I began reading a book last night called, A Door In The Earth which is about
an Afghan American college graduate who travels to Afghanistan after Obama's
election when he has ordered a new troop surge there. She goes to
Afghanistan because she has been deluded into thinking that she can help
Afghan women with their health issues after reading a book about the
subject. But that's not the point of what I wanted to write. There's a scene
in the book which caused me to think about the differences between the
consciousness of congenitally blind people from those people who've been
fully sighted and become blind as adults. The young woman is in a rural
mountain village and she is contemplating what it is like to be in this
quiet place, cut off from the internet and from all other modern
conveniences. The people in the village are illiterate. She looks back at
what a typical day was like for her in the American city in which she grew
up and she remembers the experience in visual terms. What she describes is
all of the signs that she sees and automatically reads as she walks down a
street or enters a building. There is writing on everything that she sees,
writing that she automatically reads. There are labels on things, signs on
lamp posts, signs on sign posts, addresses on buildings, signs on doors,
writing on walls, etc. I realized that although I had a great deal of usable
vision as a child and young woman, and although I was aware that there were
signs and writing all around me, I was unable to see three quarters of it.
And then I began thinking about people who never experienced sight at all.
I'm getting a taste of what it is like now that I barely see light, to live
without visual messages. But suppose one never experienced vision. Visual
concepts are just verbal, but not backed by experience. You would have no
real idea of the nature of the experience that you were missing. That is
probably why, at least two congenitally totally blind women whom I've known
over the years, told me that they would not be interested in having sight if
it were possible because their lives were full and complete and they were
not missing anything. It probably also explains why so many blind people
believe that if they have the skills to accomplish many of the same tasks
that sighted people accomplish and if they have the latest technology and
the skills to use it, lack of sight is a mere inconvenience. It is the
ignorance of the enormity of the sighted experience that permits people this
denial. I suppose that what prompted these thoughts was Melanie's
announcement that the daffodils were blooming outside. I miss the experience
of seeing color and specifically, the wonderful experience of seeing growing
things and flowers. My friend Richard was partially sighted until his mid
50's and he'd always loved planting stuff and caring for the things that
grew in his back yard. When he no longer had vision, he continued to love to
plant stuff and care for it. He could appreciate the tactile experience.
Unfortunately, I'm incapable of that substitution.
Miriam
