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I am a little shaken by how much time I spend on this blog.
*goes outside for the first time in 6 years*

When I was a little kid, I learned the difference between long and short vowel. The teachers explained that an ? (long I), found in words like mile and fine, were signified by a macron, or horizontal line, over the letter. And an ? (short I), found in words like mill and fin, were signified by a breve, or tiny u, over the letter.

Oddly enough, the mnemonic that formed for me was that “long I” sounded like “eye” and the macron was an eyebrow. I remember answering a question in class where the teacher asked how we knew the word in the dictionary was pronounced with a long I. Because of the eyebrow, I said. My response was met with laughter, both by the students and the teacher.

As any kid ridiculed by his peers, I turned red and felt ashamed. I abstained from answering questions that day and, possibly, the rest of the week. I walked home thinking of how silly I’d been, thinking the symbol was an eyebrow. It wasn’t the first time that my seemingly autonomic creative thinking had led to embarrassment. On a school trip to the Boston Aquarium, I pointed out what I knew to be a plecostomus—which my parents had in their freshwater aquarium, recognizable by a colorful pageantry of scales—as “a costumed fish,” simply because it rhymed.

It wasn’t until years later, when reading Harlan Ellison’s Slippage, that I realized this tendency wasn’t a defect at all. In an introduction by the author, Ellison says that he overheard someone talking about The New England Confectionery Company (NECCO)’s wafers, he initially heard “Necro Waiters.”  This mistake spawned a fantastically morbid short story about a recently dead person being forced to eat his sins before passing onward.

Ellison’s embrace of this shared talent proved to me that the discomfort I felt with the eyebrow and costumed fish was merely a child’s reaction to a natural inclination toward creative thinking. It’s this ability that drives my business and provokes me to seek unconventional and memorable design for corporate identities and advertising campaigns. And one day, if I’m blessed enough to have children remotely as awkward and quirky as I was, I know to nurture this trait.

Incidentally, should you find a copy of Ellison’s Slippage on a dusty shelf at Strand, I recommend it for Mefisto in Onyx alone.

I came up with this idea and was thinking about making it into a T-shirt on Threadless or CafePress. If I did and they were cheap, would you buy one?

I’d debated putting this post up for a long time. In fact, for the last decade, I was convinced that it had no place in a personal blog. Any reference to those terrible events, commingled with announcements of my studio‘s successes and incessant ramblings about the decline of customer service, just seemed to be a flagrant rodomontade more than a eulogy. In light of the barrage of articles commemorating the ten-year anniversary of the tragedy, the shameful exposure of Vincent Forres and the 9/11 profiteers, and the revelation that I now have a 19% increased chance of developing cancer, I’d begun to re-evaluate this position.

This week, I shared my concern of cancer to a dear friend, a friend that I’ve known since 2003, and he was surprised to hear that I even volunteered.  To someone with whom I share almost everything, it seemed equally surprising to me that I hadn’t mentioned it either. Maybe you should write something, he said. His suggestion was probably prompted by the concern for why I’ve remained silent for the last decade. And my understanding of this is ultimately what has lead to this post.

The above pictures were taken on September 13 at around 1 a.m. and are facing east. I don’t remember the name of the photographer, unfortunately. In the photos, I was under the World Financial Center (WFC) viaduct (that ran between 1 and 2 WFC) which withstood the impact. The rubble of tower two is in the background. You can see a slight outline of the outer shell ominously standing amid the smoke and dust.

My brother and I volunteered for about 22 hours each over the course of the 12th-15th. Along with hundreds of others, we went from location to location trying to help. We were able to: find and deliver food and supplies to medical personnel outside St. Vincent’s Hospital in the West Village, go to donate blood at the Red Cross on the Upper West Side, stock trucks full of water and food in Chelsea piers for delivery to Ground Zero, unload medical supplies at Stuyvesant High School where the triage was set up for survivers and firemen, organize a brigade of people to unload ships coming in from New Jersey behind Two World Financial Center, set-up a food/sleep station for tired and hungry workers, fill and move over a hundred bags of garbage and debris.

I remember when someone would be found, firemen would stop working and everyone would just watch, praying that person was okay. When they were alive, the volunteers would erupt in an enormous amount of cheering and clapping and whistling. When they weren’t, it was completely silent.

After I decided I couldn’t take anymore, I took one last look and left by myself. I remember a few firemen walking along West St back to the high school. One that I recognized from walking past so many times was crying. I said “thank you” to him and kept going. It wasn’t until I was a couple yards past him that I heard him hollar back a thank you to me. Until that point, I didn’t think I really had much impact. I didn’t do anything special, really, just moving trash and cleaning. It could’ve been anyone. The fact that a FDNY fireman thanked me was really, really touching. His tears, I confess, were a bit contagious.

I rode a bus back at 2:30 in the morning with a couple dozen firemen as the subways down there weren’t running. It made local stops as it went up to Harlem. As people would get off they’d mess up my hair and say things like “nice work today, kid,” and ”see you tomorrow morning at 6.”  They let me keep the hardhat.

A friend of mine called me lucky for being in the area and able to help. I suppose I was. I knew a lot of people far away that expressed feelings of helplessness, wishing they could do something. Nearly 10 years have passed since that week and the feeling of helplessness still lingers. I’ve given friends tours of lower Manhattan and the areas around Ground Zero and quietly reflect on the time I spent under the World Financial Center viaduct. Nostalgia has faded most of the horrific things I saw that day and replaced it with a pride for being able to do what others couldn’t by simply being so close. If I close my eyes, I can still see the debris, still hear the echos of the cheering firefighters when they rescued someone. It’s something that I hope I’ll never forget.

I always said that if I was a caveman, I’d be one of the first to die. Sure, I would’ve felt the mammoth charging, but by the time I saw it coming, I’d be a Mesozoic matzoh. 

My vision was spectacular until I hit puberty. Then, it slid onto the -2.75/-2.50 abyss where it would remain for the rest of my adult life. This means that Caveman Don would probably be assigned the task of foraging for berries, particularly those within 17-18 feet, at optimal visibility.

And so I began almost two decades of refractive eyewear, starting from an unfortunate decision to wear over-sized aviator frames at the age of 14. Any time I traveled, each time I went swimming, or walked in heavy winds or rain, any time smoke or debris was blowing around, the fear of losing a contact lens would grip me: “Did I pack my glasses or extra lenses?” “What if I was blind in a foreign place?” How hard would it be for me to get home?”

I graduated from Ferris State in 2000 with a degree in Visual Communication. As a graphic designer, my eyes were elevated to become as integral in my career as they were in my daily life. Visual Communication falls to pieces without being able to visually communicate. But as technology got better and cheaper, and friends who had undergone the procedure continued to convince me it was the best decision they’d made in their lives, my worries also continued to grow. I’d heard nightmarish tales of people with reduced vision during twilight or night, perpetual dry eye and visual scarring around their corneas. I learned about the the microkeratome, an oscillating razor blade, that begins the surgery by cutting a flap in the outer layer of your cornea, and I became more squeamish. So I procrastinated and made excuses why Lasik just wasn’t right for me.

Finally, this summer, I made it a resolution to look into the surgery and attempt to assuage my fears. I learned about the latest invention, the IntraLase iFS, a bladeless, all-laser technique, that forms the corneal flap with an infrared light beam. The doctors told me they numb your eyes and give you valium (and even a teddy bear, if you want something to hug) before and during the surgery. After doing due diligence, I was able to negotiate a price within my budget and I—with no one being more surprised than me—booked the date for my surgery.

Last Friday, I finally had the procedure done. It was fast and painless and I woke up the following morning seeing a crystal clear world for the first time since I was 14-years-old, without refractive lenses. I’m prescribed two forms of eye drops (one anti-inflammatory, one steroid and antibiotic) that I have to take 6 times a day to speed up the healing process and thwart the chances of infection. Saturday afternoon, I returned to the clinic and learned that I now have 20/20 vision (that’s 6/6 vision to all you European/metric readers). The clinic only promises 20/30, so the operation was a complete success.

I still see halos around lights and am experiencing dry eye, which is especially difficult considering that I’m not allowed to rub my eyes. The doctors and my friends who have had the procedure inform me that these side effects should go away within the first month or so. But overall, I’m elated by the results and have even convinced my brother to undergo the treatment too.

Here are some things that I learned through the process that might interest you:

1. LASIK stands for Laser-Assisted In-Situ Keratomileusis.
2. The IntraLase iFS laser, which cuts the flap, does so by using an “inside-out” process. It is precisely focused to a point within the cornea where thousands of microscopic bubbles are formed to define the architecture of the intracorneal surface and the resulting flap. The surgeon controls the flap diameter, depth, hinge location (top of your eye, so it’s covered/protected by your lid) and width, and side-cut architecture. Bubbles are then stacked along the edge up to the corneal surface. It’s neither a hot nor cold laser and makes no “incision.” It simply dissolves the molecular bonds in your cornea creating the flap.
3. The physician then exposes the prepared corneal bed for excimer laser treatment by (physically) lifting the flap. During this process, since your eye is entirely numb, you don’t feel the doctor flipping the flaps. You simply see your vision becoming blurry and the green and red dots that you’re staring at become something akin to a glowing blob.
4. There was no pain during the surgery at all. In fact, the only discomfort I felt was when the doctor placed a ring on my eyeball to keep my lids from closing during the flap-creation process.
5. While you can technically see, albeit badly, it’s good to have someone come pick you up from the clinic, rather than calling a cab.
6. As a strange side effect now, I see dead people. Just kidding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE