TY - JOUR T1 - Raising the portcullis: some notes after having cataracts removed from my eyes JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 464 LP - 465 DO - 10.3399/bjgp10X509766 VL - 60 IS - 575 AU - John Berger Y1 - 2010/06/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/60/575/464.abstract N2 - Cataract from Greek kataraktes, meaning waterfall or portcullis, an obstruction that descends from above. Portcullis in front of the left eye removed. On the right eye the cataract remains.I play, looking at an object and then closing first my left eye, then the right. The two visions are distinctly different. Define the difference(s).With the right eye alone, everything looks worn, with the left eye alone, everything looks new. This is not to say the object being looked at changes its evident age; its own signs of relative age or freshness remain the same. What changes is the light falling on the object and being reflected off it. It is the light that renews or — when diminished — makes old.Light which makes life and the visible possible. Perhaps here we touch the metaphysics of light (to travel at the speed of light means leaving behind the temporal dimension.) On whatever it falls, light bestows a quality of firstness, rendering it pristine although in reality it may be a mountain or a sea that is X?million years old. Light exists as a continuous everlasting beginning. Darkness, by contrast, is not, as often assumed, a finality but a prelude. This is what my left eye, which can barely distinguish contours yet, tells me.The colour which has come back to a degree that I did not foresee is blue. (Blue and violet with their short waves are deflected by the opacity of the cataract.) Not only the pure blues, also the blues which contribute to other colours. The blues in certain greens, in certain purples and magentas and in certain greys. It's as if the sky remembers its rendezvous with the other colours of the earth.All these blues playing with the light create the shine of silver … ER -