Notes on Blindness

by Hull, John;

  8 July

  Studying from cassettes means that the difference between the spoken word and the printed page is broken down. Reading a book has become like listening to a lecture. It is not quite the same, because by pressing the rewind button briefly I can get my lecturer to repeat again and again what she has been saying. Moreover, the recording means that there is no ambiguity about the actual words which were spoken, and I can listen to it again and again, from various points of view.

  It remains true, however, that the task of summarising a lecture or a speech as I am listening to it is very much the same whether the speaker is personally present on the platform or whether it is a recording. If you have the printed text in front of you as someone is speaking, you tend to follow the printed text, but if you have nothing but the speech, you have to concentrate entirely upon what is being said.

  If I am getting any better at summarising and evaluating immediate speech in the form of lectures and addresses, I am sure it is because of the practice I get in doing this very thing as I listen to books.

  9 July

  I was walking along Navigation Street in the city centre. Someone offered me a packet of mints. ‘Thank you’, I said brightly, accepting the sweets with a cheerful smile.

  ‘That’s all right’, replied my benefactor. ‘I had decided to give them to the next child I met anyway.’

  At a formal dinner, the main course was chicken on the bone. I asked the person next to me to wave to the waitress, to ask the kitchen staff to take the chicken off the bone for me; this is the least embarrassing thing to do on these occasions. The guest next to me said this would be quite unnecessary; she would cut up the chicken for me herself. This she did, very happily and skilfully, passing the plate back to me with the comment, ‘I cut up a meal for a handicapped child only the other day.’

  I was staying with a friend in an unfamiliar house, where there had been an overflow from the toilet during the night. The bathroom carpet was soaked with the overflow. My first knowledge of this was in the early morning, when I got up to go to the bathroom. My friend woke up immediately and called out, ‘John, don’t go into the bathroom. There’s been an accident.’

  I came back, and he explained the problem. As I sat thought-fully on the edge of the bed, I said to him, ‘Tell me, had you been lying there half awake all night, waiting for me to get up and go to the bathroom so you could intercept me in time? You didn’t like to wake me up earlier to tell me? You knew it would be messy if I went in there without knowing?’

  My very good, old friend gave me a laugh. ‘Well’, he said, ‘that’s more or less right. I didn’t stay awake. I went off to sleep, having set my head to wake up the moment I heard you get out of bed.’ He added thoughtfully but with a chuckle, ‘It’s like having a child again.’

  Travelling with my eleven-year-old daughter on British Rail, we could never work out whose ticket was whose. Her ticket, purchased on a Family Concession, had printed on it ‘Flat Rate Fare’. Mine, purchased under a Disabled Person’s Concession, had printed on it ‘Child’.

  I had a discussion the other day with Clive Inman, who is confined to a wheelchair. He tells me that, when people see him in his wheelchair, they tend to speak to him in a gentle, slow and compassionate sort of voice. It is a kindly, condescending voice, the way some people speak to children. It is also the voice of uncertainty, people not knowing quite how to react in meeting an adult who has been ‘cut down to size’.

  A disabled adult man loses part of his manhood, part of his adulthood, and part of his humanity. I don’t like having my adulthood wrenched from me like this.

  10 July

  While, on the one hand, it is so easy to be marginalised, it is also very easy to dominate. Sometimes a blind person may not be aware of his dominance. He may not realise that he is the centre of a concern, that all around him there is an elaborate fuss which involves getting out of his way; preparations are being made for him, agreements are being reached about him, conversations are taking place in readiness for his arrival. Sometimes a blind person will realise that he is the centre of an attention which he does not want. He is an object of curiosity. All eyes are focused on him as he enters the room.

  It is so hard to find an intermediate way, that is, somewhere between being ignored, and being the centre of attention. It is so hard to be a normal person when one is not a normal person. It is also hard to avoid the situation which arises when, because of one’s very powerlessness, one does have a kind of power over people. The disabled person tends to render other people powerless. One flusters them, reduces them to confusion, covers them with uncertainty and embarrassment, makes them feel gauche and insensitive, awkward and intrusive, makes them realise that they do not know what to do, or that they are not handling this very well. The disabled person can inflict all of these feelings upon the normal.

  To judge the right use of this power is an important part of learning to be a disabled person.

  11 July

  There is a certain point along my route which catches the wind. This morning, as I came up the steps from the underpass and around the corner, it hit me. It was a beautiful, warm, scented breeze, not hot like the Australian Northerly, but full of a perfumed richness; a moving, fragrant wind. It was an unsettled wind, suggesting the break-up of rather a sultry day. I stood there for some time, allowing it to play over my face and through my clothes. I turned my head this way and that to catch its different currents. I leaned into it and away from it and breathed it in. It was delightful.

  Can the wind mean as much to sighted people? It is invisible, so they gain nothing over the blind. Of course, the blind lose the sight of the world being blown along by the wind, the hurrying clouds and the trees swaying. On the other hand, the wind has a special beauty for the blind. For the sighted, to whom the world is mainly visual, an invisible phenomenon like the wind is only observed incidentally; it is one of many things which one notices in passing. It is mainly visual cues such as the sight of the washing blowing about on the line that give rise to the thought that it is a windy day. The wind itself, as felt by the body, is only one of the ways in which sighted people experience a windy day.

  The blind person enters into the windiness of the day at first hand. For the blind, the wind does not have the enigmatic quality that it has for the sighted. There is a passage in the Fourth Gospel which says of the wind, ‘You do not know where it goes or where it comes from’. I think that that is a sighted person’s reaction, because sighted people are used to seeing where things go and where things come from. Sighted people work at long range. The sighted person tends to look at the pennants above the pavilion to see which way the wind is blowing.

  Blind people are accustomed to not knowing where things come from and where they are going to. Things rush past: one is in the midst of a mêlée of action, one does not expect to see origins and destinations. The invisibility of the wind does not make it mysterious to the blind, for whom there is no such thing as invisibility. The blind person experiences the impact of the wind upon his body and the sound of it in the trees. He knows perfectly well where it is coming from: it is coming from that direction, he is facing into it. The wind is coming from the direction I am facing when I face into it.

  Sometimes a blind person experiences a wind which is all the more exciting because it is known at long range. I hear the distant tossing of trees across the park; it comes like a wave rolling across a beach. Now it breaks upon my body in a squall, a gust, like a fist. This is very exciting because of the anticipation, and the wonderful feeling of having the knowledge in your body of what is going on.

  12 July

  If I have to carry a cup of tea from this room into the next, I can do it. If you put a full glass into my other hand, then I cannot do it. Giving me a full glass in my second hand is like blindfolding me. A blind person with a full glass in each hand is equivalent to a sighted person blindfolded with a full glass in each hand. A blind person with a full glass in one hand
only is roughly equivalent (he may be a bit slower and a bit more clumsy) to a sighted person with no blindfold and full glasses in each hand. It is the loss of the use of the second hand through having to hold a full glass which is equivalent to blindfolding. It might be objected that a blind person surely has the experience of being blindfolded, as it were, all the time. This, however, would be a mistake. As long as the blind person has one free hand, he sees with that hand. He does not experience not knowing where to go or where he is so long as he can guide himself with his free hand. He does not feel blind, but with a full glass in each hand, it is almost impossible to avoid knocking against something and spilling a few drops. The only way to do it is to walk backwards, rubbing your back or elbows along the walls and so protecting the full glasses. To sighted people, this looks ridiculous.

  It is difficult for a blind person to carry cups and plates on a tray from one room to another, or to carry a chair or anything which requires the use of both hands. If a blinded person begins to forget what it was like to see, or if you want to explain to a blind person what it would be like for a sighted person to go blind, there would be no point in blindfolding the already blind person. What you do is put full tumblers of water into both of his hands and tell him to take them into the dining room. He will then bump into things, knock one or both glasses against corners and spill stuff, and will know exactly what it is like for a sighted person to be blindfolded.

  Working the other way, a sighted person can always gain some understanding of what blindness is like by being blindfolded. This may be rather superficial unless one adds the additional blindfold, that is, puts two glasses of water into the hands of the blindfolded sighted person, thus depriving him of guidance through the sense of touch. In other words, to obtain insight into the manoeuvrability problems of another mode of cognition it is not enough to delete the faculty most immediately affected (in our case, sight). One must allow the ramifications of this mode to be experienced by deleting a second sense (touch) showing how the nature of the second sense, and its usefulness within the mode as a whole, undergoes a change. Touch is not the same for the sighted person as it is for the blind person. Deleting sight but leaving touch untouched gives a false impression, because touch is affected when sight is deleted. In other words, the blind person sees with his fingers.

  13 July

  Many of the people I mix with have never met a blind person. They have little idea of what to do or how to relate to me. I try to create situations in which sighted people will feel at home, but this is not always easy, and I often fail. I think that one reason for this failure is the fact that the relationship between the blind person and the sighted person is not often one of equality. Suppose I am standing, talking to people in a lounge bar. Suppose I have changed partners many times, using the ‘litmus paper’ technique. Suppose now that I want to sit. I have several problems. Are there any unoccupied chairs in the room? How do I locate one?

  I was talking to someone in a bar. It was during a residential conference. She pointed out that we had no drinks. I suggested that she should go to the bar and get drinks for both of us. I added that I would sit down and wait for her return. ‘Okay’, she said. ‘Where would you like to sit?’ I said, ‘Why don’t you take me to a chair, and put my hand on the back of it?’ She took my hand and put it on the back of a chair, and off she went to the bar. I found that I was standing behind a lounge chair, but, on running my hand across the back of the chair, and down its sides in order to discover if the chair had arms or not, I found I was running my fingers across a woman’s neck. There was someone sitting in the chair already. She got quite a surprise, for a strange man was feeling her neck and shoulders. There was general consternation, much laughter and apologies. Why, I wonder, didn’t my first friend put my hand on the back of an empty chair? Had I somehow failed to make it clear that I wanted to sit down? Maybe my friend thought it was my intention merely to stand up with my hand on the back of a chair waiting for her.

  When my friend came back from the bar with the drinks, she was apologetic, having seen the incident. We laughed and made our way towards some seats. I said, ‘Let me put a finger under your left elbow if I may.’ She would not let me do this. Instead, she stretched across with her own right hand, grasped my right hand firmly, pulled my forearm under her left arm, and closed her left arm tightly, continuing to hold my hand. This was someone who was determined not to make a second mistake. This time, there would be no ambiguity.

  As we walked across the crowded lounge, I said to her brightly, ‘You know, I have to train people the way they train guide dogs for the blind. I have a special technique for people to sit me down in an armchair. Would you like me to train you in it?’ Laughing, she agreed. ‘Okay’, I said. ‘This is what we do. When we get to the chair, you take one of my hands, stretch it out, and place it on the back of the chair.’

  When we got to the chair, she couldn’t do this. Maybe the lounge chair was in an awkward position or something. I suggested that she should put her own hand on the back of the chair. She did this, by now thoroughly mystified. I simply ran my fingers along her arm and located the back of the chair. Immediately, I was orientated. I needed no further help. I knew exactly where the chair was, and I could now sit down any time I liked, with safety and dignity. My companion, however, refused to let go. ‘Thank you’, I said cheerfully. ‘That was very good. You can let go now and I will sit down.’ She was determined to back me into the chair, holding both my elbows from the front. After a few more appeals I persuaded her to let go and I sat down. I contrast this with a similar incident which took place the following day. I was walking with another friend who said, ‘Let’s sit down.’ In a swift, natural and unobtrusive movement she took my hand, placed it lightly on the back of a nearby armchair, and sat down herself on the adjacent chair without any further comment. I was so impressed by the speed and the gracious ease of this gesture, that I asked her if she was used to working with blind people. ‘I never met a blind person in my life before’, she said, ‘but I get a fast read-out.’ This person, as I got to know her, proved to be someone of exceptional sensitivity and insight.

  Yes, I begin to think that I really do have a sort of litmus test. What degree of freedom will this new person be prepared to allow me? Will this sighted person find ways of letting me preserve as much independence and dignity as possible? Will this person want to possess me, to control me, to make me feel even more handicapped by refusing to admit that I can do the slightest thing for myself? For my part, how can I make it easier for sighted people? My policy of giving cheerful, simple directions will work with some, but not with others.

  16 July

  At church, one of the vergers approached Marilyn as she was standing with me, and said to her, ‘Marilyn, is it John’s wish to go forward to the communion rail?’ Marilyn made no reply, so I turned towards him and said with a smile, ‘Yes, thank you very much, I will be going forward.’ There was a slight sound of surprise, and I gathered that the kindly man was somewhat flustered because I had overheard what he had said. I assured him that I would be quite all right, and would go up accompanied by Marilyn as I normally did. I thanked him for his concern. I think that he was assuming I was deaf. Why not tap me on the elbow, and ask me whether I intended to go forward, and whether I would need any assistance? I would appreciate this thoughtful gesture. To speak about me, in the third person, to someone else, is another matter.

  This situation often seems to arise when I am getting in a car with a group of other people. ‘Will you put John in the back with you?’ ‘No, I’ll put him in the front with you.’ ‘All right, you put him in then.’ At this point I interjected, crying out with an exceedingly loud voice, ‘John is not put anywhere, thank you very much. John is asked if he has any preferences about where he sits.’ At this, all my friends laughed uproariously and were covered with apologies and confusions. On a similar occasion recently I shouted out, ‘Hey, you guys, don’t you talk about me as if I’m not he
re.’

  This, again, brought shouts of laughter and a mixture of apologies, agreements and congratulations.

  It is, of course, very embarrassing for intelligent and sensitive people when they are caught out like this, in using the ‘does he take sugar?’ approach to a disabled person. These people are all sensitive, and well aware of the humiliation which this approach implies. So the question arises, why do they do it?

  It is so easy to marginalise a blind person, indeed, in certain situations it is almost impossible not to.

  29 July

  I had been nervous about several aspects of my visit to Melbourne. I had been afraid of a renewed sense of loss through being in a place which has so many visual memories for me. Flinders Street Station and Princes Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the famous view of the city seen over the river Yarra from the Botanical Gardens, these are all sights which are deeply etched upon my mind. I have always loved the view along Collins Street towards the Victorian parliament buildings, and the vistas along St Kilda Road, with the Shrine of Remembrance standing out so prominently among the lawns and trees.

  In the case of Birmingham, I have had time to adjust to the gradual disappearance of well-loved buildings, and to revise my memories bit by bit as people tell me about demolitions here and reconstructions there. To be suddenly plunged back as a blind person into a world so full of remembered visions made me feel most unhappy. I felt particularly dismayed by the thought that I would not be able to enjoy the coastline. I had always loved Port Phillip Bay with its lapping waves and myriads of yachts, but my greatest excitement had always been the south-western Victorian coast. Here the Great Ocean Road, cut out of the cliff, takes you through spectacular scenery, down to the Port Campbell area, where the massive waves have eroded strange shapes in the cliffs, and the wildness and majesty of the scenery had always held a strong fascination for me. Although I had never been a great lover of the outdoor life as such, and could claim almost no real experience of bush walking, I had always been moved by the endless ridges of blue-grey hills and the gaunt beauty of the rocky outcrops of granite. The Grampian mountains had been a favourite holiday spot for us children, since my mother had been brought up as a child in the nearby town of Stawell. When I was there in the spring of 1980, many of the best-remembered places were already inaccessible to me because of my poor vision and the rocky, uneven ground. Wonderland, the Grand Canyon, the Nerve Test, the Whale, the Fallen Giant and the Elephant’s Hide were already fading. Now they would be entirely gone.