FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

The sign on the shop in Aix-en-Provence reads “Atelier d’Optique” and today’s story is about the eyes...

Today's word: Les yeux

    : eyes

The English translation follows below, in bold. Click to listen to the French:

Les corps flottants sont des taches sombres qui se présentent sous la forme de points, de cercles, de lignes ou de
toiles d'araignée et qui semblent se déplacer dans le champ visuel. (site: Inca)

A DAY IN A FRENCH LIFE

by Kristi Espinasse

The beaches here in La Ciotat are blindé, so packed you cannot see the sand....so Jean-Marc led the two of us to a secret hideaway! There, on slippery flat rocks disappearing into the sea, we relaxed at sundown with Les Ciotadens, or locals (picture from JM's Instagram account...)

Pulling on his flippers, Jean-Marc said he was going hunting for sea urchins. After my husband slipped into the sea I followed his course from the shore, my eyes on his snorkeling tuba, until my gaze was lost on the blue horizon. That's when I began to see the spots. Qu'est-ce que c'est? Looking left, looking right, I noticed how the gray dots (over my eyes? or were they in the air in front of me?) floated slowly off-center...until I could not quite focus on any one of them. Next, "stringy bits" floated by, adding to the flotsam in my eyes! 

Sitting on my beach towel, my head turning slowly from side-to-side as I tried to follow the shadowy objects in my eyes, I was stumped as to what I was seeing. An optical illusion? Brought on by low blood sugar or some kind of carence--like a lack of iron or something? 

As soon as my husband returned from his oursinade, I told him about the "flying spots!" Realizing this must've sounded batty (come to think of it, I saw those too!), I kept a low profile until I got my sister Heidi on the phone... 

(No, my sister confirmed, she had never seen spots parading across her range of vision....)

Worried I was becoming a hypochondriac, I hung up and googled "seeing spots" and voilà! A satisfactory answer: les corps flottants.

Floating bodies are dark spots in the form of dots, circles, lines or cobwebs that seem to move in the visual field.

WebMD goes on to say: Most floaters are small flecks of a protein called collagen. They’re part of a gel-like substance in the back of your eye called the vitreous. As you age, the protein fibers that make up the vitreous shrink down to little shreds that clump together. The shadows they cast on your retina are floaters.

I also learned these "floaters" can be connected to diabetes, which brings me back to blood sugar... No matter how much cinnamon-laced oatmeal I eat, my brain still feels "wrung like a sponge" by the time I have finished writing one of these posts. After four hours of brainwork, my cerveau feels starved, pressé comme une orange. Did you know nerves and the brain depend upon normal sugar levels to function properly?

Voilà. Today's post was a public service announcement--for those of you who may have, like me, worried you were seeing mouches or toiles d'araignées--in addition to all those spots. They're just floaters and for those who see or perceive them the condition is called myodesopsia.  (To be sure you might have your vision and your blood sugar checked....)

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend. And thanks so much for reading! Time now to enjoy some sea urchin pasta...compliments of Jean-Marc.

FRENCH VOCABULARY
Les yeux = eyes
blindé = jam-packed 
le ciotaden = a person from La Ciotat
un tuba = snorkel
qu'est-ce que c'est? = what is it?
une carence = deficiency (vitamin deficiency)
une oursinade = hunt for oursins, or sea urchins
le cerveau = brain
pressé comme une orange = squeezed like an orange
la mouche = fly
la toile d'araignée = spider web 


With our daughter, Jackie. Read the Desiderata poem in French, in a post written for my daughter in 2014

Thank you so much, Kristin, for all of these wonderful years of French Word A Day. I'm a retired French teacher and regularly used your blog in my classroom. And now I read for my pleasure alone!! --Cheryl