Seeing is of course wonderful, admiring a landscape, a beautiful mountainside, a painting, a colorful outfit, a beautiful form, etc., but as seeing evaporates and diminishes slowly in my case, to the point where I am now visually impaired in dreams as well, and describing my vision is so complex, it is futile, because I have RP, then sounds become evermore noticeable, enjoyed more mindfully, appreciated, absorbed, sensed clearly and a source of great gratitude.
When I had mobility training in Columbia, S.C. in '09, I learned that a lot of getting across a busy city intersection, has to do with listening for the traffic. When you hear the perpendicular traffic go by, you know that you do not enter the street. One also has to listen to parallel traffic. It is not easy, and the instructor walks several feet behind you, so if you are in trouble, gee I do not know. Sometimes strangers want to help, but you are not supposed to let them. Once I jabbed my stomach with the handle of the cane, and turned around with a mournful face to Clint, who just said in his country southern African American accent, "you're holdin' the cane too tight." So much for sympathy, tough love it is called. It works, you know like Pavlov's Dogs, remember from Psychology 101?
However, I have come to enjoy sounds, pleasurable sounds to me anyway, like someone whistling outside for their dog, a dog barking, a child playing with delightful shrieks of joy, a boy playing basketball, light conversation. That is why I like living in a populated diverse neighborhood. I grew up in the woods, in a beautiful rustic home, the only sounds from outdoors being possibly our own dog barking, crickets and the sound of my own shrieking joyfully, playing outside with my brother or a friend, or both. The thing is that you don't really hear your own sounds in a sense.
It is a profoundly gorgeous day. It is warm for January. The sun is shining brightly. I received, UPS, my lucid 2" memory foam mattress topper, three year warranty, queen, uh, er, did I leave anything out? That is a lot to remember. Oh yeah, ventilated, that is it. So after taking it out of the box, you have to air it for 48 hours, in order for it to plump up to full size and lose it's odor, which it allegedly, but really does not have, in my opinion that is, and of course is said to be nontoxic. Oh, and it is antimicrobial as well.
Well, now that you know about my ...mattress topper..., and all the beauty of sound... I also like the sound of television and my talking books for the blind. I am thinking of getting my son an Eckhart Tolle*2 CD for his birthday. The library for the blind does not have Tolle on digital yet, but they do have Wayne W. Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Neale Donald Walcsh, spelled differently than my name, which is Walsh, like Joe Walsh or John Walsh. I like hearing the sound of Eckhart Tolle's slow, Austrian accented speaking on CD, reading The Power of Now, from my son's room at night.
I miss my other son, but he is out of the country, and starting a new life I suppose.
Well, much love. Enjoy this weather while it lasts. Namaste. Oh, and speaking of reading and accents, my favorites in terms of poets who read aloud, are Etan Thomas (the contemporary poet), Coleman Barks and Thomas Rain Crowe*1, one of the editors of my father's autobiography, Journey Out of Darkness, because I like Crowe's flowing waterfall, Native American quality, in his own poetry as well as his interpretation of Hafiz, Barks' earthy Georgia accent interpreting Rumi, his own as well, and Thomas' soulful, intense rhythmic and beautifully rendered passion, in its powerful statements of society against the rap beat of acoustic drumming like a heart beat.
The sound of a reader's voice is very important. I have listened to entire books read aloud by the authors, such as Jodi Picouldt, Chopra and Stephen King, to name a few. There are also great readers since time, like Alexander Scorby, maybe remembered by some on Gallo wine commercials in the '70's.
When you had a blind father like I did, who listened to old time vinyl talking books, you became familiar with recordings for the blind, sometimes a family activity. I think we all miss vinyl records, if we are old enough to remember buying them, but vinyl talking books for the blind played on a different speed from 33. Also, as with the digital books now, they could only be played on a special talking book player for the blind. I have not found anyone yet to listen with me, though I much enjoy solitude at times. My sons, also legally blind, have read on talking book as well, and when they were in cassette form, the biography of Kurt Cobain*3, of course.
Obviously, retinitis pigmentosa has a strong genetic pattern in my family*4. They said it came from an Irish girl, and I read a book, a memoir about a nun with RP, whose father, sisters, and nephews had it. She came from the Midwest like my grandmother, and also said it started with an Irish girl. I thought, 'that Irish girl really got around.' Just kidding!
Once again, namaste, and enjoy the beautiful weather!
*1: Thomas Rain Crowe is from North Carolina, one of the states where the Cherokees were driven out by Andrew Jackson, on the famous
Trail of Tears, which will cause tears if you read it. Thomas Rain Crowe has American Indian (Native American) heritage.
*2: And of course, Eckhart Tolle, whose voice has been almost as famous as his books, is renowned for his amazing, calming quality, for easing the mind's frantic activity.
*3: We think Kurt Cobain's death was a conspiracy due to the evidence, or lack of evidence of true suicide, no fingerprints on the gun.
*4: In my early adulthood, things were different, as well as my childhood. I had RP, but I was never told by my parents. When I finally went to the eye doctor for the first time on my own, he told me, and then it was confirmed by every eye doctor I went to after. I am the type of person who would have had children regardless, (I was in early pregnancy with my first child when I found out) but I believe a young person deserves the proper information about, not only their own disease and its potential progress, but a potential disease that their children could most likely have. I tend to have a pro-life view, but I believe everyone has a right to their own reproductive choices. Things are different today for young people, because we do not hide everything in the closet like in my time, perhaps because as in everything else that adolescents deal with, it is now usually popular opinion and rightly so, to tell children and youth the truth, rather than brushing every single thing we do not want to look at, under the rug, and that includes a whole array of things. Some people think our society of social workers, psychologists, police, etc. are too involved with the family's privacy, a libertarian view, but I feel that although children are almost always better off with their own family, it is wrong to turn a blind eye on their pain, whether it be bullying at school, sexual abuse from a predator who knows the family, to depression, reason unknown.
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