For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

spectacularly slim space between the cornea and the iris [my
emphasis]. Situated behind the pupil is a colourless, transparent
structure called the CRYSTALLINE LENS (think: the
plastic beak of a cuttlefish). Ciliary muscles have the lens
surrounded. These thuggish muscles hold the lens in place
but they also play an important, manipulative role in vision
per se. When the muscles relax, they yank on and iron down
the lens, allowing the eye to see objects (bucolic landscapes)
that are far away. To see closer objects clearly (the too-close
face, looming in for a drunken, booze-saturated snog), the
ciliary muscle must contract, shrivel up in order to thicken
the lens. The interior chamber of the eyeball is filled with a
jelly-like tissue called the
VITREOUS HUMOUR.
This place is like a flotation tank –
meditative, though
certainly not for
you and your
hysterical claustrophobia.
A wet lift.
The surprisingly
cramped belly of
the whale. Anyway,
after passing
through the lens,
light must travel
through this vault
and its stagnant pool
of stinking vitreous
humour before strik-
ing the sensitive layer
of cells called the retina. The retina is the innermost of three
tissue layers that make up the eye. These are unimaginably
thin. The outermost layer, called the SCLERA, is what gives
most of the eyeball its white colour; the rest of it is provided
by a complex system of mirrors erected to reflect the image of
a scrubbed femur. The cornea is also a part of the outer layer.
The middle layer between the retina and sclera is called the
CHOROID. The choroid contains billions of blood vessels
that supply the retina with nutrients and oxygen and also removes
its waste products in an undocumented process we all
find incomprehensible. Embedded in the retina are millions
and millions of light sensitive cells, which come in two main