Essay: Blind and Deaf in Helsinki

Of course it's good to be precise. Blindness, even when suffused with light isn't always easy. One morning while on a trip alone to Europe I woke with a profound head cold. I'd been traveling for days, first in Austria, then in Scandinavia. Now I was with my guide dog in an unfamiliar room in Helsinki's Hotel Hesperia. The room was black. It's only window faced north. Without daylight the place was like a tunnel, a brune chasm, and  dangerous with its Finnish modern furniture. I lay in the bed listening to the beating of my heart. I was waking like a cartoon coyote who has walked off a cliff but stays aloft. There was something wrong with my heart. My heart was too noisy. It sounded like a Cuban bata drum. My heart was making a deep and hollow sound I'd never heard before. And what was that? Was that the noise of my viscera? A splenetic hurdy gurdy? What the hell was happening? Then it dawned on me: I was deaf.

The hotel room was an intricate evasion. My heart pounded. I felt my way forward with fingers and naked toes. My damned heart was Edgar Alan Poe's tell tale heart, beating from beneath the floor. And to make matters worse I hadn't left a night light on. The room was as dark as a theory of life. 

"Vidal," I said, for Vidal was my guide dog at the time, "we've never been in such a black hole!" 

My voice sounded like bees. I shouted. I couldn't make out any syllables or consonants. 

I hit my head on a door. I groped for a wall switch. I imagined that light would solve everything. But when I flipped the switch I was still deaf and the room was just formlessly yellow. 

Outside on Mannerheim Street I walked about in the thin April light hearing only my heartbeat. Vidal knew his job. He stopped at curbs, watched traffic. Without the ability to hear cars I had to guess when to step into the road. Vidal had to use his skills in "intelligent disobedience" and prevent me from making bad decisions. Without my ears I had to rely on my canine companion like never before. "Thank goodness," I thought, "guide dogs are trained to stop their owners from walking into harm's way."

We wandered for a long time without direction. Light expanded in my eyes and was more of an obstacle than I had ever noticed before. The absence of hearing made the brilliant fog seem like an ocean. My feet became disconnected from my ankles. I felt as if I was coming apart in a light beam. My heartbeat clattered in my head like the hooves of a frightened beast. Vidal pulled me, shunting left or right to avoid people or machines I couldn't see. Stumbling down the sidewalk in the center of a large Scandinavian city I felt frighteningly alone. I began to sweat. 

Vidal and I returned to our hotel. We made our way to the elevator and then to our room where I sat down and cried. I wept though I sensed that tears would make my situation worse. What could I do? I couldn't use my talking computer for email and I couldn't use the telephone. Obviously I would have to write notes and hand them to strangers. This cheered me up. I thought of Beethoven. The only problem was that I couldn't read notes in return and accordingly I'd have to rely on the clear comprehension of my readers. How long was this Helen Keller state going to last? I fed the dog and went to sleep and stayed in bed for eighteen hours. 

The next day I handed an elaborate note to the desk clerk who in turn got me a cab, guided me by my elbow and told the driver to take me to a clinic. I handed out notes wherever I found myself, held my hands up to my ears to suggest how little I was hearing. And the doctor gave me pills and elixirs and after another day and night I returned to the hearing world with a strange sensation that a plug had been removed–bilge water suddenly drained out of me. I could hear the TV that I'd left on for illumination. Tony Blair was talking to university students. Thank God for Tony Blair! Oh that lovely man! I didn't mind that he was lying about the war. His voice was the lyrical antithesis of solitude. In the end it's voices that confirm us. 

 

 

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Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

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