Eyeglasses

I lost my favorite glasses of all time!!!  I can't believe it happened.  I have had them for years and years and it's very out of character for me to lose something important like that.  I guess I'm alowed to beat myself up since I'm not wearing glasses...

Now, I have to go through the painful and tedious process of finding new ones that come close to being as awesome as my old, classic, amazing ones.  Glasses are so personal and so important.  The eyes are the "window to the soul" and glasses are the window frame.  Once I start thinking like this all kinds of references pop into my head.  Firstly, the movie ( based on the novel) The Great Gatsby.

I remember reading the book in high school and the teacher getting all excited about the symbolism of Dr T.J. Eckleburg.  "The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic - their retinas are one yard high.  They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose."  This is a quote from Nick Caraway, the central figure of the story.  The final analysis is that these are the eyes of God looking down on a careless world. 

Henry Bemis

Another grave and dramatic glasses reference is the Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Meredith when he wants nothing more than to curl up with a good book and when he finally gets his post apocalyptic chance to be alone with all the library books, he breaks his only pair of glasses.  The closing narration is cool - "the best laid plans of mice and men... and Henry Bemis... the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time.  Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself.  Mr. Henry Bemis...in the Twilight Zone."

I think when most people are asked to muse upon the subject of eyeglasses they might not get quite so deep.  They very likely will come up with some of these references:

Revenge of the Nerds

Erkel

Nerds almost have to wear glasses.  You can't be a tv or movie nerd without glasses.  There was a saying "Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses".  I guess women who wore glasses in that era didn't have a chance of dating.  Or something.  Those days are gone!

Shirley Manson

This Oliver Peoples ad campaign from a couple of years ago begs to argue that "old" saying. 

This Chantal catalogue photo certainly wants to dispel the myth that glasses-wearing bookworms are a bore.  (the pose and the outfit are hilariously playful!)

Even so, I miss my old glasses!  I have always thought that I am not methodical enough to wear contacts.  It just seems like one more thing to add to my to do list - put in contacts... take out contacts... clean contacts... ugh.  I hate it already.

I just have to accept that the old baby blues are going to have new window frames.  I have been fumbling around like Henry Bemis for a few days and it is not pleasant.  The windows to my soul are a little hazy and that can't be good.

So I guess new window frames, new outlook, new books to read... I would have to say, it's all good!