Something odd is happening. I wonder if it’s just me.

As time has passed my body has eroded a bit. I have some hearing loss. I have Nystagmus, which does a number on my visual acuity. Hell, there’s probably some basic cognitive deterioration, too.

The upshot is that, when watching a show on television (for instance), I frequently miss a chunk of what’s happening. I often don’t catch dialogue (turning the closed captioning on helps a lot, although then I miss may visuals because I’m focused on reading what’s being said). I may miss fine image details, especially if the picture is dark, and I’ve discovered that even a slight loss in visual fine-tuning damages my ability to grasp important subtleties (as in, if two actors look sort of alike, I easily confuse them).

In other words, I sometimes have almost no idea what the heck is going on.

Here’s the weird part: it doesn’t matter. I’ve discovered that I can watch a show where I’m totally lost and still enjoy it. I suppose I’m attuning to texture, mood, atmosphere, and so on. It can be a very impressionistic experience, if not downright abstract. (To a degree maybe I’ve always had this tendency – there are songs I love, songs I’ve heard a zillion times, where I still don’t know the lyrics. And my favorite movies can be heavier on style than technical precision. My all-time favorite flick is Blade Runner, which in places connotes a lot more than it denotes.)

Obviously I’m missing the story – the linear narrative largely eludes me in these cases – but the experience is fine. Maybe wonderful.

I’m not sure what’s happening inside, but now I’m thinking about how hard it is – how much I resist, even resent – things that demand my “attention”…