(Written on a chalkboard at Alcove)
When I first found out that I needed glasses, I was forty-two years old and I responded to this sign of aging with what I thought was a nice show of humility and good humor. In a post on Facebook, featuring pictures of me in my new spectacles, I wrote, “At 32 years of age, ‘11 am’ meant it was time for ‘hair of the dog’. At 42, it means it’s time for an appointment at Lens Crafters!” My sense of humor regarding the situation would wane, however, as within a few short years I required not only reading glasses, but glasses for distance, and a third pair of glasses for finding the first two pairs when I mislaid them!
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Were my years of sitting too close to the television, or reading in low light, or any of the behaviors for which my father would scold me, finally taking their toll? Or was it countless hours spent staring at computer screens in various edit suites around the greater Los Angeles area that was doing in my vision? In the summer of 2018, I should have known something more than the inevitable aging of the human apparatus was behind my rapidly deteriorating vision. After needing to adjust the prescription strength of my glasses each year, that summer I suddenly jumped several prescription strengths all at once. Even this did not get me to a medical doctor for testing. Instead, it would take the southern California fire season of 2018 to make me realize that something requiring serious medical attention might be taking place.
That year was the worst fire season on record in Southern California (having now been surpassed by both 2020 and 2021). Lily and I had gone on a brief trip and when we returned, the atmosphere of smoke that welcomed us home disturbed me. One day I complained about it to a neighbor, asking, “When will all this smoke go away?”
My neighbor responded with a question that would change my life. “What smoke?” he asked. Shocked by my neighbor’s willful ignorance, I explained that I was referring to the smoke from the wildfires. “Oh, that went away weeks ago,” he stated before assuring me that the sky was, in fact, clear.
The apparent clouding of my eyesight made me flashback to when my father had cataract surgery. “You had boats removed from your eyes?” I asked and he explained to me the difference between cataracts and catamarans. In the months following the conversation with my neighbor, I started to notice at night significant “halo” effects surrounding lampposts and traffic signals. This also pointed towards cataracts. However, I had no clouding visible in my lenses, so something unknown causing my ongoing and increasing difficulty was a frightening possibility. It was not so frightening, however, that it got me to a doctor. Or, perhaps, I was so scared that I was not ready to find out. Either way, I knew that with Lily and my forthcoming nuptials coming up fast, and our west coast and east coast engagement parties coming up faster still, there was too much to be done for me to worry about it. There would be plenty of time for worrying after the wedding.
I like to think I would have followed through with my plan to consult with my physician regardless, but two incidents made me swear a silent oath that just as soon as the wedding festivities were behind us, I would do whatever it took to get to the bottom of my rapidly diminishing eyesight. The first of these occurred in New York City, a place where Lily once lived, and where, for many years, I spent about half the year. In short, we had each flown into JFK countless times. We had taken the subway into Manhattan, and even into Brooklyn as we were doing on this occasion, so often it had become a matter of habit. Or, at least, I thought it had. On this trip, we had taken a red eye and Lily was exhausted, completely willing to follow my lead. That was a mistake that would not go unpunished, for when I realized that I had led us astray, I had an epic meltdown that she had to patiently endure.
We should have taken the JFK AirTrain to Howard Beach, to catch the subway into Brooklyn, where we were staying with our dear friends, Jon and Kelly. Instead, we took the AirTrain to Jamaica, a neighborhood in Queens and a place neither of us had ever been. Nothing was familiar. I felt foolish. I felt frustrated. And when we stepped outside to find that it was snowing, reducing my visibility to almost nil, I felt powerless. You probably don’t need a therapist to tell you that feeling foolish, frustrated, and powerless is quite the recipe for an epic middle-aged man tantrum. Lily’s patience, a Good Samaritan, the Long Island Rail Road and a subway from the Barclays Center finally enabled us to reach our destination safely.
In February of 2019, Lily and I were wed. Jon and Kelly flew in a few days prior and I went to pick them up at LAX. Arriving early, I waited in the cell phone lot. When the call came that they had arrived and were downstairs awaiting me, I hopped on the ramp that leads from the cell phone lot to the terminals. As I approached the airport proper, the ramp branched off in two directions, one branch leading to arrivals, the other to departures. Each lane had a sign designating them, a VERY large sign. I could not see any words on those signs. On the way to the airport, I had noticed that all the freeway signs looked entirely backlit. I wrote off this effect, thinking it was caused by the harsh afternoon sunlight. Approaching LAX from the cell phone lot ramp, I realized the culprit was my eyesight.
So, I had a 50/50 chance of choosing the correct lane. I chose poorly. I ended up at the right terminal, but in departures. Fortunately, it was so empty up there that I got on the phone with Jon and said that I saw the traffic was really busy in arrivals. This was a fact I was guessing about, but which he confirmed, and so I told him it would be smarter for them to go back inside and take an elevator or escalator up to departures. While I waited for them, I made a vow. If I delivered us safely back to Los Feliz, and if I could just see well enough to take in the full wedding weekend, I would then get myself checked out.
Such was the beauty of the weekend, and the nature of my complete focus on savoring every moment I could, that the images of each event are etched permanently in my heart. It would be only a matter of weeks, however, before I was spending most days in bed, the daylight blinding, and the attending headaches constant. I would have to wait for nightfall to do my work for the day. One of my favorite aspects of where I live is a glorious view from most of our windows, of that famous Los Angeles hood ornament, the Griffith Observatory. Not long after our wedding, I could no longer see the observatory at any time of day. The closer I looked towards the horizon, the more I would see just a sheet of white.
I fulfilled my part of the vow I made on the arrivals platform at LAX. I went to see my primary care provider, who ran me through a battery of tests and had me fill out detailed biographical questionnaires. I had assumed that the next stop would be a visit to an ophthalmologist and having done extensive research, I hoped that a referral to Dr. Sherif El-Harazi would be forthcoming. Instead, all manner of trauma and underlying physical conditions needed to be ruled out as the root cause of my vision loss. For a while, it seemed as if every professional with letters following their name practicing in Los Angeles were entitled to poke and prod me and look inside my innermost physical secrets.
The highpoint, in retrospect, though the absolute nadir of my medical journey at the time, was the MRI on my ocular cavities. Was it possible that long ago I had suffered severe trauma, so severe that I had no recollection of the event? Locked up like the man in the iron mask, I went into the MRI machine, an experience as close to being inside a coffin as I hope to get. Ever. In fact, I hope to be remembered for never dying. Say what they will about me, I want people to say, “That Phil Leirness, he sure didn’t die.”
Fortunately, my pal, Dean Haglund, hipped me to the sound of the machine and the way I would be able to use it to enter a meditative space. This is what I did. So meditative was I that at one point I was pulled out of the machine because I had apparently stopped breathing. The technicians were shocked to find me absolutely fine given my extremely low pulse rate and almost nonexistent breathing.
All these tests did was eliminate possibilities. When every other possibility was seemingly exhausted, I was finally referred to none other than Dr. Sherif El-Harazi, a man I quickly came to call “The Fixer”. With his almost forty years of professional experience, he was undeterred by the failure of any of his modern instruments to find the cause of my increasing “white blindness”. Suddenly, in an entirely darkened room, conducting a decidedly analog experiment, he exclaimed, “Ah! You see like a cat!” And he was right. When I would get up in the middle of the night, with all lights off, I could see as well as most people see in a bright room in the middle of the day.
His diagnosis: aggressive proteins, cataracts, forming all across the back of my eyeballs, rendering them invisible to most devices. In fact, these cataracts served as almost a stealth technology, preventing accurate measurements of my eyeball and lenses. Surgeries would be required, on both eyes, with each lens being replaced, and they had to be done by hand. Many months later, when it was clear that these surgeries were successful, I asked The Fixer what had caused such a rare form of cataract.
He looked at me and offered, “You used an inhaler as a child?” I nodded, amazed. He explained that the only time he had ever encountered this rare form of aggressive cataract was with body builders who used steroids and those who had used inhalers for asthmatic conditions as children. The most amazing thing about this was that somehow he looked at me and knew my impressive physique was God-given and NOT the product of steroids or human growth hormone!
By the time of my first procedure, I was virtually blind. I could see nothing but white. Lily and I had flown back east to visit her family (my in-laws). She had to lead me by the arm through the airport. I needed help finding bathrooms and walking up and down steps. I could not wait for the first scheduled procedure. The morning of the procedure, however, I was all sorts of terrified. I wasn’t just scared of what might go wrong, but of what I might see during the procedure. After all, the surgeon was going to be coming at my eyeball with a scalpel. Worst-case scenario and I lose my vision, would a scalpel be the last thing I would ever see?
The surgeon, a very nurturing woman, assured me that the experience would be like one of those Pink Floyd laser light shows. I let her know I had always hated those shows and that with my head strapped to the gurney and my eye pried open, I looked like I was about to undergo the Ludovico Technique in A Clockwork Orange. Still, I laughed about it all, so she knew I was as ready as I was going to be. My terror did not subside as I was wheeled on the gurney from pre-op into the surgical theater. Fortunately, I had an excellent bartender. Whatever the concoction the anesthesiologist gave me, it made me feel so good about everything that at one point I demanded all in attendance gather around me. When they had, I told them, “I just want you all to know that I love you.” And I meant it. I was feeling good.
When I was safely back at home, and healing well enough for the bandages to come off, Lily softly suggested that I might now see things I was not prepared to see. I did not realize in the moment that she was referring to my pores! I had gone for years thinking I had beautiful, youthful skin. I did not realize that I had that “Star Trek” female guest-star soft diffusion lighting built into my vision! For many months after my second successful surgery, I would notice things I never had before. “We have earthquake damage!” I exclaimed, and when I asked how long it had been there, Lily told me it had been there as long as she could remember.
Seeing how vibrant the world’s colors are was an emotional experience to be sure. Taking in the faces of the two females I love the most – my wife and my cat – was enough to make me feel humbled by all the beauty I was now privy to without the need for glasses. There is so much beauty in the world. For many years, I enjoyed one of the most privileged views of that beauty anyone could ask for, as I served as the on-stage announcer for the weekly Wednesday morning meetings of the Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.” Witnessing expressions of friendship as many and varied as the souls exploring those friendships did nothing less than inform the purpose I see for myself in the world. However, standing on stage after my eyesight had been restored, I realized that I had learned how to identify many of my fellow “ham an’ eggers” by the way they walked, by the energy they embodied, because I couldn’t actually see what they looked like!
Standing up on that stage, seeing everyone clearly for the first time and feeling confident that my newfound eyesight was not temporary, I told my fellow Breakfast Clubbers that one morning I got up and seeing myself in the mirror, said to Lily, “I look so old and tired.”
Brightly, she replied, “But your eyesight is perfect!”
The Los Angeles Breakfast Club is a club of hospitality, where the art of making people feel welcome is practiced. What is it to make someone feel welcome? It seems to me that it is to make a person feel seen and to let them know their presence is appreciated. One of the most astonishing things about the Breakfast Club is the wide age range of those who feel welcome and right at home there. We have had members as young as 18 and those who have reached 100. And the way the different generations interact so easily should not be a surprise as everyone in attendance is truly young at heart. Yet, it is surprising, because quite frankly there are very few places in society where the different generations come into contact with each other, and fewer still where they are given an opportunity to enjoy each other’s company.
Beyond my eyesight issues, the advance into middle age held serious concern for me. After all, growing up, nothing about middle age seemed cool. Heck, being in the middle of anything sounds so boring to anyone in their youth who wants to live an extraordinary life. The middle is just so … ordinary. Yet, as I have spent several years at the Breakfast Club, from my mid-forties into my mid-fifties, and I find myself with friends who are kids and friends who are in their nineties, I realize the middle is a pretty incredible place to be.
In late December of 2023, I was asked about my intentions for the New Year. I know that the question was aimed towards “New Year’s Resolutions”, but I found myself inspired by the word “intention”. Surprising myself with my own certainty, I answered that my intention, so much as it is in my power, is to help ensure that those older than me enjoy themselves, and those younger than me feel good about themselves. As for those I consider my contemporaries, I would like to invite intimacy. I would like them to know that I truly listen to them, and I would like to know they do the same for me.
One of those contemporaries is Debra Matlock, the President of the Los Feliz Improvement Association (whom I wrote a bit about in my earlier essay “Origins”). Like me, she is a refugee of Cupertino, and a graduate of Monta Vista High School. Despite going to the same high school, and the same college (UCLA), where we both studied film and television, it is only now that we have become close collaborators. Through her, I have had numerous opportunities to live out my intention of helping those older than me enjoy themselves, and those younger than me feel good about themselves.
Back in December, I was strolling through the neighborhood, doing some Christmas shopping. I was coming from Spitfire Girl on Hillhurst, north of Franklin, and was on my way to Sumi’s on Vermont Ave. A young couple stopped me, and rather nervously asked, “Did you go to Monta Vista High School?”
Even though I was utterly legendary at that school, let’s not kid ourselves, this couple was too young to have heard those tales. A quick glance down at where they were pointing, reminded me that I was wearing a vintage Monta Vista football hoodie from the 1970s. “We never thought we would meet anyone here who went to Monta Vista!” They were amazed.
After verifying that they had graduated from Monta Vista less than a decade ago, I let them know that the President of the Los Feliz Improvement Association went to Monta Vista. I pointed down the road in the direction of a good friend’s home, letting them know that the homeowner in question was a Monta Vista grad. I leaned in and whispered, “There are more of us than you know!” This delighted them.
It’s very easy in this day and age to get so distracted by our differences that we can think we have nothing to offer those who seem so different. The truth is that it is also just as easy to find commonalities. There I stood, a white man in my fifties with European ancestry, meeting two young people in their twenties whose heritage can be traced to the Southeast Asian diaspora. And our meeting was helping them realize that they had found the right neighborhood in which to live, simply because many years before they were born, I graduated from a school they would someday attend, a school in the strange far off land of Cupertino.
After telling them my name and bidding farewell, I watched them walk away, looking taller, more confident, a newfound spring in their step. It made me feel good that I had somehow played a part in this young couple feeling at home in their new neighborhood. Thanks to Debra, I was recently afforded the opportunity to celebrate this neighborhood in front of some two hundred of its residents at “Viva Los Feliz: Hidden Gems”. It was the first of at least two stage shows we are putting on at the Autry Museum’s Wells Fargo Theater, full of music, comedy, live presentations and delightful videos. As the Master of Ceremonies I got to witness the wide cross-section of our community that attended. I witnessed our newer and younger residents come away with a greater sense of pride in this special place they call home, and I witnessed some of our residents who have lived here for many decades deeply enjoy the celebration we gave them.
A funny thing happened to me as I started working on this essay. I had planned to write about the topic of homelessness. Yet, when I thought back to the events that would forever change the way I look at and interact with the homeless members of our community, I realized that those stories involved my eyesight. During the training I underwent in 2004 and 2005 that led to me becoming a California state certified Violence Prevention Specialist, I learned that a significant percentage of the un-housed population have experienced and survived trauma and quite often are survivors of violence. As I learned about their stories, I could not bear the thought that these members of our community might feel invisible, unwelcome, unappreciated.
So, I started making a concerted effort to take them in, to make eye contact, to stop if the person indicated a desire to talk. If the individual asked me for “change”, I would usually say, “no”. If they asked me if I could “help”, I would always stop and listen to what they needed. Sometimes, I can help with what they need. Sometimes, just listening and talking with them seems to be what matters in the moment.
One example of this, I will never forget. Marsha was a local fixture for many years. One night I was taking the trash out and there, heeding the call of nature next to our car was Marsha. I was startled, to be sure. I was not angry, nor did I beat a hasty retreat. I gave her some privacy, and then approached the trash bins. As I did she locked eyes with me and stated in no uncertain terms that she wanted me to “tell Obama I won’t do the sex act.”
I took this in and it was clear Marsha expected a response. I let her know that I was sure the President would be disappointed, but that I would relay the message. Satisfied, she gave me a nod and headed off into the night. I think of Marsha fairly often and I do miss seeing her. She was a neighbor. A neighbor without a residence.
As the homeless population has grown, I have thought about what those experiencing homelessness mirror for the rest of us. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, I believed that no culture that was healthy to begin with would have been felled by a pandemic. So too do I doubt we would have such a sizable number of our fellow citizens experiencing homelessness if the majority of the rest of us actually felt at home in our lives. Most of us have housing, but do most of us feel at home in the world?
The more I authentically take in every person I meet, the more I help my elders enjoy themselves, the more I help my juniors feel good about themselves, and the more I help my contemporaries to feel seen and heard, the more I feel at home in the world.
And it is so much easier to achieve now that I can really see.
PLEASE NOTE: I will return with another essay next week and another full-length podcast episode before the end of August. I will also be releasing my first essay exclusively available for those who have pledged financial support to “The Voice of Los Feliz”. Because I want all my Los Feliz content to remain free and accessible for everyone, my monthly “thank yous” to paid subscribers will involve topics and themes related to travel and travel experiences.
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