I gazed about at the aged and the youth.
All waiting for gentle Dr, Fein whose wife had the most beautiful of large clear graybrown eyes. Rather like the eyes of an ostrich, almost too big for the head.
I speculated that the optomologist had picked his wife because of this attribute. Perhaps his profession as well.
The chance to look into the jewels on every face, the irridescent brains.
This is when I picked up a magazine and read of the artist who had made a name for himself in New York City. His last painting had been of a horse wearing a blindfold.
Shortly thereafter he himself went blind and took a trip across our planet to the Far East and beyond. This to me was an incredibly courages thing to do.
To travel in darkness into the heart of the unknown. Images formed of the artist in tattered dirty robes and sandals trudging up a shallow river in the heat. At night sitting on stone floors hands gropping for strangers to beg for food.
Was this to me my image of blindness?
Of course in reality he must have traveled in the most modern of vehicles accompanyed by wealthy friends.
Maybe it was not courage but despair that drove him on this journey. Already cut off from the light it would not matter to him where he was.
Is not after all despair the brother to courage? When we value not our lives what have we to lose?
The other alternative is that through blindness he gained vision.
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I have long pondered on the word "vision". The English language outlives us all. It is the keeper of our collected wisdom and culture. Vision is a word with physical, mental and spiritual connotations. The recognition by our language that there is a link between mind, body and spirit. I have been told that the equivalent word to vision in the Japanese language also means " the act or power of seeing as well as imagination, or mystical awareness". Something for the linguists to study. PS. I later read that the artist unexplainably regained his sight. © Audri Phillips 1998 |
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