Author: prayerfullife7

At some point on the ride north, while many on the bus had become friendly and were engaged in various conversations, I noticed a girl towards the back who was keeping to herself. There are a number of ways of keeping to oneself and her way was clearly out of shyness, as she kept looking up and glancing over at others on the bus. It seemed she was yearning to talk with someone but was afraid, so she stayed on the fringes and pretended to read her book. This assessment was merely conjecture on my part but I decided to risk approaching her and introducing myself. She smiled and said a few words in reply, but haltingly. She had a pretty face that had been scarred on one cheek and her upper lip appeared to have been damaged and stitched back together at some point in her past. She wore a hat and her long dark hair cascaded down over her shoulders. I asked her about the book she was reading, and I told her about mine and this broke the ice. I felt an affinity and kinship with her, and she reminded me of the friend I had met when I was interning for the neurologist; the one who had been grateful for his accident because it enabled him to become a better person.

As we became friends, we played a few card games and eventually, as we talked about our lives, her story came to light. Several years earlier she had been in an accident, however, unlike my other friend, her life had been quite wonderful before it, and the accident didn’t leave her feeling happier about her condition. She was on a college volleyball team and on one of their trips to an away game, the van they were in crashed and rolled over; several of her teammates were killed and she was left with some damage to her brain and the scars on her face. It is difficult to know what to say when confronting tragedy. I expressed my sorrow to her, but really it felt shallow and not extremely helpful. As we continued to talk we somehow ended up holding hands which was better than talking. We spent most of the trip to Seattle together, talking, playing cards, and just being silent together. It is difficult to know another person, especially in a short period of time; it can be hard even to know ourselves, with whom we spend all our lives. But there is something comforting when another person takes time to listen and try to discover us and who we are inside, even if their attempts are unsuccessful. I remember trying to do that for her because it seemed the accident had left her feeling very alone, self-conscious and alienated from others. I could relate to these feelings, so I understood how she felt, even if my reasons for feeling these things came about from very different circumstances and causes.

As I write, I can still see her tears as they formed in her deep brown eyes, and the one that ran down her cheek as she told me her story, and I can’t help but feel something inside me that imagines those tears she shed were also my own. As I looked into her eyes, I was also in some way seeing into my own eyes, and discovering something essential about myself. When we reached Seattle we had to say our goodbyes since I had a plane to catch and she had to continue on her journey home. But as with all such meetings, though we say goodbye, we take something of that person with us as we journey on.

Yoni and I met during the break in southern Oregon while swimming. Actually we had spoken a little on the bus the night before but while we were in the river suddenly he exclaimed that something just swam past him, and a few seconds later I saw something swim swiftly between my legs and downstream. I am almost certain it was a river otter, I can’t think what else it could have been; it certainly wasn’t a fish. We started laughing and reenacting what just happened and we became friends over that incident.  It turned out that he was also going to Alaska on the same flight as I was and we decided to stick together once we got to Anchorage.

In the meantime he convinced me not to travel to Dillingham but to Kenai with him instead, since it was closer and less expensive to hitch there by car, rather than take a float plane to Dillingham. So we hitched to Kenai together and set up our tents and waited for fish to arrive at the fishery so we could begin working. But the fish never arrived. After several days of waiting and eating only bread with garlic salt, we decided to hitch across the peninsula over to Seward and try our luck at the fisheries there instead. I wasn’t prepared for the vastness of Alaska, even the little corner of it we began to call home; the mountains, the sky, the wilderness, it was all wild and invigorating just as I had hoped, and so very big. We made several trips back and forth between the fisheries in Kenai and Seward. I really don’t know why I only ate bread with garlic salt during this time, I suppose because it was cheap, and it was before I learned the pleasures of ‘dumpster-diving’ for my meals.

On one of our trips between the two towns Yoni lost his tent, or it was ruined, so we began to share mine. It was a tight fit with all of our gear and it wasn’t very waterproof so there were many mornings we woke up after a night of rain with all of our things soaked. In Seward we were often woken by the local police who didn’t want us camping so close to town. We camped close so we could check in with the fishery and be ready to work if and when the fish arrived.

I had saved $600 for my trip to Alaska and used most of it for my bus and air fares. Eventually my money ran out and I still hadn’t found work. Fortunately the gas station was hiring in Seward and I got a job at the register. The best part about this job was the free chili I could eat while working. This lasted a little more than a week before they realized I wasn’t twenty-one, and since they sold alcohol, I was laid off. I was so sad to lose my source of free chili. The next day the fish arrived, we were hired to work the slime-line, and we could move our tent onto the fishery property and set up in their tent city.  Showers were available too! No more washing in streams, or ponds or just out in the rain. We had finally made it, and things began to look brighter.

Working the slime line isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. When the fish arrive there is little time off, you get up around 3:30am and put on your clothes and raingear, still wet from the night before, and take your place at the stainless steel tables, pick up the metal scraper with the water-hose attached, and start scraping out the blood that runs up the back of the salmon, one after another, as they pass continually past you on a conveyor belt for the next sixteen hours. You get a couple breaks each shift, but you never get away from the smell of fish, or fish guts, or slime. Eventually the flow of fish ends, and you’ll get a few days off until the next ship arrives.

We lived this way for the next six weeks or so; working feverishly for several days and then relaxing for a couple days. During one of my days off I met a very drunk captain of a small fishing boat at the marina in Seward. He had been born in Harbin, China but was Russian. He tried to convince me to join him, and his surly and very creepy shipmate, on a fishing expedition. Even if he wasn’t so drunk that I had to prop him up as we walked down the dock to his boat together, and even if his assistant didn’t look like a serial killer, I wouldn’t have gotten on that boat with them. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to predict the numerous bad outcomes that could happen to me alone with the two of them at sea.

The beginning of August arrived and with it the close of the salmon season just over the horizon. Before I left to begin my own journey home, I splurged and bought two beautiful salmon from the fishery to send home ahead of me. I just needed to smoke them. A friend on the slime-line told me of a guy up the highway a few miles that had a smoker that I might be able to use, so I took my two fish and went to visit him. We struck a deal that I could use his smoker if I painted the side of his barn. He was a follower of the Baha’i faith, and while I was staying with him he tried to teach me their history and beliefs. I didn’t learn much about this, but I did feel like I was playing a part in The Karate Kid as I worked painting his barn.

After I finished painting he taught me how to use the smoker. He showed me how to find the proper diameter alder branches, how to cut them to the correct size, peel the bark, stack them, and prepare the marinade for the salmon. After he showed me the proper use of the smoker, how to tend the fire, and a few other details, he left me for the night to tend to my fish. I still needed to cut and peel quite a bit of wood but this would give me something to do throughout the night, since he estimated I’d be sitting out there, behind his shed, tending the smoker all night until early morning.

It was a beautiful clear and cool night. The stars and the moon came out for a while sometime near midnight or thereabouts. There was a full moon, and its silvery light cast down upon me through the bare alder limbs, illuminating my surroundings. The smell of the alder and the fish in the smoker was delightful and I couldn’t help but feel giddy with excitement for the freedom of this place, the wildness of Alaska, and that I was now a part of it.

(to be continued)

~FS

As a backup plan to UC Santa Cruz I also applied and was accepted to a small private liberal arts college only thirty minutes from my home. The following fall, after my summer in Alaska I would attend and study Mandarin Chinese, major in a program called, “Meaning, Culture and Change” and eventually study abroad for six months in Taiwan.

I expect this decision comes out of left field for the reader, based on the progression of my narrative up to this point. Such is the mind and whims of one in their late teen years, as I suspect many of you will remember from your own life history. My six years as an undergraduate will end up taking several more twists and turns, before I actually am awarded my bachelor’s degree.

But first I’d like to share a little about Alaska. They call it ‘The Last Frontier’, and that is an appropriate title. Vast and wild, a lot like one might imagine the wild-west back in the day: untamed land, animals and humans. Alaska is an exciting place, a place to spread your wings and throw caution to the wind. It also is the land of my birth, and it had an allure that called me back, to find my roots, and to create new histories.

My father was in the Coast Guard and stationed in Ketchikan, Alaska when I was born in the late 1960s. We only lived there less than a year before he was transferred to Cleveland, Ohio and then eventually to San Francisco. So I hadn’t lived in Alaska very long, but still I claimed it as my own, being a native. I considered myself on par with any other native Alaskan though I was separated essentially at birth. As a further claim, my family had also lived for a time on Kodiak island, but that was before I was born. Nevertheless this fact further emblazoned Alaska onto my consciousness and instilled in me a burning desire to return and see it for myself.

My plan was to take a bus to Seattle, fly into Anchorage and then take a float-plane out to Dillingham and work at a cannery there, save up money for college and make my way back home, somehow, in the late summer in time for the school year. I had a backpack, some changes of clothing, a tent, ground-pad and sleeping bag, new boots and jacket and a few other odds and ends. For some reason my mom convinced me to bring baking soda with me. I have no idea why, perhaps in case I met a baker stranded in the woods trying to make cookies. She was thoughtful that way. It seemed strange to me, but I packed a few tablespoons into an old film canister and tucked it into a side pocket on my backpack. It remained there throughout the entire trip, unused and forgotten until customs officials found it as I returned into the US, crossing the border from Canada. More on that later, but they didn’t believe my story that it was just baking soda.

My primary goal was to see Alaska but equally important to me was to make money for college and as a by-product of this goal I would get to see what it is like to live on the street, in a tent, without a home, and with very little money. I planned to have all but the smallest amount of money sent directly home so I couldn’t touch it while in Alaska. Our town had plenty of homeless and I grew up feeling badly for them. It seemed so difficult not to have a place to call home, and for many of them not to have a family. I figured this would be a good way to develop some empathy towards their plight, and gain some insight into the details of their way of life, by living like them for a summer. It was a good idea, and in general I did learn a lot of things about life on the streets: terms like ‘dumpster-diving’ which describes how I found many of my meals that summer, intimate experience with rain and mosquitoes with no means of relief, recurring hunger, the joy of finding a means to get clean, and the overwhelming feeling of gratitude to be treated like a human being by others instead of like a piece of garbage. But in the end, after losing everything on a train that I had hopped, a few too many sleepless nights on park benches, in abandoned trailers, or under truck canopies for sale, the novelty wore off and I began to really understand the horrors of life without a home and the toll it takes on a person, as I felt my own grip on reality starting to fray. Thank God the summer was only a few months long. But more on these things later.

I began my Alaskan adventure catching The Green Tortoise bus near the marina in Berkeley, California. This bus line is famous for cheap fares, friendly service and unorthodox seating. In fact, there aren’t any seats in the bus, except for the driver. I handed my backpack to him, he placed it in the compartment under the bus, and then I hopped aboard. All of the seats are removed in a Green Tortoise bus and are replaced with mattresses, front to back and wall to wall. Strewn about on the mattresses were the bodies of my new travel mates. I picked my way in and around my new bedfellows until I found an opening about midway down on the left side where I could sprawl out and relax. That night the bus drove straight through, without stopping, from Berkeley to someplace in southern Oregon while we slept, played cards and the guitar, and sang songs. The next morning we stopped at a campground for a pancake breakfast, spent some time in a sweat lodge, and swam in the nearby river. After a couple hours break we continued on our way to Seattle. On the bus I met two people; a sweet girl with a tragic story who became my partner in a brief two-day romance, and a young Israeli who had just completed his mandatory service in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and was traveling the world to get away from home and enjoy life, who became my summer companion in Alaska.

~FS

Accusation, slander and libel are the weapons of the man without self-control. He wields his tongue wildly, flapping it in all directions, like a sword slicing the air, inflicting wounds without number, without care, like a crazy-man. Anger floods his mind; his thoughts running amok while he seethes with violence, looking for places to spit his venom. What response is there to such a man as this, in the throes of his vicious and slanderous babblings? There is no reasoning with the man without self-control, or the one intent on his own opinion. For he will guard his point of view like a bear guards her cubs, attacking without mercy anything which threatens it, or which casts light upon it, revealing its narrow limits and faulty foundations. No, the best response to the man spitting fire, is silence. Silence is the salve and the remedy, because there is no arguing with a man who lacks self-control. Set reasoning aside, it is useless now. Pick up kindness and gentleness and fill your mind with good wishes for his peace and happiness. Do this, but know that he won’t recognize your love. You will not get any credit for your sacrifice. But do it anyway because it is the best thing to do, and by so doing you will not cause greater harm. In time, you may even help heal a broken man; if not him, perhaps yourself.

~FS

The hillside where I took the bandages off my eyes, the one which I routinely cleaned of garbage, and which was a refuge throughout my childhood and youth, overlooked a small valley on the eastern edge of my hometown. From the vantage point it afforded me, I could see across the valley, and from this height, everything in life seemed smaller and more manageable. The problems I had down below seemed to soften and become muted from up here, while the smells of the grass and the oaks which surrounded me filled my mind with a sense of hope and peace. After spending time on my hill I would usually return to my life with a sense of confidence and courage, with a clear mind and renewed strength. I loved the slopes of this hill almost as if they were members of my own family; I knew in detail the trees, the rocks, the contours of the ground, where it grew steep and where it flattened out, its paths where others trod, and its mysterious clearings hidden from view. My first real adventure took place on my hill, when I was about six or seven, and the two young daughters of our house painter joined me on a perilous journey to the top. They were each a year or two younger than I and I took my role as their guide and protector very seriously. Near the top there is a steep area, from a slide that had occurred many years ago, and this was the most exciting part, as one had to crawl up its face mostly on all fours, and just before it flattens out again, one must maneuver carefully around a large rock face, or fall to one’s certain doom. I explained this to my two young friends so they knew the danger they were facing, and I told them to stay close. We held each other’s hands as we worked our way around the large rock and then finally, relieved to have survived, ran joyfully the last hundred feet or so to the crest of the hill.

My hill was a magical place, a simple retreat, and the environment for much of my youthful contemplations. It was the first place I contemplated death, its meaning, and the fact that I would die someday. My own death seemed very remote to me though and it wasn’t easy to think about. I found it more interesting to think about what I would have done with my bodily remains. I devised an elaborate scheme, only slightly grounded in science, but mostly a product of my own fantasy and science fiction. I envisioned I would have my body placed in a glass coffin and placed at the top of my hill and my body would be covered in strips of potassium because I remembered reading someplace or perhaps observing an experiment in which potassium was ignited and that it burned extremely hot, with a great deal of light and energy emitted; so I would have my body covered by these potassium strips and powder and then lit. In this fantasy, all of the energy from the potassium would consume my body and this would be collected in some type of gadget on the end of the glass coffin, and that collector, which was also a transformer, would convert all of this energy from the potassium and my body, and focus it into a laser, which would be shot across the valley. And that’s how I’d end; in a golden potassium explosion condensed into a vibrant red laser shot out across the sky. It was fantastic, and the idea made me smile, and chuckle a little. I wondered if it could be done. That was the extent of my musings on death while in my late teens.

Although I did often think and worry about my own mother’s potential death. This filled me with fear and sorrow. Since her divorce from my father, which occurred at the tail-end of the general timeframe my three older siblings all moved out of the house, my mom was all the family I lived with through my teens. Within a fairly short period of time our family went from six down to two. It was strange, disconcerting and played a role in my desire to keep her close to me. The tendency I had to protect my two little friends on my hill, also manifested as a very strong desire to protect my mom and to make sure we were safe together. I believed that she was the only stability I had in the world, and to some degree, I would carry this belief within me well into my adulthood, long after I had moved out of the house and lived on my own, geographically far away from her.

Professor Reynold’s offer to get me into the neurology department at his former university back east was still in effect, and he periodically inquired about this with me and what I wanted to do about it. I’ve heard it said that in each person’s life there are only a handful of times that big opportunities come, and we need to be ready to act when they come, before they pass and are lost to us forever. Whether or not this is true in a general sense it certainly has been true for me, and this educational opportunity I was not prepared to act upon; I was incapable due to my attachment to my mom and my need to be close to her. I couldn’t conceive of moving to the other side of the country and spending the next four years, perhaps more, perhaps the rest of my life, that far away from her. I lived for adventures and new experiences, but only when they had an end in sight. This opportunity was too open ended and there was no sense of returning home from it. Professor Reynolds and I never really spoke about any of this since I’m not sure I even understood these feeling I had, so over time the plan to help me just petered out naturally. I still helped him with his distribution of materials for the blind and our relationship stayed engaging, but the original purpose for our meeting, and all the promise that entailed, slowly dimmed and eventually vanished.

Nature abhors a vacuum and so do I; new adventures and pursuits took the place of the old. I made plans to work in Alaska the coming summer following my one and only year at the Junior College. I also applied and was accepted to the psycho-biology program at UC Santa Cruz for the following year. Psycho-biology is the study of the biological basis of behavior and mental processes. It seemed like a great fit for me and the campus was only three hours away. But I still wasn’t ready to move even that far away from home. I didn’t even take the short drive to the campus to check it out, I just let the opportunity pass me by once again. I wasn’t ready to take serious steps towards my adult life because I felt unprepared and ungrounded, which was the truth. I had a mind full of ideas and a willingness to try nearly anything but I didn’t have a solid basis within me from which to live. I had fragments of notions about myself, but no cohesive identity or knowledge of myself. The only stable and trustworthy thing I had in my life at this time, in an emotional sense, was my mom, so I needed to stay close, at least for a little longer.

(to be continued)

~FS

Professor Reynolds inspired me by his example, to give of my time and abilities in service to others. His tireless work for the blind also brought to my attention the issues that blind people face every day and made me wonder what it would be like to be blind. So I devised a short three day experiment to cover my eyes and live as a blind person might. I’ve written about this experiment in a short article entitled “Reflections on Three Days of Blindness”, which includes my journal entries and some commentary for anyone interested in greater detail.  I’ll just include here, a few of the main points from that article, as they relate to this narrative.

The means of making myself blind were simple and very effective. First, I covered my eye sockets with cotton balls. Next, I covered over the cotton balls with large gauze pads, and then I used surgical tape to tape down all of the edges of the pads to my face, sealing entirely around the pads which covered my eyes. Lastly, I put on sunglasses. This last step was entirely for cosmetic and reasons of vanity, because, after the first two steps I couldn’t perceive even the tiniest trace of light, shade or shadow, so the sunglasses were completely redundant and superfluous.

During my three day experiment I kept a detailed journal using my typewriter: tracking my activities, my thoughts and feelings, and my conclusions. The portions in italics are from the journal I kept while doing the experiment:

Prelude to Day One of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

“Awaiting blindness, Friday night, February 12, 1988. 11:00pm. is something

            like what I imagine awaiting one’s execution might be like. As I wait, I try

            to indulge my senses as one who was about to die might enjoy and cling to his

            last meal, or his final breath. I’m scared, even though it isn’t permanent. A dark,

            dark prison is what it might be like, or maybe it’s really a doorway to a greater

            consciousness, a larger freedom. Who knows—I don’t. I’m writing this before

            my evening reading and meditation which, when I’m done, will be followed by

            covering my eyes for the duration of three days—a relatively short time but

            enough time, I think, to glimpse into the world of darkness, to somewhat

            feel what it is like not to see. I will uncover my eyes on Monday the 15^th at sun-

            set, on the hill overlooking my home and surrounding neighborhood. Until

            then these pages will be written by a seeing man who doesn’t see. Or does

            he? Goodnight.”

 Day One of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

            “I am feeling very frustrated. There are so many things I can’t do. I am constantly

            running into things or knocking them over. I’ve broken a glass and spilled a lot

            of water today. Victories include riding my unicycle around the block and walk-

            ing around Safeway to get some whipped cream. In both cases, I was accompan-

            ied by my good friend, Nicole. However, I felt very isolated at the grocery store.

            I can’t help but feel that people with handicaps aren’t liked by those without them.”

Looking at this entry and remembering back to that grocery store visit, I can still recall a sense that I had of being looked at in a way that felt like unkindness, and even though I couldn’t see them, I felt that people were uncomfortable with my presence.

           “Vision. It is important to imagine and to create images to compensate in a

            way for what I can’t see. To be able to picture in my mind what my surround-

            ings look like is crucial. I wonder what people who were born blind can picture?

            I bet a lot of their imaginings, their images, are better than our reality. I wonder

            if they would be let down to really see. To get a good look at the pollution in the

            air above Santa Rosa and the disgusting trash that lines every road and even

            invades the innocence of my hill. No, I bet they would love to see even that.”

           “Memory also plays an important role in my blindness. It goes hand in hand

            with visualization. Remembering where things are and how they are organized.

            In the kitchen I visualize the counter, set down my glass, walk to the stove, turn

            the knob one-quarter turn to the right, crack the eggs and cut the tofu…do I

            remember where the seasoning is located? Yes, it is in the front of the rotating

            dolly on the shelf above me. Add it to the eggs and tofu already cooking, return

            to the counter…remember, and save the glass that I left there…forget, and break

            it. I’ve done both today.

           Visualize the toothpaste going onto the toothbrush. Good. Do I remember what

            my mom looks like? Yes, of course, it hasn’t been that long, but if I was blind

            for a long time I would wish that someone would care, and understand enough

            to ask me to tell them what she looks like. Or ask me to describe a banana, and

            to explain what green is and where it is found. I mustn’t forget and neither

            should anyone else.”

Day Two of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

“I try to smell the flowers I got for Valentine’sDay today but I can’t smell either; I’ve got a cold. I try covering my ears for a moment—complete darkness and silence. No way! That is intense, I don’t want to try that. I’m glad I can hear, the music gives me power. I can feel powerful listening to the music. It fills me with some kind of reality—communication. Not with eye contact, but through the voice. Music is the same whether you can see or not.”

This entry reminds me how important communication and sharing together is to our mental and emotional health. It is easy to take for granted, while we have it so available to us, but when we are deprived of the opportunity to communicate and share, even silently perhaps as we sit together in a room listening to music, the isolation we can feel is very intense and demoralizing. I expect we all know someone in an isolated place, in a convalescent home hoping for a visitor, or shut-in at home for health reasons, or just socially unable to relate with others very well. There are so many cases and so many opportunities for those of us who are enjoying our healthy lives to reach out and communicate with those who aren’t enjoying the same state of wholeness and who need our communication.

Now it is their need, but it will likely be us someday, in the future, that will be in need, and I can assure you, when that time comes, we will hope that somebody cares enough, and has thought enough about this, to reach out and communicate with us when we are alone, or blind, or shut in. The truth is we are all in this together, we are all of the same fabric, the same blood, two sides of the same coin, and we need to care for one another with the same concern we give ourselves.

Day Three of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

            “I’m still blind. This is the last day. Tonight I take the bandages off. I’ve been having

            the most beautiful images in my head. They are so colorful and vivid. Pictures of

            skies drawn along by the tails of eagles. Illuminated rock walls, shimmering golden

            alongside the deep reds of fallen leaves. An eagles head stares me in the eyes, a

            faint vision before me. A translucent image but strong and full; it comforts me

            and calms me. Another eagle swoops down out of the sky. Full, thick cumulous

            clouds in pastel colors, things I’ve never seen in this way before. I hope I still

            see these things after I regain my other sight. These new visions are wonderful

            although I still run into walls.

            Yesterday I went to the beach with mom. We drove up to Goat Rock near Jenner.

            It was a great day. The sun was warm and the kids of the beach were having fun.

            The sounds of the beach travelled so well, I could hear things a hundred feet

            away as if they were right beside me. The crackling of a plastic bag, the shuffling

            of the sand by a walking seagull, and the roar of the ocean. The birds are chirping

            right now outside my window and a plane is flying overhead. It is still morning. My

            breath is calm and rhythmic like you might expect your breath to be on a morning

            with no worries. There were planes at the beach also, four of them.

            They flew low, I think they were searching for something. The faint roar of their

            engines slowly closing in over me and flooding my ears, then subsiding, allowing

            the crashing of the waves to once again take center stage. The yell of a Frisbee or

            beach ball player explodes from my left. Mom and I eat yogurt and bananas and

            enjoy the warmth of the sun. Before leaving we walk to the edge of the sea. I hear

            it in front of me. It starts with a soft but full-bodied gush which builds up to a

            crackle, something like the static on a radio, and grows into an entity all its own—

            the powerful roar of the ocean and the crashing of the water as the waves pound

            against the sand. Then the fizzling of the foam as it sneaks its way up to my feet.

            It sounds like hamburgers cooking on the grill and I see this in all its red glory,

            the grease bubbling and frying in my mind, sizzle, the meat redder than the red-

            dest red of the sighted world. What accounts for this extra color in my minds-eye?”

Day Three: Final Evening, on my hill, removing my bandages and seeing again:

           “What a drug sight can be; I just took the bandages off. I indulge in the visual

            now and almost fry my brain! Taking them off and seeing the sunset was some-

            thing I couldn’t have foreseen. It was more real and vivid and wonderful than

            anything I’ve ever seen. It was the ultimate in perception! I know that I won’t

            be able to aptly describe it on these pages but this is my best attempt. At first

            everything before me was blurred but only for a short time, and then I saw

            the tree against the background of the sky. Each small branch shimmered

            with its own life, an entity of its own. Deep, dark, blackness, so rich and deep

            like nothing I’ve seen before. Every twig, every limb, burnt savagely into the

            soft blue sky. And then the sun…the sun ducked down behind the trees and the

            bright halo arose from the dark mountain and filled the sky. It then began to

            shrink and as it shrunk it gained intensity until it burst and spurt brilliant

            light across the sky, across the valley, filling my vision with brilliance. What

            remained was a pastel yellow globe of light just above the horizon. To either

            side of the globe, just above the treeline, shot out a bright red line of light; it

            flickered and suddenly vanished. The blue and orange of the sky turned pas-

            tel. The air gained new life from the light of the sinking sun. A bird arose from

            the shimmering tree and shot past me. Then I turned to my left and saw the

            deepest, most crisp shades of purples and blues of the distant and not so dis-

            tant hills. And the hill I was on was pure also; it was green but it was also

            blue. It was both at the same time but it wasn’t confused or muddy; it was

            clarity. I had the feeling about my eyes as if the sights I was should be out of

            focus but all that I saw was crisper and richer than it had ever been. My eyes

            hurt but I kept looking. It struck be that everything I saw was alive and had

            just been born—the world was starting over, afresh! I then turned and looked

            behind me. There I saw my hill, the one I sit on all the time. The trees were

            black and green, all shades and hues, full and real; I was drunk with what

            I saw. Everything reached out and touched me, nothing stayed still, it all

            reached out to me: the purple hills, the dark green trees, my hill, the burnt

            black tree, the sky, and the light of the disappearing sun. All these reached

            out and stung my eyes. I turned to my right and there was a girl. She was

            so small it seemed but also so big. She was beautiful. Her eyes light blue,

            dark blue rimmed, and happy. She was so close but she also seemed very

            far away. I couldn’t touch her but I was glad she was there and I know I

            talked to her but I don’t know what I said, something about the beauty

            around us. This feeling didn’t go away as it seems it would, like so many ter-

            rific things do, but it stayed with me and surrounded me and caressed me

            for a long time. I saw in this way and I felt complete.”

 Conclusion of My Experiment with Three Days of Blindness:

            “It was an overwhelming experience. I am so glad I got to ‘see’ it. I feel very

            lucky. Now I can see and I don’t know if I care. Sure I don’t run into walls

            or trucks anymore, and I think that’s a good thing, but I feel as if I’ve lost

            something important….

            Now I’m in the harried world of sight where we are way overstimulated.

            We must rush off to school or to work, I have work to get done, I must be

            in certain places at certain times, and there is television and newspapers

            and books to read, shows to see, and sports to enjoy. I think that there is

            too much to think about, too much stimulation. I’m not entirely glad to

            have my sight back. It means jumping back into this whirlwind that we’ve

            all been spinning around in so long. A whirlwind that’s got us dizzy and

            confused, and that stirs up the dust and leaves us with tears in our eyes.

            The tears of our souls crying to escape this tormenting tempest….

 

            What satisfaction I felt from making my meals or making some cookies.

            It seems it would be the same, the feeling of fulfillment, if I had a plot of

            land somewhere and I could wake in the morning and build maybe a part

            of my home, maybe the bathroom today or a windmill for energy. What

            satisfaction that would be, and to plant the seeds that would sometime

            later be my food, and to write and paint and cook—how simple. How

            meaningless and wasteful…but it isn’t. It is simple and it is pure, and whole

            and unscattered, and unhurried, and easy to keep everything in front of

           me. Not confusing; just peaceful…

 

            It was a wonderful experiment and a great ‘vacationland’. Instead of

            travelling far away I travelled within and found a whole world of mir-

            aculous sights and breathtaking beauty—a land that reached farther

            than the eye can see, and that holds more to do than the greatest family

            amusement park. It is a land whose limits exceed infinity and whose

            treasures I’ve only just begun to dig up. This land of wonder is my mind.”

(to be continued)

 

~FS