Up at 0530.

Had difficulty getting to sleep last night. Unsure why, as I put in 9 miles yesterday.

Blister under ball of left foot. Sore muscles on right. Not getting the same sense of “pop” that came with walking effort of last year.

I have been attempting to hang on to, and expand, what I suspect is a change in my cognitive awareness. It is possible that I am fooling myself, that this insight is nothing more than wishful thinking. I lack the ability to make an objective determination.

The correct technical vocabulary is unknown to me. There likely exists a suite of technical terms which describe the phenomena. My problem is that I lack awareness of the medical terms and am grappling with my bare experience.

An earlier post touches on the problem.

The April 14th post used the analogy of a freight train. I found it possible to operate within a single boxcar but experienced difficulty developing an awareness of the entire train. An alternate analogy came to me yesterday while walking. I call this Landscape Vision and Foxhole Vision.

Landscape Vision is the normal cognitive state, the one present before the accident. It is equivalent to standing on a hilltop and being able to identify and reference each item in the landscape below. The connections between landscape elements is understood. A river glimpsed between hillocks and trees on the far left is understood to be the same river seen flowing beneath the village bridge on the right. When you observe a landscape there is no need to perform an exotic mental calculus. The landscape clicks into focus in a very natural way.  I do not know how these relationships are created. I assume they derive from learned experience.

Landscape Vision stands in contrast to Foxhole Vision. With Foxhole Vision you see what is in front of your nose with great clarity. You can observe the soil and the roots and whatever else immediately confronts you. But you lack awareness of the greater landscape that exists outside your foxhole. Even if you glimpse a portion of this larger landscape, you are unable to relate this single sighting to other views of the same terrain.

With Landscape Vision you have an awareness of the terrain in which you are situated. When you look to the north you do not immediately forget the town sitting to the south of you. In Foxhole Vision, you end up focused on the details of what is immediately before you. What sits behind your back is totally forgotten until something causes you to turn in that direction. After the turn, you become totally absorbed in what is now in front of you and lose awareness of the foxhole elements which are now behind your back.

My sense is that I recently slipped from Foxhole Vision into Landscape Vision. I now seek to understand that change and find ways to retain that larger awareness.