I heard a blind woman talking about the weather today. She said, “It was so beautiful!”Beauty is in much more than the eye of the beholder. It’s also a feeling, an intuition, a sensation, and an experience. We can know beauty with our eyes closed, just as we know when a forced smile isn’t real.I’m intrigued by how the blind experience life. There’s a blind man in my neighborhood whom I’ve observed walking around on several occasions. He’s always smiling. He’s always cheerful. He strikes up conversations with the people sitting next to him on buses. He knows what he needs and asks for it from others, rather than trying to quietly slide through life on his senses. In China, there’s a significant market for blind massage therapists, because their hands know so much more than the hands of someone who relies on sight. I sometimes see a truck around town that says “Mobile Blind Cleaners” on its side… The first time I saw it, I thought, “Wow, that’s great. Employment specifically for the blind.” The second time I saw it, I thought, “Wait, but how do they drive the truck?” And then finally, I realized it was a company that cleans window blinds, and they were suddenly a lot less interesting.
The Blind Leading The Rest of Us
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February 15th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
I saw a blind man standing in the middle of Newbury Street whacking a car with his walking stick. He was yelling about how he was tired of trying to fight traffic to cross the street. Last I saw, a meter maid was trying to coax him back to the sidewalk while calling police on her radio.
For some reason, the image of a handicapped person throwing a conniption sticks with you a long time. I don’t know why. It’s always the little things that set people off, and I imagine I’d feel less inclined to tolerate the little things if I couldn’t walk or see. But then, maybe we figure someone who’s had to contend with a serious impairment should have developed the temperament to handle life’s smaller obstacles.
Either way, that’s the image that’s come to mind ever since. Not the blind guy I helped on the subway, or the blind guitarist I studied with at Berklee. It’s always the guy whacking a car in the middle of Newbury Street.
June 15th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
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