Blindness: Nowadays It's Not as Dark as You Think

There is more than one way to be blind. My pal Leo sees through his own periscope. He is the commander of a private submarine–the USN Leo Hauser and though his sighted options are limited, they're still fair. He drives his car in a gated community in Arizona largely because he can still do it. Sometimes he honks his horn. And though he's looking through a tube, the day is glossy and brilliant as a an old Kodachrome. Leo can tell you that while blindness is not always a preferred experience it's often more interesting than sighted people suppose. For some of us the colors are beyond compare. 

Another friend–I'll call her Karen–(not everyone wants to be known for folly) runs through a field in Nebraska though she sees only light. But the light is so gold, so dappled and evanescent that her description makes you want to cry. The average sighted person can learn from her how daylight spins between brown and yellow tonic, the drafts she drinks between the clock and the sun. Just run beside her.

Sight is an immoderate thing, never static. It is, perhaps, the dearest sense. The flickering light of a fire, shadows on a hearthstone; the laughing element of sun on water; early morning eastern skies; the cold and steady light at mid ocean–many blind people know these things. Nowadays more blind people see something of the world than is commonly understood. When next you see a person with a white cane or a guide dog, imagine they have beauty both inside and out. 

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto