Notes on Blindness Page #4

And accept me.

Every year we used

to go and pick cherry plums

and bring them home.

Mother made cherry plum jam by the dozen.

I can remember rows and rows of the jam.

- Say, "Hello, Grandma."

- Hello, Grandma.

Of course, they were delighted

with the children,

but I think they were shocked.

Absolutely scandalised!

It was like

having to get to know me all over again.

- It's a nice photo, that.

- Yes.

Here we have a photo of us all sitting

up in this car out in our back yard.

That's right.

Well, how strangely

coloured photographs fade.

It's all laid out like a professional poet.

"Poems, to my mother."

Oh, to my mother...

Not to my mother and father.

- Interesting.

- To my mother.

I never had a close relationship

with my father.

I don't know what he thought of it all.

I walked down to the shops with him.

We went to buy some bread and butter.

It was the first time I'd touched him

on that visit...

and I was shocked at how fragile he was.

How slowly he moved along.

And as we went along,

he with his blind son on his elbow,

I wondered what was going on in his mind,

but we didn't talk about it.

I wish I had known.

I wish I did know.

# Da-da-da-de-duh! #

Even Grandpa!

Whoo!

Go, Grandpa!

Strange thing, John, wasn't it?

That Dad came from England

and married an Australian girl.

You were born in Australia

and married an English girl!

Yes, it is strange.

He's a good father, though.

I remember, she sitting next to me,

cuddling up quite close.

"John," she said,

"I have to come up close to you now

"because there's no other way

we can get in contact, is there?"

I said, "Yes, Mother, but that's all right."

Dear old Mother,

what's it like for you?

Lizzie?!

Hang on!

It's all right!

Is she hurt?

It was awful, wasn't it? Oh, dear.

What's happened?

She shut her finger in the door.

I remember taking her little hand.

Painful for the child,

but no harm done really.

Good girl.

Try to stretch out

your fingers a little bit.

It'll be fine, love.

That was a frightening moment.

The discovery that you re useless

is not a nice discovery...

for any father to make.

- You all right?

- Yeah.

You just look a bit...

Do you want some water?

No, I'm all right.

Good.

- When will it come?

- When will what come?

Speaking bit.

It doesn't speak, darling, not like a phone.

- Can't hear you.

- Do you know what it is?

A tape recorder.

You see that going round inside there?

It's making little records

and your voice and my voice are on it.

- Say, "Hello, hello, hello."

- Hello, hello, hello.

I knew that this was

the first time I'd seen her.

I stared at her, full of wonder,

taking in every detail of her face.

I thought, "So this is her.

"This is she.

"These are those lovely,

luminous brown eyes.

"This is that smile that they all

talk about."

Everything went black again.

I was back in consciousness.

And in blindness.

And I realised with a shock

that it had been a dream.

I've got sick of recording this one

so I've stopped.

When I was last here,

many of my best remembered places

were already fading.

Somehow...

I expected Melbourne to be there.

That's stupid, isn't it?

Just move in.

Just move in.

You want to take your kids and say,

"This is the beach we used to come to.

"That's the place

where we used to play footie.

"This is the school I went to."

But... there was nothing there.

Just people's hands and voices.

Feel of the car on the road.

The wind, of course.

Walking along somewhere,

never quite knew where.

That's really all there was.

I didn't somehow expect it.

I didn't anticipate that.

I don't know why.

Tom!

Come along! What are you doing?

The house itself.

What was it like?

Where did I sleep?

I can't remember much.

This is too difficult.

I don't remember.

Isn't that strange?

Oh, I just don't remember.

It was exactly that moment.

A world is lost.

And it wasn't just

the Melbourne I knew that was lost.

I myself was lost.

I began to be terribly afraid...

that something would be broken

between us which could not be healed...

that you were disappearing into a world

where I could not follow.

Everything was just tumbling down.

We knew we wouldn't go back, didn't we?

We will never do this again.

I have returned home

with a feeling of immense relief.

To be again in a familiar house,

surrounded by familiar objects...

to have in my mind a mental picture

of the environment in the streets

and city around me

is like having the world

restored to me again.

Three.

Two.

One!

Here I come, ready or not!

Now... Let me see.

Never have I done

the washing up with such happiness.

I got up this morning

and made Marilyn a cup of tea.

Would he be...?

Feeling so grateful...

No...

...that I could move freely,

that I knew where things were,

that I could act.

Is he behind the curtain?

No, not there, either.

That I was coming out of

that shadowland of passivity...

Where could he be?

...into personal action and life again.

Got you!

September 22nd, 1985.

I love the smell of him.

The way I can slightly sense

when he's looking at me now.

I also like feeling his little nose

and holding one foot.

I love holding his little hands

and putting my own hand

on the warmth of his head.

The feel of him as I have him

over my shoulder.

It's 7.00 am and time for Radio 8

and here's your host, Immy Hull!

It will be drizzly today,

with occasional intervals of sun.

Later on in the day...

Two or three times this week,

I have taken Thomas to school.

Or perhaps I'd say he has taken me.

And he is getting quite good

at guiding me, although unreliable.

Right, let's look at you.

We also have a way of saying goodbye

which is the equivalent of waving.

As he runs off through the playground,

he shouts out, "Bye!"

Bye!

And I shout, "Bye!"

Bye!

Bye.

And we keep up this

- echoing chorus...

- Bye.

...until his voice becomes faint.

Bye!

Bye!

I love this.

I had said to myself that I would

learn to live with blindness,

but I would never accept it.

Now I find that there's been a strange

kind of change in the state of my brain.

It's as if now, being denied stimulus

of the outside world,

the thing has turned in upon itself

in order to find inner resources.

Occasionally I go home in the evening

and I feel as if my mind is almost blown

with new ideas and new horizons.

I find myself connecting more,

remembering more,

making more links in my mind

between the various things I've read

and learned all my life.

I now feel clearer,

more excited,

more adventurous,

more confident intellectually

than I've ever felt in my life.

There is something so totally

purging about blindness

that one either is destroyed or renewed.

Your consciousness is evacuated.

Your past memories, your interests,

your perception of time,

place itself.

The world itself!

One must recreate one's life.

In my case, fortunately,

I had a central core

around which to recreate it.

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