I am trying to gather information so I can create a poem about blindness... If any ony has any ideas and wouild like to share them with me I wouild be most grateful. I have one friend who has recently been blinded through a motorbike accident and is telling me that his world is full of darkness. He misses being able to see the light, the colours of the rainbow and most of all he misses seeing the smiles on his beautiful wifes face and their newborn son Daniels cheeky grin when he looks up at him from the cot. While I was in hospital visiting him, I came across another person who has been blind since birth. She told me that what she didn't know about she cannot miss. However, she did say that it would be a miricle if she did get her sight back, if only for a few minutes to experience this world of light. By experiencing this she said, her dreams will no longer be full of nightmares, it would be surrounded by the wonderful colours of the rainbow. She got me to try an experiment with her. I had to close my eyes real tight then put a blindfold on. When I did this she had me walk around the room and feel my way around. I did this and I can tell you experiencing her world in that fashion was an eye opener. I bumped into the beds so many times in the ward, I had bruises all over my body. This was only a taste of what it was like being blind. Each time I bumped into a bed and caused myself harm Rebecca just laughed at me. Well I am glad I was able to give her a little bit of happiness in her life, by my antics of crashing into the beds. But I do not know what I would do If It where me who was blind. So I would appreciate all the help and ideas I can get of everyone out there in order to help me write a poem. As I want to go back up to the hospital to Rebecca to read it to her, letting her know that there are people out there who do care about the blind and all their difficulties in getting around, just as it very difficult for other people with other disabilitiies
Wackerob, I believe with what you have experienced from this little experiment should be a starting point for you when writing the poem. Write down how you felt when you were going around the room blind. What was it like bumping into the other bed in the ward. Did you hurt yourself badly? Now imagine what it was like for anyone who is blind, learning how to cope with a cane to guide them around the place, for the first time. Using this experience you have yourself a nice starting point. Then you can expand it by wondering how they have managed to cope today with all this technology around them. Feeling their way through a crowd, or walking across a road full of heavy traffic. Even try to imagine what it was like for them, experiencing these new technologies for the first time. Imagine the fear they must have felt, while experiencing this new breed of machinery, while at the same time coming to terms with modern technology. Now imagine how they experience your first touch. The texture of your hands could be rough and grainy like salt. Or it could be as soft and smooth like silk. Your body could be soft like a mountain of jelly. Perhaps it could be even taut like a mountain of rock.
THese two areas alone, from what both of these people have said, you could create a really emotive piece. Look through your friends eyes, imagine yesterday looking down at innocent little bundle of joy and seeing his huge smile, the warmth you felt, and today... it has been ripped away. You will never see that again. It brings an emptiness and a coldness into the heart. This other person, says seeing for a few minutes would take her nightmares away. Imagine you are having a nightmare, and a ray of golden sunshine comes beaming through, and you have no idea what it is because you have never seen it before. So you move to that ray of light and finally see the beauty of the suns rays that have been beaming down on you all these years warming your heart, but you had no idea because you had never seen it before. ANd maybe as you step into that ray of light the world turns from black, to the colours of the rainbow. Be creative. If that makes any sense to you at all... good luck with the poem. But step into their shoes, see the world the way they see it. Allow yourself to feel what they feel.
Press on with the experiment. You only "tried" being blind for a few minutes. Purchase one of those really good eye covers and try being blind for fifteen minutes. Set a timer, and do not remove the vision restricters until it rings. Go to the bathroom, shave, fetch the mail, use the TV remote, make a sandwich - in short, live blind for fifteen minutes. When it's done, think about what you experienced. Pay particular attention to other senses like touch, taste, sound and smell. Did they change while "blind"? Write down your notes. The next day, repeat the experiment for one full hour! Arrange for a friend to assist you with walking places - down the sidewalk on your street, through a store, up stairs or more frighteningly down the stairs! Hold onto the back of the friend's upper arm the same way a blind person does. Keep a small micro cassette recorder handy for immediate impressions and make more extensive notes after the experiment is over. Now...the big test...try being "blind" for an entire day. Never see the sun! That will include bathing yourself, bathroom calls, preparing and eating your meals, dressing (what about color-coordination of clothes?) using others to lead you around at school, church, shopping, using your TV and other electronic devices...living without the computer for a full 24 hours...OUCH! Now, you have completed enough "research" to write with meaning.
Thank you naci and torana for your comments and your helpful ideas. I will do as you suggested naci with regards to experimenting further with being blind. Torana, I also agree with what you said about already having two areas to work from I.E. no longer being able to see the smile on the child's face and also imagining seeing the light for the first time and not knowing what I am looking at. Again, I appreciate your comments. Assassin
Sorry wackerob, I appear to have replied to your post instead of one of my own... NaCi and Torana, please ignore my comments as they were not meant to be written by myself. If anyone were to reply, it should have been wackerob
like naci said continue with the experiment. Another way of doing it is by going to a school for the blind, explaining what you are hoping to achieve and see if they can help you out. Even if they allowed you to be blindfolded attending their classes, where they are training kids how to cope using all their other senses would be a welcome experience in itself.
Thats a nice idea Destroyer. I may go along with my friend to one of his classes, ask the principal of the school if I could possibly spend a week there during the daytime to learn and understand what the blind have to go through. In return I could ask if there is something I can to help, inside or outside the school. Even if its volunteering my services for one or two weekends a month doing charity work. That doesn't seem to bad, it is what you could call a fair trade off. Assassins Creed
Sorry Wackerob, I seem to be getting confused with my own posts. Instead of answering to my own, I seem to be answering for you too. Sorry Assassins Creed
how about mentioning the mixed blessing of not being able to see all the evil and suffering in the world, along with all the destruction man wreaks upon his environment? and no longer being influenced by what people look like, so the supposedly 'ugly' and 'beautiful' alike can be perceived only by what they say and do, as they should be, but seldom are by the sighted, instead of their society-created standards of 'acceptable' physical appearance? and the enhanced pleasure being unsighted gives to simple joys like a bird's song, a breeze riffling leaves, or the scent of grass and an infant/puppy/kitten?
