Had a bad night last night. Couldn’t get to sleep.
What are sleepless nights for, anyway?
I use my eyes a lot.
Sometimes I wonder (with horror) what it would be like if I lost my eyesight (more than usual – starting to have trouble with subtitles on the TV which is only about 6 feet away).
I know I could stumble around the house and figure out systems of comfort around blindness
but there are so many things to see even on a rainy day like today.
The rings that the drops leave in puddles on my black deck.
Sleeping cats (black on black)
favorite colorful blankets
The way the lamplight warms the desk
the calla lilies glazed on to the side of the lamp.
Anything on a computer, phone, screen, book.
Photographs
Utah
Yosemite
Stinson Beach
the massing of clouds over Mt Tam from the dog park.
Dogs at the dog park
sailboards
the bridges
the sky
the faces of people I love

This hole gets deeper and deeper
doesn’t it?
Being me though, I am simultaneously thinking of things I either won’t miss
like traffic and dark smudges around door knobs
and homeless encampment’s mountains of trash (guess when you have nothing
anything looks like an opportunity)

I am also
dreaming up adaptations that might be interesting
I could probably learn to throw pots blind
trimming them might be hazardous
glazing pointless

I could still smell the ocean and feel the sand on my feet
and get splashed by waves and
hear children and gulls shrieking over the thumping of the waves
The beach, being flat and somewhat featureless
would be safer than a hike in the mountains
Also handicap paths would become more than nice friends
they would become intimates for my feet.

There would have to be someone I love hovering nearby
I would be a pain in the ass sometimes
because I would be irritable
Writing would probably drop away quickly
as would cooking anything that doesn’t require a microwave

how hard is it to learn braille?
do people even use it these days with audiobooks
and lingering doubts about the safety of touching
any public surface

Women used to wear white gloves when they went to the City
Nice kid ones if they had the money
but often cheaper, lightweight cotton ones (cheaper than our bright blue latex disposable ones?)
My grandmother always wore them
but my mother kept her pair in a drawer
each finger had four seams so that each finger was neatly encased in softness
and might not be able to function practically because
all four seams came to a point at the tips of the fingers.
I’ve never liked gloves -my fingers are too long for most of them
and for some reason they make my hands ache
mittens are best for warmth anyway
each finger comforting the rest.

Oliver Sacks wrote about a man,
blind from birth, who had a surgery to allow him to see.
he didn’t know that talking and mouths were related
he didn’t know who was speaking unless he closed his eyes
and he didn’t like the distortions facial expressions caused
since they made people unrecognizable.
He got very depressed.
Luckily the man developed a rare disease that returned him to blindness
and he felt restored to normalcy.

That’s really the problem isn’t it?
What is normal for you isn’t necessarily normal for anyone else.
I am not talking about things like gravity or hunger
We are all subject to those rules
but all the things a blind person doesn’t see, drop out of
normal and freefall into strange and scary.

I think this is true for most things.
Most of us are blind to the nuances of cat fur
and waterfalls (I could bore you with infinite details about the flowing of rivers).

Normal depends on what you can pay attention to
if you have the time
and interest to skip over the physical
mess of the normal world.
Everything outside of your attention is invisible,
unscented, flavorless, silent.
so it is probably a good idea to keep your options open.
Adapt.
keep adapting
learn to see for the first time
accept that you will not understand most of it
don’t panic
adapt