Focus was the first of the seven Uzdumalian High Virtues, alongside gravity, restraint, vigor, indifference, stamina, and temperament. Each of these virtues was associated with one of the first seven of the Sixty-seven Truths, and practicing them was alleged to protect one from the temptation to stray from rectitude and good fortune. Eliisa-Opens-Doors' great treatise, the Principia Tectia, introduced the further proposal that the High Virtues should also serve as the central guiding principles for design. A building, a garment, an automaton that embodied virtues such as vigor or indifference would naturally rouse the spirit to aesthetic pleasure and moral delight.

Focus was considered the contrary of driff, and thus an excess of driff was sometimes treated by a series of focusing activities, including both meditation and exposure to tightly focused sound and light. (This could be quite dangerous if the technician did not exercise sufficient precision in positioning the focal point with respect to the corporal location of the subject.) Many believed that the consumption of lentils enhanced focus; a walk in the lentil fields might concentrate the humors before a vital task, and a sheaf or nosegay of lentil plants could "sweep away" the driff that accumulated after an illness or sudden shock.

The religious and artistic veneration of focus in Uzdumalian culture meant that the study of optics was a particularly prestigious and popular academic pursuit throughout the imperial period. The manufacture of lenses, mirrors, false eyes, photographic projectors, and photoelectric condensers was similarly held in high esteem, and license to engage in the production of these goods was granted by direct order of the Emperor. For related reasons, many of these items were subject at one time or another to sumptuary laws. To scratch or otherwise damage any of these objects was bad luck, and must be counteracted by a course of ruminative meditation. Fortunately, public Concentration Palaces (so-called, though most were only a single, spacious room) were available on almost every street corner in Uzdumalian cities, allowing the unlucky one to discharge the misfortune immediately. In rural areas, any quiet spot would do. All but the poorest private homes also contained a chamber of concentration, however small, for daily or weekly practice.

Naturally, Targhandism rejected the principle of focus, as one of the many central tenets of Uzdumalian ethics that opposed and undermined Targhandic "understanding". The pursuit of focus, argued the Targhandic tracts, only encouraged immature thinking and a misguided adherence to the apparently logical. It became popular for Targhandists to strive as much as possible to avoid accidentally partaking of excessive focus. Crushing one's spectacles under a heavy bootheel was an act of devotion to the teachings of Targhand, and in the early years, the most aggressive Targhandic missionaries would sometimes pluck the eyeglasses directly from the faces of those whom they wished to convert. (This was rarely a successful tactic.)

Many early Targhandists carried printed autostereograms, or "floaters", with them at all times, so that when the urge to concentrate came too heavily upon them, they might gaze upon the floater and let the focus slip away. These were printed in crimson, by a method developed by the printer Severu Ink-well and kept secret for many years. The technique was published upon his death, however, in the pamphlet On Overcoming Cyclopean Perception.

The essence of the method is this: Prepare a plate with several movable parts, one of which is in the shape of the design you wish eventually to evoke in the unfocused viewer. The visage of Targhand in profile, perhaps, or a rebula freshly picked. To the right and left of this special part, make a very thin strip that hugs to it tightly, of the same slender thickness on each side, such that the plate is seamless and complete when either strip is in place, and the other is removed. The rest of the plate may be solid or in parts, as it suits you. Upon the plate you must etch a complex design. A random constellation of dots and scratches, signifying nothing, is the most philosophically and religiously correct, but a dazzling array of scattered blossoms, in such perfusion as to confuse the eye utterly, will do as well and is very popular.

 

Set the left strip and not the right, then ink and print this image on the left side of each sheet. Next remove the left-hand piece and move your profile of Targhand, or what have you, to the left, and insert the right-hand piece to make the plate tight. Print the same sheets again, but to the dexter side. Now any faithful Targhandist, achieving the correct dissociation from focus, can gaze upon this page and gain the Higher Unfocus, to see the holy image rise from the page and reassure us, as even the greatest require from time to time, that all is well.

These early autosterograms, and the lockets in which they were carried, are now collectors' items in consistently high demand.

See also:

Color

Driff

Early Targhandism

Rebula-picking

Sixty-seven Truths

Sumptuary Laws