At close range
We are not aware that the world actually unfolds within fifty centimetres of our eyes. Poor distance vision can be remedied simply by moving closer, or by virtually bringing the object closer, but when we have a problem with focusing within those first fifty centimetres, everything becomes uncomfortable, whether we are wearing glasses for myopia, reading glasses, or no glasses at all.
I regret having my ordinary glasses for myopia and astigmatism reglazed recently, because I did not need such sharp vision for things so far away, especially if it comes at the expense of vision that has become decisively impaired at close range.
If I do not want to be constantly taking off one pair of glasses to put on the other, or to go without glasses altogether, only to put one of the two pairs back on again, there is a first alternative: to wear my distance glasses further down my nose, at its tip, thereby recovering the vision I had before the last change of lenses.
That change was prompted by a slight increase in myopia, which, once corrected and coinciding with the onset of presbyopia, is what has brought about the current inability to focus at less than half a metre. Before, I also had problems reading small print at close range with my distance glasses, but I did not notice the blurring (for example) of the food I cut up on the chopping board when preparing a meal, or of almost everything on my mobile phone. Now, when I am out of the house, without my reading glasses and refusing to hold my phone (without glasses) fourteen centimetres from my face, the phone is only usable for listening or talking, and for checking the time on the lock screen.
A second alternative is simply to close my eyes. The world then ceases to be visually uncomfortable, and another discomfort, one that has nothing to do with distance, takes centre stage — the sensation of metal and hooks against the teeth, and of plastic pressing against and covering the roof of the mouth.
I was told it would be almost impossible for the fixed implant system fitted to my lower arch to work in the upper one. So the future will not bring the miraculous comfort of my lower arch extended to the whole mouth, but rather the fitting of a prosthesis that would have no hooks (because there would not be any natural teeth, as there are none in the lower arch) and no plastic covering the entire roof of the mouth, all of which would certainly be an improvement on the current solution, but the prosthesis would not be fixed. I would have to remove it daily (for instance, during the hours of night-time sleep) and clean it in my hands, thereby emphasising its status as an external object, while the mirror reveals the monster with no teeth at all in the upper arch.
Before that, and returning to the present moment, there is still the option of removing the metal and plastic and staying as one is, with a few teeth still in the upper jaw and one’s eyes closed, recovering the fundamental comfort of the senses, but at the cost of being unable to eat or speak properly, or see anything at all out there, and, of course, of not allowing oneself to be seen.