Respect comes from the Latin, and means to look again.
I’m lying in the sun in St Stephen’s Green, on a patch of grass, just by Traitors’ Gate, and there’s hardly room for anyone else. It’s a spot where I’ve long lingered, in summertime, ever since I was a teenager – it’s the location for the Dublin passeggiata, or promenade. In the Eighteenth Century, the North side of St Stephen’s Green was known as the Beau Walk, and fashionable society would check each other out, ambling up and down the path, in chaperoned (but, I imagine, nevertheless flirtatious) decorum. Up to the end of the 20th Century, before they were shut, the public toilets nearby provided a rather less genteel focus for certain gentlemen strollers in the area, and their admirers.
It’s a place where people sit around and stare at passers-by, shamelessly. Trinity students abound, or wannabee Trinity students; office workers show off their hard winter work in the gym, lying on their shirts, eating their panini and smoothies; black-dyed goths with bejewelled navels drawl and snigger like pallid vampires on day-release, sharing cans of Red Bull and Marlboro Lights; Polish and Russian working men with impossibly wide shoulders in tight black t-shirts and spade-like hands glower at the sun with their inscrutable brand of unreconstructed masculinity, feigning indifference. African women push buggies lazily towards the pond, their bright-eyed charges pointing to the ducks ahead. Gardaí on bicycles slow-pedal their way gingerly through the crowds, asses in the air.
Respect means to look again.
I’m there passing the time, waiting for a new lens to be fitted to my glasses, as there was a scratch on the glass that was irritating. I didn’t mind it so much, before; but for the past three weeks my left eye has been going blind, and therefore I’m keen to remove all possible obstacles in the way of my good eye.
I don’t know if what’s happening in my left eye is temporary or permanent. It’s a rare inflammatory condition with a myriad of possible causes and, sometimes, I’ve been told, no specific cause is found. The longer it stays like this, the more likely permanent damage is done. Before they treat it with steroids, there is the necessity to ensure that it’s not due to an infection, because steroids boost infections, not fight them. So there is a long wait while all the test results come in, before they can do anything. In the meantime, at the time of writing, all the doctors who treated me last week are at a 3-day conference, and no one can take my call. Yesterday I realised I could not read at all through my left eye, and it is now easier to read (and write this article) if I keep it closed. I’ve been in a sulk and not gone to anything like theatre or cinema, because the experience is quite dramatically affected, and I find it upsetting. I’m not prepared to be resigned to it and make allowances. Yet.
Respect means to look, again.
A lad next to me on the lawn is talking to his girlfriend on his mobile. Everyone around has mobiles; about half the people who are sitting in the sun on their own are talking away to their friends. He’s having a hard time with her. He’s trying to arrange when to see her next. She’s an “I don’t mind, whatever” kinda gal, and he’s not too different, so they go around in circles for quite a while. They could go get drunk tomorrow. They could get stoned this evening. He doesn’t have any money though, could they go halves on some spliff? They eventually decide to go for a drive. He’ll take the seven o’clock DART and call around.
The conversation rambles on. He takes issue with her over something confidential she had told a friend, despite him having specifically asked her not to tell anyone. She gets defensive. He tries to reason with her, and asks her to consider what she would feel, if the tables were turned.
I lie there with my eyes closed. Listening. The world is full of sound. If you listen.
He says he’s not criticising her, he’s protesting that she’s criticising him. “You always want to change me, you know? I love you the way you are, but you don’t accept me how I am”. They’re having a low-grade row. He’s calm. Persistent. He’s a gentle soul. Doesn’t want hassle, but cares enough to work it out with her. He’s incredibly patient. I’d have thrown the phone in the pond
The metaphors of war and battle are easy to use when it comes to disease, and some question their usefulness, especially those who think holistically. But, for the life of me, I can’t but be aware that there is a battle going on inside my eyeball; no other metaphor fits, as the internal storm-clouds descend and get darker and darker. Knowing what the enemy is would be useful; for the first time in my life I find myself wishing I had a sexually transmitted disease, because, if it was syphilis (one of the many possible causes) then it could be cured, with Good Old Pasteur’s Original, penicillin. But I’m not exactly unaware of these matters; I think I’d have noticed before now. At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities, it’s one of those new-fangled double-barrelled “syndromes” where the body starts attacking itself, an auto-immune thingy. The thought of that just drowns me in lethargy. Civil wars never resolve anything.
Respect means to look. Again.
For all of the month of January, I had glittery vision, as if a weird cartoon-effect Tinkerbell was waving her magic wand around the periphery of my sight, in both eyes. I took notes, kept a diary, drew maps of where the glitter danced, got it checked out, but nothing concrete was seen. My testament, my personal subjective experience, counted for nothing, being a lay person’s unscientific narrative, and so, unverifiable. The glitter faded in February, the journal became a curiosity on a shelf.
Now, I bring it with me to the hospital, at each long and tedious visit. Look, again. Respect my experience. Respect my subjectivity, as you’re busy hunting for clues. There must be something in there that explains it. As you get excited about the rareness of my case, and your colleagues drop in to take a look at my retinal photographs as they are taken, eager to see something normally only seen in textbooks, look at it from my perspective. I knew something was wrong in January, I described it, in all its camp detail, day by day. My knowing was different to your knowing, but it is no less real than yours, no less important. Science has a blind spot. It can’t see everything.
Respect.
He winds up his phonecall. It’s been half an hour. “Are we alright, now? Are we ok?” She appears to agree, has been mollified enough, in the lazy sunny afternoon, to let it go, and to see him later that evening.