Walk and Talk

This bit is more than a week old, left for masticatory embellishment, which didn’t come to much – so here it be.

Sep 21, 2019

 

If you don’t walk, and you can, you should try it. It is one of my favorite things to do, but it is no passive sport for my likes – no walk in the park. This is true anywhere. It demands that I always be aware of my exact location, and who and what is there with me. Failure can mean going on the wrong path, but worse, and more commonly, it means triggering the deepest darkest fears of the sighted world. To see that a blind person is out on its own, and, oh so much worse, may lack certainty in its trajectory, is a nightmare worthy of the most piteous of wrath.

My inability to communicate extensively with local residents here doesn’t make it kilometers worse than the way things were in the Anglophony world. There I could expressively tell people to let go of me, and they would either ignore me, or swear at me before storming off. Here, I can’t do that beyond perhaps feebly attempting something that might sound like “no problem” … ok”, possibly making the situation worse.

So far, I’ve been mostly passive, with deference to the people that generally allowed me to go about my daily business, I’m happy to say. I suspect that many other blind people that have gathered the courage to assert themselves in life, also bare the cross of sensing that the world’s constant impulse is to have their pesky blind asses dragged off to where they can’t be seen. Surely an unblemished world full of truth, justice and equitability would proceed from there. Some day someone will have to make that tough but fair decision to lay down the law on these miss-folded, free-radicals of immortal sin.

“It is unpopular to say I know, but we are all thinking it” is what those sighted onlookers say. “I’m sorry honey, but we just can’t assist you every time your cane is about to touch the leg of a chair. I’m sure you’ll be much happier back where ever blind people come from.”

               When this one such caned person walks the street, thoughts often linger in the aftermath of having just been grabbed or pushed without warning. Round about here, it commonly happens with a particularly strong, unspeaking, and sometimes sharp-fingernailed hand. Coming down from this place is a principal challenge. So why do I say walking is one of my favorite things? I’m not totally certain, but there is the sense of accomplishment in the worst of times, and the urge to move against forces of stagnation.

Indeed, peace and calm should be a couple of the great merits of walking, and it doesn’t sound like they are for me, yes?

“So, explain yourself! Is it unnecessary torture?”

If I didn’t walk, you wouldn’t stop to ask. All the sights and sounds of the world at least conspire to make new experiences. I am on a journey to learn, so just as well. The alternative, to lock myself up, so as to not offend the simpler senses of reality bore by the great un-caned, is much more pitiful. I learned that in depths of depression in my life. They of the media also say that walking is healthy in ways that, if present only to help me fish for self-justification, make sense to me. Walking assists with the replenishment of neurons, memory, and calmness I read. I told you that 80 years ago, and you didn’t believe me, and I’ve been cuckoo as a pigeon since.

I do hope that I can encourage my fellow blind people in HN and VN to take the plunge, and walk about unassisted to the extent they can. It is one of those things that you lose if you don’t use. If no one sees a blind person walk outside, they will assume it can’t happen, and this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The busy streets are already not exactly red-carpets for any pedestrians, save for the lovely grand face of Hanoi around Hoan Kiem Lake. Tree plantings, lovely as they are, oddly consume the whole diameter of the other off-road walking spaces, obliging one to step onto the street to get around them. Where these aren’t present, surely in surplus are parked motorbikes, whole cars (nice parking job buddy), and seating areas belonging to the local eateries (luckily still often including the little Fisher Price-type plastic stools designed for one adult butt-cheek at a time). This is where “sidewalks” exist. On the nice streets where they abound, as near Ho Tay, or West Lake, regularly they terminate in an instance, replaced by salient buildings, descending stare-wells, or miscellaneous nothings. The pedestrian around here so often thus makes due with the shoulder of the street, where the honks and splashing of vehicles gives proof through the day and night they are not alone, much as an echolocating bat reminds a moth. It is not a first-class existence, but you manage. I’ve not been squished once, and I intend to preserve my 3-dimentionality as long as I’m around. People deserve to be able to move freely without vehicles everywhere on equal terms. I predict that at some point in the next couple decades Hanoi and many more major cities will go the way of other great tourist-ravaged urban centers like Barcelona, and greatly expand genuinely lovely pedestrian-exclusive, or car-free zones. There’s no better mutagen than tourism, as exemplified by the burger restaurants along the West Lake front near me, where aspiring pop-stars work their chops on soul-lite, Anglophony music, bereft of regional flavor or human provenance. It isn’t that bad really. Life goes on in a world where you are not squished. I am thankful for that life. Whatever keeps you out of a black hole can only keep you sane.

Actually, a pleasant facet of the sonic environment here is the infusion of certain lovely traditional instruments and melodies that locals continue to enjoy. The Dan Bao and Danh Thu for instance flourish in the melancholic tunes I hear coming through shop windows. The traditional instruments are slightly electrified, and sometimes placed on a synthesizer background, but they are alive and well. I’m thinking it’s not the Australians or Americans doing that. Those mates of ours are far from repenting for their demands that restaurants either play Justin Timberlake incessantly, or perfectly imitate him with another humanoid singing unit, and apparently to not take down the sign that says “Happy Wednesday!” Everyone around the world risks becoming a happy consumer of such things though, as they make their way on the shoulder of the Thorofare.

               Now to take on a week of teaching and learning. Hopefully I can find an uncaged bird or two singing along the way also. The trapping of wild songbirds remains an ish around here and in neighboring countries, extending beyond SE Asia. May we not be caged inside or squished on any surface.