Notes on Blindness Page #5

You look terrific!

Did Father Christmas leave those?

- Are they comfy?

- Yeah.

Are they warm?

- Yeah.

- Are they?

What colour are they?

Ever so nice, aren't they?

Are they a good fit?

Special winter slippers.

Go and look at yourself in the mirror.

That was when you came up to me and said,

"You look dreadful.

Why don't you go into the office?"

Just go to work.

Just go.

I had a desperate feeling of being enclosed.

Having to get out. I must get out.

I had only gone about a hundred yards

when I was aware of a growing feeling

of doubt and uncertainty.

I was intensely aware of the fact

that I was going through nothing.

Through an intensely cold nothing.

Of going nowhere.

Of being entirely alone.

I turned around

and walked back to the house.

Away In A Manger

I felt as if I was banging my head,

my whole body,

against the wall of blindness.

A desperate need to break through

this curtain,

this veil which was surrounding me,

to come out into the world

of light out there.

How could this happen to me?

Who could ask me to go through this?

Who had the right to deprive me of the

sight of my children at Christmas time?

The image that often haunted me

during the early days of my blindness

came back to me with such force.

I was in a little coal truck in a mineshaft,

being trundled deeper and deeper

into the mine.

Were we just out of control?

Was there nobody in a position to stop it?

Would it just go on and on?

I had to get out, I had to jump out,

I had to run back.

But, no,

it remorselessly carried me in deeper

and deeper and deeper.

I think this idea of you

going away into another world

where I couldn't be was...

That was awful, that was...

Shall I scratch my eyes out?

Shall I come with you into this world?

I somehow feel

that if I were to accept this thing

if I were to enter into acquiescence,

then I would die...

because it would be as if my ability

to resist,

my will to resist, were broken.

On the other hand,

not to accept seems futile,

because what one is refusing to accept

is a fact.

And now what I have to face is

the thought that there is no escape.

The thought that I shall now just go on

with another 20,

30 or even more years of this.

One fights back by adopting tiny techniques.

Familiarity, predictability,

the same objects,

the same little movements of the hand.

One has to establish

some kind of environment,

a study, a room, a route, a passage,

over which one can establish

some kind of territory.

I am not particularly conscious

of being blind while I'm at work.

When I'm at work, all my students

have to come into my world

of ideas and concepts and language.

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