Notes on Blindness

by Hull, John;

  He called at the house a couple of times during the following weeks but I was out. He then rang and an appointment was made for five o’clock on Friday 2 March. When I arrived home from the office, Mr Cresswell was already there talking with Marilyn. Thomas and Lizzie were frisking around rather noisily and when it became clear that we were about to start Marilyn offered to leave the room and take the children with her. Mr Cresswell was, however, very anxious that she should remain, and so we all stayed.

  Mr Cresswell began by telling me that I had had a fall when I was young. He did not deny that what the doctors said about detached retina might well be true, according to their lights, but the other way of looking at it was that I had had a fall and this had caused me to lose my sight. I expressed interest in this in a fairly non-committal way and we passed on to various other subjects. Mr Cresswell told me a little bit about his work, his calling to be a healer, and the extent of his ministry. He had special knowledge. We, for example, had a sick woman teacher friend. Marilyn and I discussed this briefly. We do have dozens of women teacher friends but, to the best of our knowledge, none of them was sick at that time. Mr Cresswell did not pursue that line of inquiry, but told us that we were missing someone very badly. We were, he told us, missing our home. He asked which home we were missing. We told him that this was our home and we were not missing any other place. ‘Aren’t you homesick for your parents’ place?’ We repeated that this was our home, we loved each other very much, we were happy together and although we loved our parents we did not miss their home. Mr Cresswell then introduced the idea that our true home was heaven, and this was the place that we should be missing.

  These little attempts at clairvoyance having been somewhat inconclusive, our visitor began another explanation about my lack of sight. He told me that I had ceased to read the Bible. I assured him that I had not ceased to read the Bible and he countered this by insisting that I was not reading it as much as I used to. I informed him that I was only reading the Bible for about half an hour a day, and in braille, whereas in the past I had occasionally read the Bible more each day, and at other times less. Mr Cresswell seemed to think this a clear admission of guilt, commenting that the moment we stop reading the Bible these things come upon us. I pointed out that there are many sighted people who had stopped or who had never read the Bible. They did not lose their sight, so the thing he was describing could hardly be a general rule. Mr Cresswell pointed out that people are different, and then again maybe it was not me but my parents or grandparents because God visits their sins unto the third and fourth generation. Mr Cresswell took a vigorously punitive view of illness and disability.

  These preliminaries being concluded, Mr Cresswell called for a Bible. Marilyn offered him a New English Bible, but he was not satisfied with it. We passed him an Authorised Version, which was acceptable. He sat there for some time apparently meditating on what he should read. He gave the impression that he was waiting to receive instructions because he muttered softly, ‘Genesis? Yes? No, not Genesis. All right. Acts? Yes, we’ll have the first chapter of Acts.’

  Since I was unable to read the printed version, Marilyn was asked to read. In order to impress upon him that I had not stopped reading the Bible, I broke into the reading about half way through the chapter and quoted from memory the following six or eight verses. Mr Cresswell was delighted with this, and Marilyn then completed the chapter. Our visitor called for a cup of cold water, stood up, asked me to remove my glasses, placed one of his hands over my forehead and eyes, sprinkled my head with the water, and prayed, first a general, healing prayer, then the Lord’s Prayer, followed by the Twenty-third Psalm. He then anointed my eyes with the water, above and below each lid, and asked me to roll up my right sleeve. He was taken aback to discover that my arm was bandaged. He asked me what that was in a tone of surprise and some indignation. I explained that I had been having a little eczema and he told me to remove the bandage, and that I would never, never wear it again. I was not sure if this was an instruction or a prediction, but certainly Mr Cresswell seemed slightly upset by the bandage, possibly because I had not informed him about the full extent of my bodily state, or perhaps because his special knowledge had not revealed it to him. Be that as it may, I was then grasped by the upper arm, and Mr Cresswell made firm, stroking movements right down the arm to the tip of the fingers, stroking each finger or pulling each finger one by one to the very tip. This was repeated on my left arm and then over my head, although I cannot quite remember if the movements on the head were up or down. The evil influences having been removed from me in this way, I was then told to take cod liver oil mixed with an equal quantity of honey. Nothing was said about whether the dosage should be repeated, or how often, and I did not inquire.

  This entire ritual was repeated again on Marilyn who was then commanded to drink a little bit of the remaining water and in a forceful voice I was commanded to finish it off. That was the end of the matter, and Marilyn left the room to put the two babies in the bath. Mr Cresswell remained for a few moments, and we had a very friendly and lively conversation about his work and the Lord’s work. I thanked him for coming and thanked him for his prayers and readings. He told me that the Lord had seen fit to afflict me with this pain but that probably he would now see fit to remove it. He was cautious, and emphasised the probability only. So, with renewed greetings and warm embraces, together with a promise to return to offer further treatment if the Lord so instructed him, Mr Cresswell took his leave.

  4

  Time, space and love

  Spring 1984

  31 March

  We were listening again to the cassette of the story of Rapunzel. When we came to the part where the witch throws the prince out of the window of the tower on to the thorns which blind him, and where the prince wanders through the forest with his stick looking for Rapunzel, Thomas asked, ‘Why was he blind?’

  ‘Because his eyes were poorly’, I said, adding, ‘My eyes are poorly’.

  In a very serious and probing tone, he asked me, ‘Are you blind?’

  ‘Yes, I am’, I answered.

  He turned towards me, and I sensed that he was examining me closely. ‘Your eyes are closed.’

  I realised that this was true. Sometimes my eyes get very itchy and watery, and I tend then to keep them closed. I opened my eyes wide, and said, ‘Yes, but even when I open my eyes, I still can’t see, because my eyes are poorly.’

  ‘Can’t you see the pictures?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I can see the pictures.’

  ‘Your eyes aren’t poorly’, I said.

  I gently put my hand over his eyes, closing the lids and keeping them firmly closed. ‘Now can you see?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  I took my hand away. ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, I can see now.’

  ‘Your eyes aren’t poorly’, I said. I repeated this some half-dozen times, and he seemed to enjoy it, but accepted it very quietly and thoughtfully. Again and again he repeated, ‘Yes my eyes aren’t poorly. Yes. I can see’, each time I took my hand away.

  We continued to listen to the story of Rapunzel, but a few moments later he interrupted again. ‘When did you get blind?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘It happened just a few days before you were born’, I said.

  ‘What made your eyes go poorly?’

  ‘They were sick’, I said, ‘and the doctors couldn’t make them better.’ We continued with the story.

  This was a very serious and important exchange. For the first time having poorly eyes, being blind, not being able to see, not being able to see pictures were all associated. It is realised now that this constitutes a difference between me and Thomas, and that it is part of my own personal life-history.

  The Rapunzel story is quite important in children’s understanding of blindness, or their misunderstanding of it. I remember being in Wales on a summer holiday in 1981. Imogen, then aged eight, asked me, ‘Daddy, if I cried and the tears fell
on your eyes, would you be able to see again?’ I am sure that she had picked this idea up from Rapunzel, for this is how the story ends.

  17 April

  Michael tells me that he thinks my perception of time has undergone a change since I lost my sight. He thinks that of all the people in the Faculty I am the only one who always seems to have plenty of time. Everyone else is rushing around, chasing their tails, trying to cram every minute with necessary tasks and to squeeze the last drop out of time. I alone seem to have all the time in the world. Michael remarked that in my work I don’t cut corners; I just go on, doing what has to be done, until it is finished. It does not matter how much time it takes. In his own work, he has to cut corners all day long, in order to get his work finished.

  Michael suggests that this different attitude to time, or position within time, may be partly due to the fact that I am not under pressure from another life. I do not have to leave the office at 5 p.m. in order to catch the garage so that I can get the car home so my wife can use it tonight. I do not have to get to the supermarket before it closes. There is a sense in which other people are not dependent upon my time.

  Michael also wonders whether the fact that I cannot see the change in the day as the evening draws on is a factor. I press my clock. It says that the time is 5.45 p.m. This is an abstract measure of time. It is a fact, spoken by a synthetic voice. I do not perceive the rise and decline of the day.

  I think there is much truth in all this. Sighted people can bend time. For sighted people, time is sometimes slow and sometimes rapid. They can make up for being lazy by rushing later on. Things can be gathered up quickly in a few minutes. It is a bit like the change in your sense of time when you buy a car. Journeys that previously took two hours now take twenty minutes. You are amazed at how much more you can squeeze in. In this way, you force time to your will. Time, for sighted people, is that against which they fight.

  For me, as a blind person, time is simply the medium of my activities. It is that inexorable context within which I do what must be done. For example, the reason why I do not seem to be in a hurry as I go around the building is not that I have less to do than my colleagues, but I am simply unable to hurry. It takes me almost exactly twenty-two minutes to walk from my front door to my office. I cannot do it in fifteen minutes, and if I tried to take thirty minutes over it, I would probably get lost, because knowledge of the route depends, to some extent, upon maintaining the same speed. The measured pace, the calm concentration, the continual recollection of exactly how far one has come and how far is still to go, the pause at each marked spot to make sure that one is orientated, all this must be conducted at the same controlled pace. Whether it rains or shines, I just go on.

  It is also a matter of what one expects to be able to wrench out of time. When I had sight, I would have worked with feverish haste, correcting forty footnotes in a single morning. Now, I am happy if, with the help of a sighted reader, by the end of the morning I have corrected ten. I do not think to myself, ‘Oh damn. I’ve only done ten’. I think, ‘Good. That’s ten done. Only another three mornings like this and the job will be finished.’ I am so glad that I am able to do it at all. The simplicity, the careful planning, the long-term preparation, the deliberateness with which the blind person must live, all this means that he cannot take advantage of time by suddenly harvesting a whole lot of it.

  Perhaps all severe disabilities lead to a decrease in space and an increase in time. I think of my friend Chris, with his multiple sclerosis. Without his mobility machine, his range is about twenty yards. With the machine, which travels at about four miles an hour, his space is extended. He can rove for eight or twelve miles and come home again. Nevertheless, his space has shrunk relatively to what it was when he was in normal health. Time, on the other hand, has strangely expanded. It takes him 45 minutes to tie up his shoelaces in the morning. It doesn’t matter. He does not get impatient. He just does it. That is how long it takes to tie shoelaces. I think of Clive Inman, my medical friend, who has recently been recovering from a serious road accident, with his back injuries, lying in the Stoke Mandeville bed in the spinal unit at the Hexham Hospital. Space to him is diminished to the size of his bed. On the other hand, for those twelve long weeks, he has all the time in the world. He can lie there all day, spend hours talking to friends, listening to the radio, thinking. It no longer matters if it takes five minutes careful concentration to pick something up.

  When you have a lot of time, you experience time-inflation. The price of each hour goes up, because of the cost involved in the performance of each tiny task, but because the tasks are long and take so many hours the distinct value of each hour seems to deteriorate. The increasing cost is associated with a decreasing value. The hours become cheap in contrast to the necessary tasks which must be accommodated within them. You are no longer fighting against the clock but against the task. You no longer think of the time it takes. You only think of what you have to do. It cannot be done any faster. Time, against which you previously fought, becomes simply the stream of consciousness within which you act. For the deaf-blind person, space is confined to his body, but he has lots of time.

  Modern technology seeks to expand human space and compress human time. The disabled person, on the other hand, finds that space is contracted and time is expanded. It is because of the space–time co-ordinates within which the blind person lives that his life becomes gradually different from the lives of sighted people, particularly in a time of high technology.

  27 April

  What is the world of sound? I have been spending some time out of doors trying to respond to the special nature of the acoustic world. I am impressed by the many different aspects of reality, the range and depth of the contact points between myself and something created by sound.

  The tangible world sets up only as many points of reality as can be touched by my body, and this seems to be restricted to one problem at a time. I can explore the splinters on the park bench with the tip of my finger but I cannot, at the same time, concentrate upon exploring the pebbles with my big toe. I can use all ten fingers when I am exploring the shape of something but it is quite difficult to explore two objects simultaneously, one with each hand. It is true that, if many people were poking me, I would feel all the prods with various parts of my body but this would not tell me very much about the world, only about my body.

  The world revealed by sound is so different. It is true that I cannot listen to two different tape-recorded books at the same time, but that has to do with speech. I am thinking of the way in which sound places one within a world.

  On Holy Saturday I sat in Cannon Hill Park while the children were playing. I heard the footsteps of passers-by, many different kinds of footsteps. There was the flip-flop of sandals and the sharper, more delicate sound of high-heeled shoes. There were groups of people walking together with different strides creating a sort of patter, being overtaken now by one, firm, long stride, or by the rapid pad of a jogger. There were children, running along in little bursts, and stopping to get on and off squeaky tricycles or scooters. The footsteps came from both sides. They met, mingled, separated again. From the next bench, there was the rustle of a newspaper and the murmur of conversation. Further out, to the right and behind me, there was the car park. Cars were stopping and starting, arriving and departing, doors were being slammed. Far over to the left, there was the main road. I heard the steady, deep roar of the through traffic, the buses and the trucks. In front of me was the lake. It was full of wild fowl. The ducks were quacking, the geese honking, and other birds, which I could not identify, were calling and cranking. There was continual flapping of wings, splashing and squabbling, as birds took off and landed on the surface, or fought over scraps of bread. There was the splash of the paddle boats, the cries of the children, and the bump as two boats collided. Parents on shore called out encouragement or warning. Further away, from the larger expanse of the lake, there was the different sound of the rowing boats as they swished pa
st, and beyond that was the park. People were playing football. I heard the shouting, running feet, the impact of leather upon leather as the ball was kicked. There seemed to be several groups playing different games. Here there were boys; further over in that direction there seemed to be a group of young children playing. Over this whole scene, there was the wind. The trees behind me were murmuring, the shrubs and bushes along the side of the paths rustled, leaves and scraps of paper were blown along the path. I leant back and drank it all in. It was an astonishingly varied and rich panorama of movement, music and information. It was absorbing and fascinating.

  The strange thing about it, however, is that it was a world of nothing but action. Every sound was a point of activity. Where nothing was happening, there was silence. That little part of the world then died, disappeared. The ducks were silent. Had they gone or was something holding their rapt attention? The boat came to rest. Were people leaning on the oars, or had they tied it to the edge and gone away? Nobody was walking past me just now. This meant that the footpath itself had disappeared. I could only remind myself of its direction by considering that it ran parallel to the bench upon which I sat. Even the traffic on the main road had paused. Were the lights red? When there is rest, everything else passes out of existence. To rest is not to be. To do is to be. Mine is not a world of being; it is a world of becoming. The world of being, the silent, still world where things simply are, that does not exist. The rockery, the pavilion, the skyline of high-rise flats, the flagpoles over the cricket ground, none of this is really there. The world of happenings, of movement and conflict, that is there.