ENLIGHTENING RESOLUTION

A New Year's resolution: visit the eye doctor. I've been really good about teeth, moderately good about internal affairs, but eyes are so easy to ignore, real frog-in the-well (or blender) stuff.

I am plagued with late mid-life vision--I used to be able to read road signage a mile away; now I misplace glasses everywhere, and never can find the right ones. I have been known to wear two pairs at the same time. While doing a house-cleaning purge, I discover eight pairs of bifocal soft contact lenses, something I experimented with a while back, and loved, though I think I loved them too much, and wound up with iritis.

"Maybe you shouldn't wear contact lenses," the doctor said.

"Damn," I said.

Just for the fun of it, I popped in a fresh pair for the first time in...four years. After a minute of feeling there was something foreign in my eye, I suddenly can see things I miss with my otherwise naked eyes. Trees in detail on the mountains. Cobwebs in corners. (Yin and yang.) And subtitles easily read on the new 50"plasma TV (although it took some doing to figure out how to invoke them; digital devices with remote controls are so cumbersome, not like my Mac laptop that makes this all so simple.)

I check out my new 50" plasma TV...testing DVDs of Infernal Affairs III with Tiny Tony Leung; Emperor of the Sea with Song Il-guk; Vincent Zhao in True Legend.

Infernal Internal Closeted Affairs

Song Il-guk..In My Closet!

And television. But...57 channels and nothing on. The cable connection wasn't working at first and the Wizard called Oceanic/Time Warner, whose satellite dishes are within walking distance of our apartment. He had a long conversation with the customer service rep; I think he wants to hire her. "How long has it been broken?"

"Maybe...three weeks since my wife last turned on the TV." He never watches TV. Never.

He eventually gets it up and running, and here is a Syfy (when did this channel change its name?) New Year's Day marathon of old B&W Twilight Zone episodes. Jack Klugman and, is it Jonathan Winters? (it is), playing pool to the death, like a martial arts saga. Very Taoist script, really. Next episode, abut contrived conventional beauty, not unlike the shows/channels I have never watched, Nip and Tuck and Extreme Makeover. Very prescient.

Klugman and the Devil?

"Look at this," I say to the Wizard, "the resolution is so good."

"Pretentious Communist twaddle..."

"But," he says later, "if you quote me, say 'pseudo-psychological-sociological twaddle'...but more a reaction to Rod Serling as anything else."

He was not a TZ/Rod Serling fan (or, for that matter, the equally pretentious Steve Allen). More of an Outer Limits, Fire Maidens of Outer Space kind of guy. (Not to say those Fire Maidens didn't look exactly like all the contrived beauties in the Twilight Zone episode.)

Now back to the episode with a young James Kirk (now Priceline spokesman) obsessed with a fortune telling device in a roadside diner, a devilish I Ching thing.

My resolution is really good! Especially with contact lenses.