by Hull, John;
Only if the route is punctuated by various textures of the pavement, the smell of a bakery or the sounds of a street musician, is there a feeling of having crossed an area, drawn near to things and gone past them.
8 August
A few minutes ago I drifted off to sleep in my armchair on this Saturday afternoon in the office. I dreamed that my colleague Michael knocked on my door to tell me that he was finishing work and going home. He closed the door and left. Then an unbelievable thing happened. My room was flooded with light. With incredulity, I gazed at the walls and saw the rows of books, filing cases and labelled boxes, all in bright colours and standing out clearly and neatly with an amazing simplicity of line, form and colour. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The whole room was aglow with objects. I daren’t blink in case it should disappear. I got to my feet, terrified lest the change of position should suddenly make me realise this was a dream. I staggered to the door, thinking as I stretched out my hand to grasp the door handle how remarkable it was to be able to do that. Reaching the door, I looked back into the room, seeing it now from a different perspective. There was the desk with all the things on it, as fresh and bright and distinct as if it was the very day of creation. Out into the corridor I stumbled, crying out, ‘Mike! Mike!’ My voice couldn’t get out. It was choked. I realised that, although I was struggling to scream, what was coming out was no more than a whisper. In the corridor it was gloomy, but I could still see. As I hurried towards the lift, I was moving my hands side to side as if I was waving my stick. I don’t think I had actually taken the stick off its hook beside the door. The thought crossed my mind, ‘There’s no need for me to do that now. Now that I can see. But how hard it will be to throw off that habit of moving my hand from side to side.’ I was wondering what on earth could have happened to my eyes to have brought this thing about.
Up the steps now I dashed, and around the foyer to the lift. Michael, with his wife and family, were just getting in. No, indeed, they had entered, and the doors were closing. I hurried forward. The doors of the lift closed. I felt now as if I was about to faint. I hammered on the metal doors as I saw, through the little window, the lift going down. Again I cried out, but all that came was a muffled hoarse whisper. The lift disappeared, and as I stood there, the vision began to fade. The distinction between the blue, metal doors and the brown jambs on either side began to blur, it began to melt and disappear. Mists and darkness came flooding in. I was back in consciousness. And there I was, in my chair, and I realised with a shock that it had been a dream.
Within this dream there is a consciousness of being blind, since I am a blind person who, in the dream, regains sight and loses it again. The curious feature is that, although the regaining of sight is part of the dreamed story, the loss of sight is not, so to speak, something I dream about. In the dream, I do not dream that I lose my sight. What happens is simply that I wake up. As I stand beside the closed lift doors, I do not dream that I go blind. All that happens is that the vision is swept away by returning consciousness. The dream stops because I wake up. The fear, in the dream, of moving lest I should lose my sight is the same as the fear that I should move in my chair, and disturb the dream and so wake up too soon.
The simultaneity of the experience of waking up and of going blind impresses me. I stood beside the lift doors. The little lighted panel was going down, with a fleeting glimpse of Michael and his family. Then it began to fade away, as with a moment of panic and despair I realised that I was both waking up and losing my sight. I opened my eyes and my mind grew dark. Every time I return to consciousness I lose my sight again.
I do not remember any dream which has left me with such a sharp sense of reality-shock as this one. This is partly due to the continuity between the dream and the actual circumstances in which I fell asleep. It was all so natural, so plausible, there was such a smooth continuity of events. The reality of it all was completely overwhelming, and the movement back from the dream-reality to the actual reality left my mind numbed, as with a blow. It was not merely the realisation again that I am blind, but the strange sense of passing from one reality to another, as if my mind had become derailed. There had been a sort of reality clock. Everything was swimming around me. The vivid distinctness of perceived objects was now exchanged for the feel of my body and clothes on the armchair, the smooth edge of the desk at which I was sitting, the knowledge that all I knew was confined within the reach of my fingers. Everything else had gone again. I felt deceived, momentarily uncertain as to whether this might also be an interlude in the dream, and if I sat very still it also might fade away.
11 August
In commemoration of the fifth anniversary of my final eye operation, I want to set out the stages through which this journey has passed.
First, there was a period of hope which lasted for a year or eighteen months. It was brought to an end by the deterioration of sight during the summer of 1981, although even as late as the summer of 1982, when I was still seeing a few lights, colours and shapes, I could not resist occasional flickers of hope.
Secondly, there was a period of business in overcoming the problems. This began about the summer of 1981, when visual work became impossible, and lasted until about the summer of 1984. It was not until Easter of 1985 that I began to have a feeling that I did not need any more equipment. A main drive to create a workable office system took place during 1982 and 1983. During this time, blindness was a challenge.
The third stage began some time in 1983, possibly late in the year, and lasted for about a year. This was the time when I passed through despair. These were the years during which my sleep was punctuated by terrible dreams, and my waking life was oppressed by the awareness of being carried irresistibly deeper and deeper into blindness.
The fourth and current period has begun since the autumn of 1984, that is, since the recovery from the visit to Australia, during which time blindness had engulfed me. I began writing my book on adult religious education in October of 1984 and concluded it in March 1985.
For most of the time now my brain no longer hurts with the pain of blindness. There has been a strange change in the state or the kind of activity in my brain. It seems to have turned in upon itself to find inner resources. Being denied the stimulus of much of the outside world, it has had to sort out its own functions and priorities. I now feel clearer, more excited and more adventurous intellectually than ever before in my life. I find myself connecting more, remembering more, making more links in my mind between the various things I have read and had to learn over the years. Sometimes I come home in the evening and feel that my mind is almost bursting with new ideas and new horizons.
I continue to find a deep need for that kind of sustenance. Even a single day without study, away from the possibility of learning something new, can precipitate a new sense of urgency and suffering. I still feel like a person on a kidney machine, but increasingly like a person who has managed to survive.
10
Lost children
Autumn 1985
1 September
During the party to celebrate Thomas’s fifth birthday, a child came over and sat on my knee. At first, I thought it was Lizzie, but as time went by, I became more and more uncertain. I reached the point where the only way I could be sure was by asking, ‘What’s your name?’ I shrank from this in case it really was Lizzie. She would then know that I had not recognised her. This was rather a puzzling and even distressing situation.
When a child opens a birthday present, everybody admires it. It is silly for me to join in these cries of admiration, because everybody would know that I was pretending. I tried sitting Thomas on my knee so I could get some idea of what the object was, but the trouble is that my hands get in his way, and without touching I do not know. In any case, it is seldom that after a moment or two of touching you can give a gasp of surprise and delight. Knowledge by touch takes time. In any case, the child will not stay on your knee, but keeps running off to get more presents and to show them to ot
her admirers. It is impossible not to experience a creepy sense of remoteness at such a time.
After the children had all gone, Thomas came running up to me with a new set of mathematical puzzles in the form of playing cards. He wanted me to do this with him. I tried to explain that I could not help him much, and he pulled from his pocket another puzzle. This is set into a clear plastic case, and is one of those puzzles where you have to roll little silver balls around until they come to rest in little holes. With a sick feeling, I tried to explain that this one was even more difficult for me. Undeterred, he produced a board game. We opened it. With a sinking heart, I realised that all of the counters were exactly the same. They must have been different colours but they all felt alike. The board was completely smooth. I suggested that Mummy would help him later. I tried to enthuse over all these presents, but it was hard work. I fell asleep that night like a worn-out ghost.
In the morning I took a new initiative. When Thomas ran in at about seven o’clock, I told him to go and get all the things he had been given for his birthday, bring them all up and spread them out on the bed, and I would go through every one of them with him. He was delighted and this worked very well. Laying things out on the bed, one by one, in the quietness, I was able to get his description of every toy or game while I had time to explore each item carefully, discovering all I could about it, and working out whether there would be any way that I could use it with him. Without the social pressure to express premature admiration, I could enjoy this very much. To some extent, I had entered his birthday world.
6 September
Two or three times this week I have walked with Thomas to his school. Perhaps I should say that he has walked with me, for he is getting quite good at guiding me. He walks nearest the road holding my hand, while I use the cane to keep me clear of the front fences. He is old enough not to walk out on to the road, and in any case, provided that I keep close to the walls and fences, I can hold him well inside the footpath. He has learned how to give my hand a little tug towards him when he sees that I am about to walk into a hedge or gatepost. He is, however, unreliable about this, and if I am not alert with the cane, I will sometimes walk smack bang into a post because he is watching something else.
I have also worked out a very satisfactory way of saying goodbye to him at the school gate. As he runs off through the playground, he calls back to me, ‘’bye’. I respond by calling out, ‘’bye’, and we exchange these calls, getting fainter and fainter as he runs further and further away, until at last his calls disappear into the general background noise of the school yard. As I am turning round to go, having waved as hard as I can, I hear one final, faint little call, ‘’bye’. This game avoids the abrupt and disconcerting disappearance which is the usual experience of a blind person saying goodbye to someone. The echoing calls provide an intermediate stage for a gradual disappearance, and this is almost as good as seeing each other wave.
Lizzie is also interested in leading me, and there is a certain good-natured competition entering into this. Often I have Thomas on one hand and Lizzie on the other. I enjoy this very much, but it makes it difficult to use the cane. I am all right provided they don’t decide to walk one on each side of a post. Daddy in the middle collects it. Lizzie is very proud of her skill, and calls out to Marilyn, ‘Look! I am leading Daddy. I’m showing Daddy. I’m showing him.’
7 September
Blind person’s Ludo has been a great asset. I played happily with the children all day until four in the afternoon. After the Ludo, we played ‘Reversi’ on a board also designed for the blind, but just as good for sighted people, and then Thomas and I listened to some old Goon Show cassettes, with satisfactory results all round. We then played a card game called ‘Jumble Sales’ and several other board games.
Even when we are not playing a game which is adapted for the blind, I do not seem to find it as upsetting as once I did. I seem to be more content just to sit there, and be told what to do, to shake the dice, to keep up an enthusiastic commentary, which the children seem to find a perfectly adequate kind of participation. The truth is that often I have little or no idea what the rules of the game are, and sometimes I am not even sure which game we are playing.
8 September
Gabriel is less than a month old, and I am enjoying his company very much. I love the smell of him, and the way he breathes in rapid, little pants when I call his name. I love to feel the way his head twists around when Marilyn enters the room, and the way he turns back to look at me. I love the feel of him when he goes to sleep in my arms, the change in the sound and pattern of his breathing. I love holding his tiny hands and putting my own hand on the warmth of his head. I like to feel whether his hair is growing and I like feeling his little nose. I like holding one of his feet and I like the feel of his whole body as I hold him over one shoulder. All of these things are very much less spoiled by the lack of sight than was the case with either Thomas or Lizzie. I have some pangs of regret when somebody remarks, ‘He’s smiling at you’ or, ‘What a bright, alert baby you’ve got there!’ Provided that such thoughts do not come to the front of my mind too much, I find that I am getting much more genuine and immediate pleasure from this little baby. He is well named.
3 October
Last night I dreamed that the family and I were shopping in a supermarket or department store which was built over a cliff. A huge wave crashed down on the store, separating us all. I rushed back to the flooded shop, looking for the children. There was debris everywhere, flooded bales of cloth, merchandise and dead bodies. Marilyn, Gabriel and Imogen were safe at the top end of the shop. It was Thomas and Elizabeth who were missing. They had been down, below the level to which the water had come. I searched for them everywhere, in growing despair, finding nothing. I came back and told Marilyn there was no sign of them. We were all full of grief, and continued to search everywhere, but it was hopeless. They had simply disappeared. We erected a small plaque in memory of them. There was a lot of discussion about what we should say. Should we simply say that the sea took them?
Now I am down on the cliff-edge myself, still searching for them. The cliff is very rugged and steep, and is composed of masses of thin layers of slate or shale. This seems to have been loosened by the impact of the wave, and as I clamber around the edge, hanging out over the wild sea, huge pieces of shale slide off under the pressure of my feet or fingertips and crash down. I am scrabbling around for my toe-hold, wondering if the entire cliff face will crumble and collapse. As I stretch out, trying to obtain a grip, huge slabs of rock slide away with a rush of rubble and debris. Other people are clambering around, higher up. At last, somehow, I manage to scramble up to where the cliff face seems less affected by the wave and storm and to be reasonably solid. So I manage to escape, but still there is no sign of Thomas or Lizzie.
This dream seemed to be immensely long. I awoke from it very gradually. Indeed, I am not quite sure at what point the dream ended and the nightmarish fantasy began. There was no sharp sense of division between the dream and reality, and the dream flooded my waking consciousness with a sense of dread.
Earlier in the summer, a group of school children had been swept off the rocks in Cornwall. This incident made a deep impression upon me, as did a dream which one of my colleagues recently told me, in which her children had been drowned on the rocks. The dream is basically about the loss in family relationships which blindness causes. Thomas and Lizzie, who are just learning to understand blindness, are drowned beneath it. Imogen was born before the shock and Gabriel after it. The dream also suggests that fragments of my old life, my conscious, sighted life, are sliding and crashing down all around me into the all-engulfing world of blindness.
13 October
We went to a party to celebrate the ordination of one of our ministers. A singing group called Wild Geese had come down from Glasgow to take part. Twice during the evening, this choir of a dozen or so young people gathered on the stairs of the house and sang African liberation songs
. I stood very close to them with Thomas on my shoulders. He was beating to the music, and clapping his hands. The music was so rich and exciting. I felt exhilarated and blessed. Over the noise of the clapping and singing, Thomas shouted into my ear, ‘What are they singing about?’
‘They’re singing about freedom’, I replied. He laughed with delight and so did I.
Later in the evening somebody said to me, ‘John, you might like to know that all those young people look so radiant, their faces are smiling, and they are dressed in such bright colours! Some are in red and orange, others are dressed like harlequins with alternate squares of coloured cloth, and they all look so happy!’
I was glad to have this information, because I had pictured them as dressed in tartans with white blouses and lots of lace. I do not suppose I will ever be able to avoid forming some mental image or other, and since this should always be as realistic as possible, I am always glad to have more information.
What moved me, however, was the sound. I do not think that my pleasure at the noise of the singing could have been increased by sight, or by a description at some earlier point of what I would have seen. I do not believe that my feeling of blessedness lacked anything because the visual element was absent. I felt slightly upset that some people might think that there would be some deficiency in my enjoyment of all this.
As one goes deeper and deeper into blindness, the things which once were taken for granted, and which were then mourned over as they disappeared, and for which one tried in various ways to find compensation, in the end cease to matter. Somehow, it no longer seems important what people look like, or what cities look like. One cannot check at first hand the accuracy of these reports, they lose personal meaning and are relegated to the edge of awareness. They become irrelevant in the conduct of one’s life. One begins to live by other interests, other values. One begins to take up residence in another world.