them shades.
You know, it took a little while for me to get it, because the effect wasn’t as startlingly obvious as the first time I got glasses, but it gradually dawned on me that my prescription sunglasses were not just shading my eyes from the sun. They were giving me an entirely different way of seeing. Suddenly, colours were richer and more intense, and landscapes that had seemed pale and washed out were reborn in my vision as oil paintings from the golden age of the Gainsboroughs and Constables and Vermeers of the past.
Polaroid lenses work by polarizing light. They eliminate a large proportion of the chaotic tidal wave of photons that bright sunlight hurls at your eyes, eliminating all but those aligned along the axis of polarization and acting as optical breakwaters so that all that reaches your retina is a relatively gentle wash of light.
So, by eliminating all the excess ‘noisy’ light, my eyes are allowed to see the more relaxed, true colours of the world. And no, it’s not cheating, or in any way self-delusory. Bear in mind that the colours we see are, in any case, just an artifice of the brain – useful tools to allow us to interpret the electromagnetic waves reflected at us by the universe. We have no way even of being sure that we all see the same colours.
I do wonder sometimes if some of those old Dutch and English landscape artists were wearing Polaroid lenses while they painted, but the thought of Vermeer in CSI shades is a tad bizarre. I’ll just accept the privilege of being granted the chance to look through his eyes courtesy of my friendly local optician.
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