Sight is a Sense of Distance

Last week, I picked up the latest issue of Colors, a global and socially conscious magazine started by Tibor Kalman. I've been reading it while I've been in California and I can only read a few stories at a time. I can't help it, I want to savor it.

Colors fell off a bit when they changed editorial directors a few years ago but somehow they hit a grandslam with this one. This issue of Colors is without colors. It's in B&W and dedicated to the blind and visually impaired.

I don't think it's just because I've always thought the idea of blindness lends itself to richer metaphors that this has become my favorite issue, more so than the mental asylum and the leisureworld issues.

They pulled some amazing stories in it and presented a point-of-view that inspires wonder and awe and no pity. From what i read so far, nobody they profile pities themselves. Everything's matter of fact yet their "observations" are spot on.

"Yogurt is blue." "Apples, especially the sour ones, are silver." "The water of the pool is white." These are the words of blind Tibetan children who have never seen color in their lives. I know the owrld of colors, faces, landscapes, and I know the world of blind people. People often ask me, "If you could, which of the two worlds would you choose?" It's not easy to answer. As a child, I often thought that the blind world was just a black hole. Sometimes I'd shut my eyes and I'd shiver, because I'd be thinking, "So this is how a blind person lives--isolated, behind a wall." When I started to go blind myself, slowly but relentlessly, I couldn't connect the word 'blind' with my own situation: it wasn't dark! In fact the opposite, because I had to imaging what I couldn't see, so the world around me became even more colorful and vivid. The only way I can explain it to myself is: the sense of sight is a sense of distance. It looks, judges and evaluates. Being able to see means you will keep your distance. With the senses I have left, I have to go very close to things, to 'touch' an event, a problem or an obstacle. And often, when you get up close to an obstacle, it gets smaller. "Yogurt is blue" and apples, especially the sour ones, are silver"...If I could choose today, I'd choose that world.
- Sabriye Tenberken, co-founder of Braille Without Borders and co-director of the first school for the blind in Tibet