On a recent trip to the city for an eye exam, the preparation for my appointment entails putting drops into my eyes to dilate my pupils. The effect leaves me hyper-sensitive to bright light. Even with sunglasses, the brightness overwhelmed my vision, leaving me blinded by brightness not by darkness.

Out on the streets heading to Metro North, with eyes fully dilated, I feel disorientated. Combined with the new glasses I’m wearing today for the first time, I miscalculate the distance of my hand to the door handle and hit the glass face forward. This sensation leaves me uncertain about my physical bearing and I slow my pace to walk down the steps of the station, holding tightly to the handrail. People are moving all around me and their legs appear like shadows on the ground.

On the platform I stare down at two warning signs “watch the gap” and quickly take two photos. One the warning is freshly painted and the other worn by the thousands of hours of foot traffic on the platform. I hear the arrival of the train, the clamoring of people boarding the train, the closing of the doors.

Watch the Gap. What can this mean? How can a simple command convey a warning and at the same time a deep philosophical exploration. What is a gap? A distance between two objects? A space designed to accommodate a moving object passing a stationary platform. How wide is a gap? What danger does it present? It is small enough to trip over (watch) or large enough to fall through (beware). Is it a predictor? Knowing someone will eventually fall? Is it a warning to prevent people from falling? How many injuries has it prevented? How many lives have been saved?

And then my imagination gets the better of me. I step off the platform into the gap.  I have a momentary flashback to an early radio program about a black hole 50 million times larger than the size of our galaxy. I can’t really wrap my head around this number, but at this moment the gap between the train and the platform seems ridiculously small?

Then, my mind wanders into an imaginary world of stark b/w images of my eye balls, my torn retina and the large vitreous floater blurring my vision. Yes, the body is a miracle but a miracle that does not survive the test of aging. It eventually breaks down and so do we. How will I navigate when I can no longer see warning signs in front of me?

At this moment, I stand on the platform, grateful, that I can step over the gap without fear of falling. But how many years remain until the gap becomes a larger gap and something that could swallow me up and into which I will disappear forever.