The eye doctor I thought was so beautiful from her picture turned out to be quite plain in person. And married. Not that I had any serious intentions of SEDUCING her. The idea that I could even do that is laughable.

Now I am DILATED, which is always fun. It doesn’t seem as bad as other times I’ve had this done, but when the sun comes out from behind the clouds it fucking hurts. Story of my life…

She said she could see what other doctors were talking about when they suspected I had macular degeneration. She said she only saw the weird pigment in one eye. I don’t remember the other doctors saying it was only in one eye. I certainly don’t remember them only testing one eye. Besides the time I had a piece of glass or metal stuck in my eye those macular degeneration screenings were probably the most onerous and even painful medical procedures I’ve ever had done. That being the case it has never been lost on me that I am pretty damn lucky compared to other people. My body wants to be healthy but my mind does not agree.

Now at the ghetto coffee shop, listening to Reger organ music.

I got a pretty huge 32” monitor at home. It’s big bright and clear. Yay. I feel like an old person already, This new prescription I got today should improve reading, which has been pretty bad since I got these glasses maybe 3+ years ago. She said to come back in 6 months for a glaucoma test.

I told her I get nervous around medical equipment. This is true, but not all of the time. I was feeling a lot of anxiety going over there, though. I’m not certain any of that was directly related to seeing a doctor or if an anxiety attack would have happened anyway, as it so often does.

I told her I came over to the appointment today thinking I was going to see a dentist. She laughed and said not to worry, her procedures are tame compared to what dentists inflict on you. That’s not exactly true. The dilation alone is enough to ruin the afternoon, but then it’s followed by a couple of flash bulbs directly into my eyeballs that make everything I see look like it has a sandy complexion. Those were the photographs of my ocular orbs.

I’d say that office is rated F. That’s the new rating that people in the motion picture industry are giving to movies that are created and which star predominantly female talent. I did not see a single male at this office, which looked like it employed about a dozen people.

I guess F is not really a rating, although I thought that was the term used to describe it in an article I read. PG and R are ratings but the F designation is more of a gimmicky attempt at creating a genre. Still, from what I read it sounds like the movie industry is ready to take it seriously.

…

It’s weird how many things I forget. Someone asked me a few month ago what my favorite movies are. How could I have forgotten that my all-time top pick is “The Stunt Man”, with Peter O’Toole and Steve Railsback. Such a strange, complicated, and disjointed film. I started watching it a couple of nights ago and found that I still have almost the entire script memorized. I don’t contend that it is a great film. But it holds a place in my life like no other.

…

At the piano for over an hour. I’ve been rediscovering the G Minor fugue from Book II of the Well Tempered Clavier. Today I looked through the D-Sharp Minor Fugue, also from Book II. Oh my God it is beautiful, but reading through it makes my head explode with all those double sharps and cadences landing in freakin’ E-Sharp Major. Bach never went as far as invoking a triple sharp, as did Alkan and a couple of others. Alkan’s use of the triple sharp was awesome, one of his most accumulative risings.

I remember as a freshman at Oberlin overhearing some upperclassmen blurting out what they thought were musical impossibilities. B SHARP MAJOR. 40 VOICE FUGUE. One of these was a TRIPLE SHARP. They did not know what I knew about Alkan, Raimondi, Tallis, or even Haydn and Bach’s travels through keys such as B Sharp.