I am not invisible.

One of the odd things I've noticed as my field of vision has shrunk to roughly 5% of "normal" is a strange sensation of not knowing quite where my body is relative to itself. This is hard to explain, but in a rough sense, it feels like I exist entirely in the floating peepholes of my fading eyes. Sometimes, walking in public, I notice people noticing me and wonder if my head is tilted at a bizarre angle on my shoulders, if I've managed to spill something on my shirt, or if my walk looks stiff-hipped and tentative even after the years I've spent consciously trying to open my stride.

After I ran a marathon (in 3:30, I'll have you know!) during my second year in law school, I developed a nagging knee injury that seemed irresoluble. I stopped running long distances, started cross-training, switched my endurance efforts to triathlons, and resigned myself to losing the clear-headed euphoria only a long, hard run seems to provide. Eventually, five or six years later, a wise physical therapist realized that the problem in my knees was coming from my lower back and hips, and that I had virtually no rotation in my hips. In effect, I had stopped moving "out there," because I couldn't see what was "out there." I had pulled my range of motion in close, leading to all sorts of interrelated biomechanical crap.

I've made great progress towards resolving the knee/hip/back issues, though I doubt I'll run farther than a 10K any time soon. But on a daily basis, I still find myself moving through the world in what feels like a constrained and awkward manner. When I am more relaxed (or have had a drink or two), I allow my arms and legs to swing more freely from my torso. Alas, the result of this looser gait often is a hand or hip smacked into a chair -- or worse, a wine-glass- or baby-toting human being -- and such mishaps reinforce my tendency to reign in my movements and protect myself and the rest of the world from my flailings.

The sense of disembodiment that comes from not being able to see myself seems also to affect my self-image. None of us can see ourselves without a mirror, you may think. But I wonder if you can imagine being unable to see your hands on the keyboard as you type, or to have no sense of where your shoulders and legs are as you sit or walk? There are times, for example, when I am waiting in line to pay for my lunch and will notice that someone standing next to me has the same salad in her hand that I've chosen, only to realize moments later that it's my own hand holding the box. Feeling formless, disconnected from my physical being, I find it hard to feel visible, let alone attractive and desirable. Strenuous physical activity, particularly climbing and running and sometimes yoga, provide something of an antidote, bringing my body and mind into alignment and making me acutely aware of the contours of my frame.

I do, of course, feel pain, arousal, fatigue, hunger, thirst, warmth, congestion, and assorted other sensations. Still, I seem to be losing some sense of my concrete self as my field of vision shrinks. I know little of the Christian bible, but am reminded of a quote from (I think) Matthew: "The light of the body is the eye." Yet, I tell myself, though the light may fade, the body remains. As Sir Francis Bacon said of Fortune, "though she is blind, she is not invisible."