(Quick note from the present – Vietnam’s relatively earnest
and responsible efforts during the current COVID season mean we are pretty well
back to pre-virus business on the domestic front. No domestic transmissions
since mid-April, and no COVID19-linked deaths at all. Schools, including my primary
place of employment have been back in business for over six weeks. No six foot/1.86-meter
thing, no bread starter kits, nothing. It would be nice if I could consider
paying the old country at least a visit, but then it would be quite a while
before I was let back in where I am now. Unlike in the U.S. this time last year,
I have employment enough where I can afford to live. Hopefully I got some other
things going on an artistic front to buff my ego. Anyway, all this can be yours
America, et al, if you’d only consider a wee bit collective intention – I’ll
say no more. Back to the more timeless topic from a few weeks ago.)
I’m pondering how to disclose something that really
shouldn’t feel like disclosure. The trouble is, it contradicts something people
assume by default. People seem rather surprised when I do muster the energy to
disclose it, which like so many things my side, is all about the bummer of
having to account for myself, and thus miss opportunities to talk about anything
else in the world. The best friendships involve ‘The Talk’ somewhere at the
beginning. But even relatively pleasant iterations may miss some details one
might find rather imp. Yes, the talk. You know… how you went blind; how you get
to work, use Facebook, eat, get around, scratch yourself … the whole floodgate
of unimagined concepts, a consequence of a world that isn’t bursting with blind
or disabled people -- particularly ones
that aren’t on a leash,, and aren’t exactly like that one unfortunate and inspiring
blind person you interacted with previously. It is part of the minority’s
burden no doubt. There are those that don’t care, and are sated by their
assumptions, and there is the insatiable flood of curiosity. It is good and
healthy to give one’s attention, but the overwhelmingness that is your
singularity causes you to get drowned in all those eyes that stare on you.
All this is to say…. hehem... and by the way, if you are
someone who’s had the talk with me, and are afraid to ask more questions --
don’t be afraid, you asshole! Also know that there are other resources out
there besides your friendly neighborhood disabled person encase you are
correctly assuming said person may wish to talk about other stuff sometimes
(See a couple quick links below).
All this is to circumlocute saying… hem hem… I have vision.
Yes, it’s true. Shameful isn’t it? Most blind people are doing this too. Not
disclosing to the wider world that they actually have some eyesight. If you
enjoy a little more argot in your life, we sometimes sport terms like low
vision or legally blind, even though, legally blind includes those with no
vision. I don’t really know about the legality of any of this, but I will often
refer to myself as blind, with low-vision or legally as a qualifier, if there
is insistence that I qualify myself in light of the aforementioned disclosure. Yeah,
we don’t tend to think of blindness as an explanation for why someone is
looking at something closely, right? An extremely common circumstance is for
someone carrying a white cane to be called out as not really blind for such
anomalous behavior as looking at things. Sorry officer. Amidst some people, doing
anything requires breaking rules of ignorance. You don’t need any vision to
discern the anguish you cause the sighted world you swim in just by doing
things unassisted. It is palpable. Man oh man… this reveal is right up there
with admission of my less than stellar hearing, which I’ve not even done yet.
When I was five or six years old,
someone told me I was visually impaired, which was the explanation I got for being
taken out of classes in order to smoosh my face against some paper and
familiarize myself with some enlarged shapes and characters. While it doesn’t
really jerk my chain like it once did, ‘visually impaired’, or VI doesn’t
appeal to me nowadays. It reeks of what someone like Carlin might have called
language softening. Might euphemistical sterilization due? That is to say, it
seems to want to soften the blow of a concept through apparently technical
sounding language – the more syllables, the more abstract. Why not one syllable
to rule them all? The other reason I don’t quite have the hots for visually
impaired any more is I’ve embraced the idea put forth by the National
Federation of the Blind in the U.S. and other organizations, that folks with
different levels of vision deficit (blindness) share a common reality, and that
dividing into categories based on residual vision creates a hurtful, ableist
hierarchy. Certainly, there are differences, and hierarchies form regardless of
ideals, although outside of the maybe 15% of blind folks with no vision, you’d
be hard pressed to find people with the exact same amount of sight. Yet impacts
of blindness, total or otherwise, are more social fabrications than natural facts
– a
bit on that here.
In truth, I am a quite visual person. While I’ve found that
I tend to range near the low end of visual capacity among those with color and
shape perception, I enjoy and use what I have. I like to stop and look at the
roses, essentially putting my nose in them, and I even do some drawing. The
blue sky and orange sunset make me happy and inspired. I imagine and dream
visually and colorfully. I have sexual and personal aesthetic preferences based
on appearance. My lack of apologies to those who assumed I was innocent of such
sins.
Perhaps part of the difficulty is I was never told what my
acuity is. I’m usually pretty patient, hence my service to you in this essay;
but one q that sometimes gets my goat is “how much vision do you have?” I
suspect if I had a number, like 20/990, this would not be very meaningful, and
would require no fewer chunks of time fruitlessly trying to depict what I can
see and when, “yes, I can see your hand moving”, and so forth. It’s just one of
those things that aren’t disagreeable per se, but certainly can be du jour,
especially when it would be much more interesting and helpful to disclose how
and why you carry an assault rifle with googly eye decals. In the meantime, I
just have to assume that is just what you are doing, plus one or more preferred
explanations, each about as awkward as approaching someone, and introducing
yourself by asking them how much they can see.
This isn’t to say that vision talk isn’t interesting either.
Sometimes context is everything. Think of how much time I took pondering and
writing this little bit, born out of my insecurities about how to disclose my
anomalous circumstance, and wash myself of the scrutinizing eyes I got to wade through
every day. That experience isn’t something I prefer welcoming daily, but there
it is. Anyway, it was good talking about me to you.
Here’s a pretty
good piece on blindness myths – check out #7 in particular.
