Toes and fingers instantly took on the form of cocktail sausages: fat and stubby, and not the elegant piano-playing hands and dancer's feet I was told I had, not that I can list those accomplishments amongst my better qualities, but having them was halfway to being convincing i.e. they looked the part., and well, sometimes assumptions even if they're wildly wrong are pleasing for the ego is stroked.
Anyhow, this alteration to my perception quite fascinated me, and as to the study of these shortened members well! I was absorbed, which sounds rather narcissistic doesn't it? as if I were a babe recognising myself for the first time in a mirror, except in this instance I wasn't using or looking in one; I guess eyes could be described as such if they weren't my very own and were reflecting other individuals like that of a window you walk by, but no, instead they were shamelessly navel-gazing. Actually, they tended to bypass the navel and focus entirely on the toes, seeing as usually when this occurred I was in a forward-bend or about to lunge or strike a Warrior pose, all the time experiencing Monkey Mind, trying to fathom out why? why? They didn't appear this way earlier or yesterday when my eyes were aided with my at-home spectacles. Can toes be fattened? I know fairy tales suggest they can, but where's the evidence? Am I it? And so on...which is very unhelpful for the mindful aspect of yoga.
Later my hands would be just as closely scrutinised as if I were admiring a ring on a finger: held out level with my face, slightly star-fished (the correct term, I think, is splayed, but I prefer star-fished but then we each have our oddities. You should hear some of the words I mispronounce or can't for some reason sound out), and turning them this way and that to conceive every nail and knuckle, and where as with the toes I'd see fat little sausages which would delight a butcher and instantly called up a counting song:
Ten
fat sausages sizzling in a pan,
Ten
fat sausages sizzling in a pan,One went 'pop' and the other went 'bang',
Now there's eight fat sausages sizzling in a pan
and
so on...until there's no fat sausages sizzling in pan since they've
all gone 'bang', 'bang' bang', 'bang', and which in calling to mind
made me question their swollen appearance, as well as why my eyes
were lying to me for that was the only logical explanation, unless,
of course, how I normally saw them (naked-eyed and through specs) was
a grand illusion that no respectable scientist could replicate.
Perhaps
this would have been a case for Oliver Sacks? But I know of nobody
quite like him, that I would trust, as I did him, to go to for
answers, though there are others who think they've plugged the gap,
but what they're really doing is repeating and with less masterful
skill too. Another I might have gone to would have been Levi, but
it's not really his field of expertise. And when I say 'go to' and
'gone' I do mean in the way of reference; I'm not deranged, I know
they're both deceased. Michael Mosley? Well, he's very much alive at
least...he's affable...and his concern is with the body. I'll mark
him down as a possible should these symptoms recur whenever I correct
my sight with contact lenses.An optometrist? No, they'd think I was mad, and only separate my thinking brain from my eyes. That's what most medicals professionals do whereas I'm of the view it's all connected. I don't buy into one problem, one appointment because the body is a network of readings, similar to a map of the underground, where a signal failure somewhere can cause disruption along the same line as well as that of others. Though that view has really very little to do with the sausage effect, because I'm already aware it's my eyes and brain in conjunction; that somehow the little discs I insert are tilting my vision.
Picture credit: Wallpaper design, 1889, C F A Voysey
