TUESDAY, JANUARY 6
I was in a "round" frame of mind yesterday. I was preoccupied with circles and balls. Today I met the surgeon, Dr. Tommy Korn, who will do cataract surgery on me later this month; and he explained why I see circles around lights. It isn't a completely bad thing; but, of course, the circles that I see around headlights when I drive at night can be dangerous even if they are rainbow colored and beautiful. When I looked up at the half moon tonight, the rainbow halo was beautiful; but I must admit that I prefer to see things clearly. I remember when I was a child on a car trip from Arkansas to California with my parents, my Mother bought sunglasses for all of us children, all six of us. Maybe she thought sunglasses were required in California. I remember distinctly not wanting to wear mine because I wanted to see the mountains and the deserts as they really were. I didn't want colored glass to come between me and reality. I wanted to see the world as it really was. Of course, when I grew up and began wearing eye glasses, the pieces of glass between my eyes and the world presumably allowed me see things as they really existed, not as distortions formed by my imperfect eyes.

Going out to look at the moon tonight sent my mind on a tangent, which, when I thought about tangents, started me thinking about what a tangent really is and... and... and... reminding myself that a tangent is a straight line or plane that touches a curve or curved surface at a point but if extended doesn't cross it at that point... and that sent my mind out into the universe to wonder again about all the mystery that the moon represents for me... which brings me back to why I went out tonight to see the circle around the moon...

Why should I
be anxious
knowing
the sun will come up
and the moon will go
not so much down
as ‘round and ‘round
until the Universe
implodes or does
whatever universes do
eventually
what I don’t understand
is how it all got started
in the first place.