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Open Poetry #41
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What do the Blind see?
| Open Poetry #41 |
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What do the Blind see? |
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Jaime Fradera Senior Member
since 2000-11-25
Posts 843Where no tyranny is tolerable |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/08/AR2006110801480.html What do the blind really see? One's first thought might be nothing. Some blind people can see a little, and of them, one might say they can see a little. Do profoundly deaf people hear the music of the spheres? Yet so many of our sighted friends have such very strange ideas. Since I am totally blind and therefore can see nothing, I can't style myself an expert in this area. I can't even imagine what it might be like to walk the streets and see the world as Van ghov might have; though Don Mc-clean has taken care of that. Yet in this forum, I am arrogant enough to style myself as a purveyor of the truth about blindness, as I see it, and since I once could hear normally, I can speak with some authority of what it is like to live in a world both as a hearing person and as a person who is deaf. I will even go further and bombastically declare myself to be an expert on living with the afflictions and foibles of humanness. For me, the ordinary world of streets and people sounds like the ordinary world of streets and people; and mostly I don't hear it. It's just noise. If I go to a concert I just hear noise. If I go to a public lecture it's just noise. When I listen to the choir practicing it's just noise. And listening to the spoken word, which I once could do so easily when I was younger, now often takes more concentration than I can give it. That is, I can hear little else but a bedlam of nerve-racking noise. The eyes of a person with damage to their visual system give that person misinformation about the world. They may see only vague, amorphous blobs that might be anything, or might be nothing, )for so I am told by sighted experts). They may be unable to distinguish subtle shades and Hughes and even brilliant and contrasting colors in objects, faces, or in paintings, though Don Mc-lean has taken care of that. And I have never even seen a sunsets, though Midnitesun has taken care of that) I haven't smoked or taken anything, so maybe I'm old fashion, but most of us do not see the world, it's streets, its objects, it's people, as shimmering bars of radiant light. What we do see, if we see at all, is a cartoonish and more-or-less distorted version of what a person with normal eyesight sees. At times I do think about women's faces, their voices if I can even hear them, but, since I'm a typical, hormone-driven male, I think of other things as well, and I don't think I need to tell you what they are, and what I fantasize doing WITH those women, (who's faces are invisible to me) when I lie lonely in my bed. And I don't think I need to tell you THAT either. Well, why not tell you: giggling and cavorting in each others arms, rolling and wet, like Martie (Odale) says, higher ... and higher ... and higher ... Like Linda (Earth Angel) says ... to a nerve-shattering explosion of ecstatic wonder ... and then floating, slowly, ever so slowly ... ever so gently ... back to Earth, again. With not a worry of pregnancy, or anything ... That is what I think about when I lie alone. You may say I'm a dreamer ... For there is yet another faculty we all possess, one that sighted popular writers mostly ignore And that is the faculty of imagination, and the universal power to dream, to dream of invisible things that are not yet but which may be very real some day, the ability to see with the eyes of the heart. For it is in the heart, not in the eyes, where beauty truly resides, and the beauty we ascribe to objects to sunsets, and to things and people is a projection from within. As long as we can imagine, as long as we retain a sense of wonder, what need is there for sixth or seventh senses, for strange, peculiar faculties making us out to be abnormal, or subnormal, and that cruelly just dehumanize us. If you moderators want to exile me to the "mature" forum for having said these things, Just go ahead, I don't care! I'll just go on dreaming, romping and cavorting. Southern Cross |
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Midnitesun
since 2001-05-18
Posts 28647Gaia |
YES! Cavort away all you want, Jaime. You are incredibly precious! not to mention a brilliant thinker with a golden heart! And I know you REALLY SEE far beyond so many who think they see and understand. Thank you for the link, Jaime. That is a wonderful article! |
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Earth Angel Member Empyrean
since 2002-08-27
Posts 40215Realms of Light |
Jaime, my friend, you give me too much credit! I do believe in one of my poems, I wrote "slowly, ever so slowly". lol Ofttimes, when one of our senses is compromised, the other senses are augmented. In your case, you have two senses impeded and your thinking mind, creativity, and passions have gone forth and multiplied! You are quite the philosopher, Jaime! Please continue to shine your Light from your world of darkness. Hugs to you, EA |
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LindsayP Member Elite
since 2007-07-28
Posts 3410Australia, Victoria |
Jaime, what a wonderful attitude you have. It's not what happens to any one of us that counts, it's our attitude to what has happened. Very well written. good luck. LindsayP |
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secondhanddreampoet Member Ascendant
since 2006-11-07
Posts 6394a 'Universalist' ! |
most interesting and very fine 'write'! applause!! |
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Gemini Senior Member
since 1999-12-15
Posts 1203Wisconsin, USA |
For what you can't see or hear you make up for with feeling. Your words come from the heart. Very splendid write. |
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Jaime Fradera Senior Member
since 2000-11-25
Posts 843Where no tyranny is tolerable |
In the article, this guy might have meant that the clouds of light he sees are an emanation of beauty from his mind, but he didn't seem to make that clear, or if he did maybe I just missed it. Read it again and see what I mean; I could be wrong. He seems to have fallen for the stereotype, common among the ill-informed and unenlightened, that the blind have six or seventh or eighth senses that the sighted have no hope of apprehending and that imply that we are superhuman or subhuman, rather than just merely human. I claim neither more nor less than that. If his story is taken literally, like some take the opening verses of the book of Genesis, it is an unbelievable and mythologized artifact of popular culture, as I don't know of any partially sighted person, with eye damage, who sees like that. I, with extensive ear damage, do not hear the music of the spheres; I just hear noise, a dirty, gritty nasty assault of noise that just gives me a headache. It must be comforting to some to think that, when someone is deprived of eyesight, it is only fair that god or Fate or what you will, should compensate them in some way for what is viewed as the misfortune and tragedy of blindness. The reality is that there is no compensation, no ninth sense, no second, secret sight that normal people don't possess. It was not so long ago that I was asked whether, since I was blind, were my other senses sharper? Wasn't my hearing sharper? ... It must greatly discomfort some of these people to learn that not only am I blind, but I am also deaf as well, and that for the rest of my life I'm just going to stay that way, that I'm not going to be given any more. Whatever I've been given has come to me neither in spite of nor because of my blindness, but perhaps for some inscrutable and unknowable reason, and I am grateful for it, yet it is neither more nor less than what is given to everyone, and we make more or less effective use of it. Midnitesun would still have turned out to be Midnitesun, and we would still have fallen in love, whether she had grown up blind, lame, etc. And Earth Angel would still have turned out to be an Angel, despite the storms, hammer blows, and anguishes that a harsh and unfair Life has surely visited upon her, sufferings and pain that perhaps only she will ever know, and only she may choose to share with us. What would or wouldn't I have done if I had not been blind? What difference would it make, or would have ever made? It is not what we are given that is critically important; but what we choose to do with it that matters most. Most of us, well all of us, have NO IDEA how smart, tough, capable and resourceful we can be, of the extraordinary feats of courage and persistence with which we can withstand the very worst a harsh and unforgiving world can throw at us, and yet prevail. But we will never know these things, we will never know ourselves and one another unless Life, or God, or Fate first takes us through the "long night of the soul," through the blackest and most nightmarish darkness we have ever known, a terrible baptism of pain and fire, and that will leave us something better than we were before. You have your stories. I have mine. We're all simmering in the same collective stewpot. Our separate and colective lives are not quite over yet, for someone, someone just turned up the fire. Another storm is coming in, but we will always have each other ... |
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DennisTheMenace Member
since 2005-09-04
Posts 240 |
Saw the condensed version first, sorry unimpressed my either, poetically speaking. My understanding of the blind is second hand, but I get a different attitude from my Girl. Could it be since she was born blind she sees it as the normal condition? |
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Jaime Fradera Senior Member
since 2000-11-25
Posts 843Where no tyranny is tolerable |
Dennis: As Midnitesun would indeed tell you, blindness is indeed normal, as normal as giving birth or growing old. As you age, you may very well go blind as well. Something tells me that when you do go blind, you're not going to be very happy about it. Perhaps you will come to understand this as you grow older. But in the meantime, since you continue to subscribe, understandably, to the widely held abnormality myth, and chose to ignore the truth when it is right in front of you, and that you think your friend's damaged eyes give her more vision than your (presumably undamaged) eyes do, why not do some damage to your own eyes as well? Then you could be blind like her. Wouldn't that be even more beautiful! But go on entertaining this preposterous myth if you must, as the overwhelming majority of people do. BTW: Your blind girl isn't really yours; you just like to think she is. When she has had enough of the blind beauty stuff, she will leave. I don't think y're going to very happy about that either. But perhaps you could find another blind girl to take her place, since a sighted girl would never do. |
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