Scars and Stripes

           

            Early on Monday I had an appointment for surgery at the hospital. In order to save my eyes I had to be made blind but as a bonus they also fixed my boots. After the operation I hung around because they were understaffed and needed a lot of help. After several hours I was getting ready to leave but I noticed that I could still see, so I asked the surgeon why that was. He said I had sight because my eyes were continuing to retain heat, but they would cool down once I went to sleep. He assured me that I would wake up blind. On the way out I saw some people that I knew in the waiting room. I showed them my repaired boots and told them that they were the result of my second surgery but I was disappointed that they didn’t inquire as to what the first operation had been. As I walked to the bus I began to worry because I had been given no training in how to get around once I became blind. I became frightened at the thought of how helpless I would be. Once I got home I went to sleep, but woke up a few hours later, worried again about how I would deal with my handicap. I looked around and noticed that I still had my vision, and realized at that point that it had all been a dream.

            I spent all of Monday flash reading Elizabeth Wein’s  “Codename Verity” and when that was finished I managed half of M. T. Anderson’s “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing”. Verity made me cry again at several points near the end. I discovered some interesting imagery in Octavian Nothing that I hadn’t noticed on my first reading. After Octavian and his mother have been whipped for the first time, an event that makes them realize that their privileged lives have been an illusion and that they are really slaves, their wounds are described similarly to the design of what would later become the flag of the United States of America. The stripes are on Octavian’s back and the spangled droplets of blood are said to look like stars showing through her silk dress.