Everything Looks

huge. And we’re talking here about very nearly gargantuan. There is at least one reason I can cite directly for this, and this is the fact that last weekend, while wandering around in the ocean at the Boryeong Mud Festival in South Korea, a large wave smacked me in the face and in my idiocy I hadn’t taken my glasses off. Well, these things happen.
It should probably be pointed out, here, that I have terrible eyesight. To be technical, my eyes are something like a -8.00—whatever that means. All I know for sure is that without assistance, I literally cannot see one foot in front of my face. Well, the first task was naturally to rectify this whole “inability to see” situation that I had managed to get myself into, and, let me tell you, there was a note of the frantic at first when I remembered that glasses can oftentimes take a little while to get sorted out… days in fact. My last pair, with its Transitions ability, super scratch-resistant coating, and high density lens material had taken a week to construct. As I said to my friend: “They were just super-sweet glasses, man.”
“And now your super-sweet glasses are in the ocean in South Korea.”
Touché, salesman.
At any rate, I then remembered that my life revolves around reading, writing, and teaching. These are three things for which sight is pretty necessary, and tears were almost starting to well up at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to read a book for a week, but the brain does magical things when it’s pushed: contacts. Duh. Optical shops always keep a steady supply of contacts on hand, and it’s as easy as going to one and telling them my prescription (this is a handy little number to memorize by the way).
To make a long story short, we succeeded in finding me some contacts.
I haven’t worn contacts in a while (somewhere between five and ten years—which is pretty significant considering my age), and when I put in these contacts, everything looked enormous. I had a copy of a collection of Martin Heidegger’s works with me, and as I looked at it, I could’ve sworn it wasn’t that big when I had put it into my bag. I looked at my hands, and my friend said, “Oh, don’t even look at the mitts… they might scare you.” And, indeed, they were abnormally large. My shoes, my thighs, my backpack, and my feet had all taken on this extraordinarily massive aspect. Not that this ought to be unusual, because I AM a big man, but, at the same time, this was messing with my mind. When I got home, I looked at my little 13” Macbook, and I could’ve sworn it was just as big as my friends 19” whatever it is.
At first, I thought this was simply some kind of optical illusion involving the proximity of the lens to the eye, and, indeed, this is probably the "being" definition, but what of the "nothingness" definition? Does that question even have a place here?
You see, I am leaving my current situation in Korea very soon. I have done a lot of research. I have almost finished writing a book. And my life is taking on an air of mounting madness. There is madness all around me. My best Korean friend is leaving. His wife and daughter are AWOL. The other Korean teacher at my school is leaving. I get the very distinct feeling of rats leaving a sinking ship. After all this time and all this research and all these happenings and all these adventures I have had: it seems like everything is so significant. Combine that with my belief in the fact that every moment in our life is so significant, and everything being so seemingly huge is probably not too far off the mark, eh? We’re dealing here with the world of my existence being huge (through the miracle of optics) and the world of my reality being huge (through the madness of a life lived in an almost pure spontaneity). What does it all mean?