In the beginning of 2017 I lost one feeling. The feeling of thinking sharp. I said the “feeling” because I could never know if it was merely a feeling or I was actually sharp at thinking. I used to look pay a load of attention to my surroundings, while walking, taking transit, or in a new building; and all of that information would get processed and stored, efficiently, almost passively and in parallel, all while I was very aware. Awake. That is the right word. Perceiving sharply. Although, when it came to abstract matter this distinct feeling did not exist, so it might not have been relevant to abstract thinking.
At the same time my vision also became bad enough to require glasses. It was a bliss to put them on so I could see every detail. Details that exist in my consciousness which others may not notice. More than a bliss, even—everything I saw was real, just as it was promised; now the more I looked, the more good I attained, and more than any point in the past, I did not want to stop looking. Perceiving sharply the real. But my eyes would strain like hell if I kept wearing those glasses, so I only used them intermittently; I might get the better bifocal ones, though.
No, I have not been able to recover that feeling of being awake by correcting my optics. It was a rather clear divide. Since 2017 I have woken up every time not to supreme energy and clarity, but a fuzzy world. One might hypothesize that my vision and mental state are not correlated. I would hope this to be true, too, but never actually thought about it. After all it was quite a sudden—so much that I did not end up grieving for even one second. And no one told me they noticed anything. Good, so I carried on. I think this was the first time I had to deal with fate.
7 years could be a long time for the development of a young brain.
Interestingly enough, I never lost my geospatial abilities, which had developed preemptively. I also became better at basic physical reactions which I previously had problem with. I learned many new things, too, including the fact that creativity is not given. Yet I rarely became awake again. Because I grew? Because I had better information than direct observation? Or the reverse? In any case, it seems to be a strenuous task to gain it once it is lost to reason.
I was awake when I saw galaxies and thunderstorms from the equator onboard QF 98. When I was looking at Los Angeles from 10,064 feet. When I was standing in an unnamed park, with a certain number of people nearby chatting differently and the urban noise casting in spatially, so I recognize the direction and distance of all motions around me. When the sun arrives at a certain angle, and every particle outside trembles as if they are thrilled about their new lives. The same kind of awakeness did not occur while I was driving, or studying math.
When I was 5 and allowed to roam about in an apartment complex—a modernist one—I noticed that the elevator buttons used an uncommon typeface, and I liked it. It felt clearly artificial, canonical, and very good for this world. I loved it so much that I learned to draw nearly every letter of it, restoring all features that were intended to be there. Later, the typeface was found to be Helvetica, which was quite uncommon in China. (Most elevators in China were, and still are, designed by foreign companies.) If my memories are reliable, it was either the original Helvetica or Neue, or with marginal possibility, Swiss 721. But how was my observation possible? How could I cease to have such discoveries? Though impossible to answer, it is hope.