Blindness and Visual Memory

by Francesca Marinaro

One morning while scrolling through my Twitter feed, I paused on a friend’s tweet including a photo of a perfect sunrise captured during a jog. I read the tweet, closed my           eyes, tried to mentally pull the image into focus, and experienced a twinge of longing; I wanted to see it. I had that fleeting moment—one that comes far more often than I care to admit—in which I wished I had a switch that would allow me to turn on my eyes for five minutes, even five seconds a day.

Over the years, I’ve learned to live without sight; that said, one question I often encounter that makes me more uncomfortable than most is: “If you could see anything, anything at all, what would you want to see?” Having been born with partial sight, I find the answer to this question difficult to unpack. You would think, wouldn’t you, that I’d want to see all of the things that have come into being since I lost what usable vision I had, because I’m aware that the world looks different now: Face time and webcams, touch screens and HD TV. The truth is, though, that the things I want to see aren’t necessarily the things I’ve never seen before. I’m curious to know how things look, of course; I’d love to be able to appreciate the clarity of watching my favorite film in high definition rather than, as a friend once put it, “all weirdly pixelated”. Yet I don’t feel like my imagination is lacking in filling in the gaps.

What I want to see, what I sometimes wish I could see, are the things I remember seeing—the things in my memory that I haven’t quite forgotten, but that naturally, with time, fade around the edges: sunshine on the water, rainbows, autumn leaves. It’s a kind of…visual nostalgia, I suppose, and as I grow older, and layer upon layer of dust obscures those memories, it’s an entirely natural longing. Having had some minimally usable vision, I sometimes seem to inhabit two worlds: the one in which I see, and the one in which I don’t. Sometimes I want to return to those memories, dust them off, and look at them again (literally and figuratively) because I have some deep, unspoken longing to legitimate my experiences as a (partially) sighted person, to confirm that that world I inhabited was real.

I’m no longer sure to what extent my imagination has colored in the blind spots in my visual memory, but maybe that doesn’t matter. We’re all guilty of revising the narratives our memories tell. Our memories are a kind of image-text of a literary biography. The basic facts are verifiable, but we colored in the gaps with details that might be true, or might just be stylistic flourishes intended to reinvigorate the memories for ourselves when we flick through the photo albums in our minds to revisit favorite chapters of our lives.

Francesca Marinaro is a teacher and freelance writer currently living in Florida with her Yellow Lab guide dog. Diagnosed with Leber’s at birth, she lost her usable vision as a teenager. She holds a Ph.D. in Victorian Studies from the University of Florida and currently teaches English Composition at Broward College. She adores Jane Austen, chocolate, BBC Drama, the Big Bang Theory, Colin Firth movies, and the Oxford comma. Check out her work at http://www.fmarinaro.com

Colors

by Fred Nikkl

I was riding the elevator down from the Second Sense blind services organization where I volunteer and happened to hear two people discussing the new colors there office was being painted.  Now it has been over fifty years since I have been able to see colors so their interest in the color scheme of their office didn’t hold much interest for me.  Later, it occurred to me that not being interested in color could be considered to be a little strange.  We are surrounded by color wherever we go.  Everyone has an opinion about the colors around them.  Just because I can’t see the colors around me shouldn’t mean they are not of interest to me.  The problem for me is that my memories of color have faded over the years since I have been blind.  What is blue?  For that matter, what do all the colors look like?  My memory of green, for example, conjures up particular memories.  I picture the dress greens I wore in the army.  Of course, that is only one shade of green.  How many others are there?  How can I compare one shade to another when considering the color of my shirt or anything else for that matter?  My color identifier gives a name to everything I try it on but that doesn’t tell me enough about the particular shade the color is. Some blind people only wear certain colors just to be on the safe side but that seems kind of boring to me.  I have been lucky to always have someone to take shopping with me so I have some idea of the colors I am buying.  The problem with that is that everyone has a different idea of how different colors go together.  One person says I look good in a certain shade of blue and the next person says something different.  Maybe there isn’t a definitive answer to the color question.  

I think I will choose a particular shade of blue and use it as a basic color for my color choices. Being a man, this will be a lot easier than if I were a woman!

Fred Nikkl is 69 years old and has fun writing.  e lost his sight when he was a young adult but has never let that stop him from being a good dad, grandfather, friend, advocate for the blind and generally nice guy.  Blindness has also never stopped his love for adventure, including dabbling in writing.  His previously posted story on Vision Through Words called Hope will be appearing on the Magnets and Ladders website for writers with disabilities.

Orchestra

by Darragh the Poet

Bliss is this to me

Steam setting softness, mystical memories melding

An orchestra glances notes of love

All worrisome infections healed from harmony

This is bliss to me.

 

Darragh became blind after a head trauma in 2004.  He says that a lot of his writing has his visions as a blind person that he sees in people or dreams.   Darragh has a poetry website of his own at www.welcometodarragh.blogspot.com.  He is currently working on 2 books.

Snow Secrets

by Marilyn Brandt-Smith

I took the trash to the curb without knowing

For the past few hours outside it had been snowing.

If they said it on TV along with weather,

I guess I must have rolled it all together

With all the other world and national news;

Did our Kentucky Wildcats really lose?

That ad caught my fancy, a wreath for the door,

It plays carols just like the one we had before.

Reds, golds, and greens are memories without vision,

But they’re still real because of my decision

To keep them alive inside and not forget them,

And make it a point of pride to always let them

Help me have a voice when decorating,

Wrapping presents, shopping, and creating

Matching outfits to help me flaunt the season;

But right now my heart looks for a reason

To go outside and play in all that fluff,

Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll find enough

On a place that’s way up high and really clean;

I’ll bring it in and make some snow ice cream.

 

Better grab that yellow plastic bowl,

My coat and scarf and socks against the cold;

I used to love to see the dazzling bright

Of the moon on snow on a chilly winter’s night.

When I’m done out here I’ll have some fun,

Take a ball inside and toss it at someone;

Don’t need a cane, I’m only here a minute,

Everyone should be out here playing in it.

But it’s my secret ’til I go inside;

I’ll make an angel, stretch my arms out wide,

Alas, it’s time to play my grown-up role,

But I bring them winter’s magic in this bowl.

 

(Marilyn lost her remaining vision just before Christmas when she was thirteen. Missing the colors of Christmas that year was the hardest part of it for her. She tries to make up for it every year with all the sensory experiences like carols, hot coco, pine and spruce boughs, and snow.)

Marilyn Brandt Smith’s writings reflect memories of her childhood at the Texas School for the Blind (1955) and at home on a ranch in south Texas.  She taught children in summer programs and adults in year-round rehabilitation centers and in their homes. Marilyn also worked as a counselor and a director of rehabilitation for several agencies across the country. She is now totally blind and lives with my family in a hundred-year-old home in Kentucky.

Fresh Fallen Snow

by Lindsay Bridges

Smell evokes memories and emotions in a way that no other sense can. The intensity and vividness of memories elicited by imagining a particular scent is attributable to the plethora of visual, auditory, taste, and tactile sensations associated with it. Specific smells bring forth a celebration of the senses. Take the icy smell of a winter’s first snowfall, for
example.

Essentially crystallized water, some people say snow is odorless, but to me its mineral scent conjures one of my most profound memories. When I think about the smell of snow, I am overcome with emotions. Joyfully, I reminisce about the first snowfall I saw, in all its glory.

It was during my sophomore year of college at a Michigan university. How is it that a woman born in the Midwest sees her first snowfall at age nineteen? Of course, I had experienced countless snowy days before, but being visually impaired my attention was always focused on using what little vision I had to navigate my surroundings. In a way, my visual sensory experience blinded me from my other senses.  Walking down a snow-covered block required so much visual bandwidth; the smell of snow never crossed my mind.  ragments of falling snow, mentally pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, had always been my understanding of a snowstorm. This day, when I was nineteen, differed because it was the first snowfall I could smell, taste, touch, hear, and see.  Liberated from my visual impairment and sensory blindness, I experienced it all with my guide dog by my side. No longer trying to navigate the world with my broken eyes, I was able to walk with my head held high, breathing in the cold, crisp smell of winter’s first snowfall. My eyes focused not on where we were going, but on the most beautiful scene! Fluffy white snowflakes danced across the blue sky, catching in my hair and tickling my nose. Each breathe I took embraced the sharp, cold scent of freshly fallen snow.

Lindsay Bridges lives near Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two children. She has Retinitis Pigmentosa and is legally blind.