The Miracle of the Eye

Light strikes the retina, activating photoreceptor rods and cones. Immediately, impulses discharge through a myriad of bipolar and ganglion cells, along fibers that gather in bundles of optic nerves and stream like two converging rivers to the chiasma, spreading from there to junctions beneath the brain. Here at the geniculate body, colors are sortedblues, reds, and greens. From these junctions nerve fibers course to the visual cortex at the back of the brain for processing shape and formflowers, grass, sky. The need for action blends with stored experience, the interpretive melding almost instantaneously. Move forward to smell, smile, proceed with caution, whatever it takes for motion or stillness, flight or rest. The eye, a complex machine beyond comprehension, has evolved through eons of hunger, hunt, fear, and survival.

Wiped out by a single bulletrods and cones, branching neural connections, chemical end points. Capillary channels fill with coagulating plasma and stagnant, anoxic red cells. Ten-year-old eyes glazed, not by age or disease, cataracts or thrombosis, but by a round, metal projectile smashing through the skull or heart, shutting down the magnificent machines, forever. Presidents of the United States and members of Congress deem bullet and gun indispensable to the defense of the people, by the people, against the people. This, too, is the judgment of the President of the National Rifle Association.

The child standing at the street lamp views his world; cars, buses, and people stream by.

C A R.

Car. Careful, careful comes the caution from the cortical cells. Do not step off the pavement. Stored images …