The Secret Deafie is a regular column about deaf experiences submitted anonymously by different contributors. In this instalment, a woman who is Deafblind has written a poem about her experiences…
My fingers are my eyes, my hands are my
ears. I create my sense of space with my
mind.
I depend on the memories of what I do,
not on the memories of what I see or
hear.
Everyone speaks a silent language;
everyone expresses a truth without
intention.
I remember the beauty of a place
because of how I remember feeling, the
light touching my body.
I always imagined the world people tell
me exists.
I learned the meaning of freedom when I
learned to accept the way I am.
Common sense will tell you many things:
Freedom is to do what you want to do for
yourself; to be independent.
I must remember one thing – I must be
open to other people.
Accept the way you are. Be true.
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Martyn
March 10, 2014
A wonderful and thought provoking insight into a world from the deafblind perspective. Thank you for sharing.
Hartmut
March 10, 2014
“I depend on the memories of what I do,
not on the memories of what I see or
hear.”
This is Interesting, how a (or the?) Deafblind remembers. From doing!
How true for everyone! People remember better from doing. That is one principle of learning: you learn better from doing than from what has been explained to you or from seeing or observing alone.
“I remember the beauty of a place
because of how I remember feeling, the
light touching my body.”
“The light” is surely a metaphor, even if the author was sighted and remembers the colors and shapes of the visual world. I would like to know more how the Deafblind experiences beauty in his own way, independent of the memory of his former life as a sighted and/or hearing person. I have seen exhilaration on his face, when he was signed into his hands a poetry that is signed in a truly poetic fashion. I have seen dumb attempts to let the blind “enjoy” a painting or sculpture and then tell them they are beautiful. Touching those objects of art does not deliver the esthetic experience to them as much. The quote says his body must experience. The whole of it must get involved. Besides presenting a beautifully rendered sequence of signs, dance may be another good avenue for this experience.
“Freedom is to do what you want to do for
yourself; to be independent.”
Hearing people of the oralist persuasion keep telling us, sign language makes us dependent on interpreters, and exhort us to be independent from them. But they indeed make us more independent than without them. Oxymoronous, in’t it? Nature is like that in some ways. Contradictions like that are so only in appearance, but really they are part of the nature. Deaf people are as a rule very independent. This Deafblind says the same thing, even though folks like him needs much of our assistance in order to provide them freedom.
Hartmut
JP
June 17, 2014
This is such a beautiful article, you should write more =)