Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Watching the World GO By

Here I am again, dear readers.  It hasn't been quite as long since last time around, and I hope to be back on a semi-regular schedule finally.  Today was a wonderful day, both weather-wise and in other senses of the word.  I believe I've a handle on how I want to approach these last few weeks of the term, which is a great burden off my shoulders.

So, with the weather being as wonderful as it was this evening I thought I would take a little stroll outside after dinner.  I didn't have anywhere in particular in mind, but ended up outside Weatherford Hall, one of the dorms on campus close to mine.  There's a nice wooden bench there, which I decided might get some sunshine.  As it turns out, it didn't, but I sat there anyway.

The title of this post pretty much sums up what I did, I watched, or listened, to the world go by around me.  This was a profoundly relaxing experience.  I could hear birds of several kinds, people walking by, and eventually the wind blowing the leaves on the trees about.  There were also plenty of cars, skateboards, and at least one airplane.

A part of me was hoping that someone might stop by and say hello while I was doing this.  I had nowhere in particular to go and was determined to stay around for a good length of time.  Nobody did.  I'd like to think that if I'd been doing this in, say, Georgia, someone might have.

There's a tendency in our modern society to hurry.  We think that if we don't get things done as soon as possible, the world will fall apart around us.  We don't really talk to one another as much as we used to, before the advent of cell phones.  I can imagine with curious nostalgia, for I was never there, what it might have been like in the time when the phone was a giant thing sitting on a hall table.  I'd hope we talked more with one another then, and maybe took things just a little slower.

Of course, all this might also have something to do with the age old problem I face.  I'm blind, people know that, and because they don't know how to approach me or are afraid of offending me they simply don't bother.  I hope it was perhaps a combination of those two factors, ideally more the latter than the former.

I am a profoundly old-fashioned person.  I have deep misgivings about our current dependence on technology and what it is doing to the world around us.  This is at least ironic, since I depend so much on it for my every day existence.  I would not have been able to thrive in the hypothetical world I described.

It is because I depend so much on this modernity that I intend to try and spend at least a little of every day outside, doing nothing in particular.  I imagine it'll be good for my health, and who knows, I might meet someone.  My request for you all this time is to try and do the same.  I think it will benefit everybody, blind or otherwise.  Remember also that just because I'm blind doesn't mean I'm unapproachable or easily offended.  I look forward to many pleasant encounters with you all.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Speaker for the Blind

It has been a while, dear readers.  I'm sorry I've not been better at keeping this blog up to date.  Last week in particular was chock full of personal drama I didn't care for in the least, and I really couldn't summon the energy to write.  This week, so far, seems to be going much better, and so here we are.  I'm just sitting here on a Monday evening waiting for my laundry to finish.  No, I haven't read the whole Ender series.

Something happened this afternoon in one of my classes which I thought I should write about.  A girl came up to me and asked me a question--it was about whether or not I'd always been blind.  I told her that yes, I have, and we had a pleasant chat for a few minutes afterwards until she and I both had to leave.  Why is this meaningful?  I've been seeing this girl in class twice a week for five weeks now.  She didn't ask me until today, for any number of possible reasons.  I suspect, however, that a lot of it was fear of offending me.  I don't offend easily, and I like to think I'm an open book, within reason.  I want people to engage with me and ask questions if they have them, because I imagine most people haven't met many blind people before, and don't have any idea what it's all about.  More generally, I just want people to spend time with me the same way they do sighted people.

I say "engage with me," because in general it is up to you to initiate a conversation.  I have absolutely no way of reading your visual body language to tell me that you're interested or curious or bored out of your mind.  If you take the first step, we can go on from there.  I wish more people would.  The title of this post came to me when I realized I was playing the role of an ambassador of sorts for the blind community at large, which is a little paradoxical considering my somewhat strained relationship with it.  Look for a future post on exactly why that is.  My point, dear reader, is that I want social interaction and friendship and even romance as much as the next guy, but you might need to take the first step.  So that's what I want to invite anybody who feels up to it to do.  Comment here, email me, say hi in class or on the street or whatever.  You might be surprised, and I'd sure appreciate it.