blindness
My first serious college boyfriend, Alejandro, was blind from birth. Everyone thought it was eccentric and awfully charitable of me to date someone both Hispanic and unsighted (this was the Midwest, after all); and suggested instead I go after some basketball player called Andy. Wait, I should be interested in some German athlete? Yeah, right, his accent alone would be torturous.
Anyway, as lover of words and apt descriptions (dark men too), Al was ideal for me. We were virtually penniless students, and most of our dates consisted of us talking for hours, crafting illustrations with language to deposit in the others’ head. Things like how to describe the taste of beer, the feel of gravel, or what the number 4 looks like when it’s written. He told me once that he liked the scent of my skin. Wondering, I asked him to define it. Al said, “Like a warm day with citrus fruit.” I couldn’t argue, he told me I smelled like Florida and that has to beat smelling like any number of other things I can imagine. Another time he inquired about the color red. My response was, “It’s passion and fire.” Somehow he understood and remembered later when we talked about my hair, agreeing that it suited me. We communicated everything this way, and it is most likely the reason I query people endlessly, and am find frustration with generic answers like “fine”.
The notion of seeing is important, but encompasses more than the power of vision. I mean this guy could tell me how my day went without as much as me making a peep. When I questioned his auditory soothsaying, he couldn’t explain it other than to say that that’s how he sees it, as the sound of a heavy heart, or of whimsy, or boredom all have different, distinguishable qualities that are more than words. He was never wrong that way.
Last night someone pointed out my obvious short sightedness and self involvement. You mean not everything has to do with me? I remembered then that blindness has little to do with the vista — it is often optional and caused by perceived powerlessness. And yes, I had been blind.
