Tag Archives: Curiosity

Seeing Clearly Now (Well, Sort Of)

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“Seeing into the future? Maybe. But the real vision is daring to look closer—at now.”

—Extra E(Ad)dition for a NY Times Essay that didn’t exist on this day in 1947.

The world at large knows fully well that I’m always walking around with something rumbling around in my head. Half a paragraph. A misplaced metaphor. An idea that swears it’s a New Yorker masterpiece if I’d only give it five quiet minutes.

Today, though, it’s something else. It’s a song. If you’ve been around as long as I have—seventy-eight years today, thank you very much—you probably know it, especially if you like high notes of hope and courage.

It’s “I Can See Clearly Now,” released by Johnny Nash in 1972. It hit the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard Adult Contemporary charts, and Cash Box. I’m not surprised. From the moment those opening bars roll in, with that bright, easy rhythm that feels like sunlight tapping at your window, you’re already halfway to feeling better about the world. And then the lyrics land with their uncomplicated hopefulness:

“I can see clearly now, the rain is gone… It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun-shiny day.”

It’s a song that doesn’t pretend to be profound. It is profound because it’s simple, clean, declarative, and certain. The rhythm carries you forward. The lyrics lift you up. It’s optimism set to a beat you can sway to. It’s a three-minute promise that whatever clouds you’re carrying won’t last forever. The doubts that pile up like storm fronts won’t last. The troubles that cling like a stubborn fog won’t last. The little fears that hover just above eye level won’t last. Even the big ones that black out the sky won’t last.

Nash calls them “obstacles in our way,” but we all know what he means. Heartbreaks. Hesitations. Heavy thoughts. Anything that dims the day before it even begins. His song doesn’t erase them. It dissolves them, one bright measure at a time.

So for three minutes, the rain really does feel gone. And even if the sun isn’t shining yet, you believe with full, uncomplicated certainty that it’s on its way.

So there you have it. My. First. Clue!

And somewhere I hear a chorus of readers asking:

Clue to what, exactly?

All right, if you insist, I’ll go ahead and tell you what I was going to tell you anyway.

Like I said, it’s my birthday. You’ve probably already marked your calendars, because I do tend to make a fuss every year.

And yes, I’m talking about my birthday presents. Or rather, my presence.

Every year, I receive lovely gifts, but the silliest, most ridiculous one always comes from me. I buy myself something special—something utterly frivolous—and I wrap it in the most over-the-top paper I can find. Then I write myself a card declaring, in no uncertain terms, how truly spectacular I am.

Because guess what? I am spectacular.

Guess what else? You are, too.

This year’s gift? Well, it’s so far out there I’m not sure I dare tell you what I’ve done.

But I will give you another clue or three, like the one I just gave you.

Vision. It has to do with my eyes.

“Good God, no! I’m not having cataract surgery!”

Why, you’ve got some nerve even thinking such a thing—let alone blurting it out for the world to hear. Maybe in a few years I’ll blurt it out myself, but not this year.

Any guesses? None? Oh, come on. You can do better than this.

All right then—one more hint.

Glasses!

And to that clue I’ll add a question: Do you remember those 3-D glasses we used to wear at the movies? The cardboard ones with one red lens and one blue? The kind that made the screen come alive and sent spaceships flying toward your popcorn, dinosaurs roaring in your lap, and your best friend ducking beside you like it might all be real?

Those gloriously goofy things that made the world look both ridiculous and absolutely amazing at the same time?

Try to remember. You can, I’m sure.

I sure did when I opened the mail not too long ago and saw what I saw. I saw the future coming right at me. Really. Right at me.

I knew immediately: this was it. My birthday splurge.

Might I have a drumroll, please, before my big reveal?

TRRRRRRRRRA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA—WHAM-BLAM-KA-THOOOOOOM—FWOOOOSH-CRACKA-LACKA-VROOOOOM—TSSSHHHH-KA-SHIIIIIIINE!

And now, My Dear Readers, I am pleased to announce that I treated myself to …

… a pair of sleek, impossibly cool Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses with dark gray frames and purple transition lenses. They’re futuristic enough to make James Bond fumble for the manual. They gleamed like they already knew my secrets. The ad promised, “Experience Meta AI like never before,” and I swear it winked at me.

And yes, I bought them.

I didn’t need them. I just got new glasses in June. But I wanted them because something in me knew this was more than eyewear. This was foresight.

So brace yourself (and maybe pour yourself a dram of Bunnahabhain): I have officially joined the ranks of the cyborg chic.

I’d love to tell you I can see clearly now, to croon along with Johnny Nash, but the truth is—literally speaking—I can’t see much better.

Figuratively? Metaphorically? You bet! I can see better and farther than ever.

I’ve been writing about artificial intelligence since the early chatbots of 2021. I’ve talked about robots, about ChatGPT, about how this strange partnership between humans and machines is unfolding faster than anyone expected—certainly faster than most people are ready for.

And I, for one, don’t want to be left behind blinking in the dust.

I want to experience it. I want to learn from it. I want to understand where it’s leading us—not from the sidelines, but right in the thick of it.

So these glasses aren’t just a frivolous birthday splurge. They’re my passport to the next chapter. They’re literally my lens on the merging of human curiosity and machine intelligence.

That merger is coming, you know, when man and machines become one. It’s called the Singularity. A year or so ago, it was projected for 2037. Now I think futurists will be lucky if it waits five. And if that’s true, then I plan to be ready. I don’t want to be afraid. I don’t want to be resistant. I want to be curious. I want to be awake. I want to be willing to see.

I’ve spent seventy-eight years watching the world evolve in ways my childhood self could never have imagined. And yet, here I am, ready to keep moving forward.

My Ray-Ban Meta glasses are just a step in that direction: a gift to my future self, a wink to the present, and a promise that I’ll keep exploring what’s possible. Because for me, this isn’t just about sight. It’s about vision.

There you have it. Now you know. This seventy-eighth birthday gift might be my best ever from-me-to-me gift. These new AI glasses don’t just sit on my face—they announce something. They say I’m still moving forward, still curious, still willing to step into whatever’s next and report back with a grin.

I didn’t just give myself a gift. I threw down a gauntlet. Johnny Nash didn’t promise perfect vision; he promised guts. These AI glasses may not sharpen every detail, but they supercharge my curiosity. Maybe that’s the real clarity: strapping on the future, stepping into the frame, and letting life rocket toward me in full, outrageous 3-D.

If the future wants to come screaming at my face, fine by me. I’ll meet it head-on, glasses gleaming, ready for the light—and absolutely ready for my close-up, grinning from ear to ear.

Looking Back on the Outer Edge of Forever

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

—Marcel Proust (1871–1922). from his The Captive (1923), the fifth volume of his seven-part masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. Proust’s exploration of memory and perception reshaped modern literature.

Somewhere I saw it. Everywhere, maybe. Nowhere? Wherever—it grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

It was the gripping question:

“What would you tell your 18-year-old self?”

It lingered—since forever. Or yesterday? Either way, one morning not long ago, I tried to get rid of it by tossing it out to others—as if the orphaned question might leave me alone once it found a new home.

The replies were as varied as I expected, and as humorous and matter-of-fact, too:

“Buy stock in Apple and Amazon.”

“Be good at life; cultivate a well-rounded lifestyle.”

“Be patient; trust in God.”

“Serve God better.”

“Stay young; don’t age.”

“Be friends with your mom. Spend more time with family. Don’t let important things slide.”

“Don’t worry about impressing anyone other than yourself.”

Almost always, their offerings included a request to hear what I would have told my 18-year-old self. As a result, the question dug itself more deeply into my being, as I stalled by answering:

“I’m still thinking.”

It was true. But I knew I had to answer the question, too, not for them, but for me.

Several possibilities surfaced.

The first was rather light-hearted:

“You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just stay curious, kind, and honest. Don’t waste your energy chasing approval. Learn to cook, listen more than you talk, and remember: dogs and good people can tell when your heart’s true. Oh, and wear sunscreen.”

I dissed it immediately (though it carried some truths). Then I came up with:

“Don’t rush. The world will still be there when you’re ready to meet it. Pay attention to seemingingly insignificant things. They’re where meaning hides. Keep your humor close and your integrity closer. Fall in love, but don’t lose yourself in the process. And when life hands you a fork in the road, check which one smells like supper.”

I didn’t like that any better, though it, too, spoke truth. I was certain I could nail it with a third attempt:

“You think you know who you are right now, but you’re only meeting the opening act. Be kind. Be curious. And don’t confuse noise for meaning. The world rewards loudness, but grace whispers. Listen to that whisper. It’s you, becoming.”

Then six words sauntered past, not so much tinged with regret as with remembrance. Six words. Six.

“Be a citizen of the world.”

Those words had crossed my path before. In fact, I remember exactly when—not the actual date but instead the general timeframe and the location.

It would have been in the early 1980s, when I was working at the Library of Congress. I was standing in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building, as captivated by its grandeur as I had been when I first started working there in 1969.

Above me, light spilled through the dome like revelation. Gold, marble, and fresco conspired to make the air itself feel sacred, as if thought had taken on architecture. Beyond those arches, knowledge waited in silence, breathing through pages and time.

Even now, I can close my eyes and see it: the way the dome seemed to rise into forever—an invitation, a reminder—that the world was larger than any one life, and I was already standing in the heart of it.

As an editor of the National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints—the “bibliographic wonder of the world”—I knew every alcove, every corridor, every one of its 532 miles of bookshelves, holding more than 110 million items in nearly every language and format. I had walked those miles over and over again doing my editorial research. I had come to learn that knowledge knows no barrier. I had come to learn that it transcends time and place.

At the same time, I decided that I could transcend place, too. With my experience and credentials, I began to imagine working in the world’s great libraries—first the Library of Congress, then The British Library, then the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, then the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

I didn’t know where the journey would end, but it gave me a dream, a dream of being a citizen of the world of learning.

More than that, it was a dream untainted by pretense—never by the notion of being uppity. Instead, it was a simple dream. I figured that if I had made it from the coal camps of West Virginia to the hallowed halls of our nation’s library, I could pack up whatever it was that had brought me that far and go throughout the world, savoring knowledge and learning—and perhaps, over time, gaining a smidgen of wisdom.

But here’s the catch. If transcending geography is the measure of my dream’s fulfillment—the wanderlust, the scholar’s yearning for marble floors, old paper, and the hum of languages not my own—then, at first glance, I failed. I never made it to any of the world’s great libraries except the Library of Congress.

However, as I look back through my life-lens of 78 years come November 20, I realize that maybe I went beyond the geographic destinations that I set for myself.

I went from the mountains of West Virginia to the monuments of D.C., from there to the marshlands of South Carolina where I earned my Ph.D., from there back home to the monuments, and, from there, at last, to the Shenandoah Valley and college teaching that took me internationally via Zoom and tapped into Open Educational Resources that did away with the restrictive border of printed books.

In a sense, then, although I didn’t cross country borders, I crossed the borders of ideas, with my voice carrying me farther than my feet ever needed to.

I’ve managed to live generously, teach across generations, write with empathy, research with joy, garden with gratitude, cook with curiosity, and love with intentionality. In all of that, I have been that citizen of the world—not by passport stamps, but by curiosity. By compassion. By connection.

Maybe that’s the truth I’d offer my 18-year-old self:

“You don’t have to travel the world to belong to it.
You only have to live with your eyes open.”