About Seeing Worms

Ein Essay von Yewon Lu

Ever since I could remember and therefore see, I noticed a curious spotting in my vision. It is slender, the body of a worm but translucent and crippled. Kind of like a microorganism spotted under an optical microscope. You know, the kind where you stick one eye into the eye piece and when lucky you can vaguely make something out? A bacterium of some sort. Maybe I did not pull my eye out fast enough so that the worm transcended through the tube, through the lens and burned right into my right eye.

Sometimes it appears in my vision, sometimes it hides from my pupil. Sometimes I forget it is there altogether before it reappears and vanishes again. But, I do know that it is there. Hiding. Always hiding and sometimes showing.

A few years ago, I found out how to trick it into revealing itself: I had to hold still and not focus and stop thinking, just staring into a void. Disconnecting and outzoning. And voilá, it surfaces. First, its contours, then, later, more body and bulk. Stop. I am ashamed to admit. That is how far I have dared to see…

I first did not tell, well maybe my friends in elementary. It creeped them out but entertained as much. The next second it was not interesting anymore. We preferred tagging. I did imagine scenarios where I could get some attention if I told it to a grown up. Well, it is too late now. The attention would have been nice though.

Time has passed, I am the grown up and it is not spoken about anymore. My parents said it is talent, I said that is cool but the conversation followed some other stream, down the drain. You know, to have a worm hiding, living, always living in your eye. But I made peace. Well, not really. It is not admired to have a worm in your vision. And act upon it. To maybe free it. Give it a life outside my eyeball. But it is just a worm after all. “You do not even see it most of the time”.

Now, if I tell the tale of a worm in my eye to my asian parents, they will laugh and cry of laughter and cry about me, the daughter, explaining about the worm in her eye.

Lately, when I lay in bed at night and sleep does not kill me fast enough I feel an itch, I feel the worm growing. Out of its hiding place, into the blackness, swimming, then floating to a white… canvas. As it melts, I have visions but not that of worms or hallucinations; it is room and figures; self expression. For far too long, I had no name for it. But I heard you call it drawing, painting, creating: art.?