Sometime Play With Tractors and Some Are Blessed to Work With Thrm Art
J A N U A R Y 1 nine 3 3
All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a yr; sometimes as brusque every bit day. Just always nosotros were interested in discovering merely how the doomed man chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of grade, of gratuitous men who take a option, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited.
Such stories ready the states thinking, wondering what nosotros should exercise under like circumstances. What events, what experiences, what associations, should we oversupply into those last hours as mortal beings? What happiness should we find in reviewing the past, what regrets?
Sometimes I take idea it would be an first-class rule to live each 24-hour interval as if we should die tomorrow. Such an mental attitude would emphasize sharply the values of life. We should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation which are ofttimes lost when fourth dimension stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would prefer the gluttonous motto of 'Eat, drink, and be merry,' but most people would be chastened past the certainty of impending death.
Most of us, however, take life for granted. Nosotros know that i twenty-four hour period nosotros must dice, but usually we picture that 24-hour interval equally far in the future. When we are in buoyant health, death is all but unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out in an endless vista. Then we become well-nigh our little tasks, inappreciably enlightened of our listless attitude toward life.
The same lethargy, I am afraid, characterizes the use of all our faculties and senses. Only the deaf appreciate hearing, only the blind realize the manifold blessings that lie in sight. Especially does this observation apply to those who accept lost sight and hearing in adult life. Merely those who have never suffered harm of sight or hearing seldom make the fullest use of these blessed faculties. Their optics and ears take in all sights and sounds hazily, without concentration and with little appreciation. Information technology is the same erstwhile story of not being grateful for what we take until we lose it, of not being conscious of wellness until we are ill.
I accept often idea it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deafened for a few days at some fourth dimension during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more beholden of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
Now and then I take tested my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently I was visited past a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. "Null in particular," she replied. I might take been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long agone I became convinced that the seeing see little.
How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the forest and run across zero worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I laissez passer my easily lovingly almost the smoothen skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bawl of a pine. In spring I bear on the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the commencement sign of awakening Nature after her winter's slumber. I experience the delightful, velvety texture of a bloom, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me. Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my hand gently on a pocket-sized tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song. I am delighted to have the cool waters of a brook rush through my open fingers. To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug. To me the pageant of seasons is a thrilling and unending drama, the activeness of which streams through my finger tips.
At times my heart cries out with longing to meet all these things. If I can get then much pleasance from mere bear upon, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight. Yet, those who have eyes apparently see little. The panorama of color and action which fills the earth is taken for granted. Information technology is man, perhaps, to appreciate picayune that which we accept and to long for that which we have not, simply it is a great compassion that in the world of low-cal the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of calculation fullness to life.
If I were the president of a university I should establish a compulsory course in "How to Use Your Eyes." The professor would try to show his pupils how they could add joy to their lives by actually seeing what passes unnoticed before them. He would try to awake their dormant and sluggish faculties.
Mayhap I can best illustrate past imagining what I should most similar to see if I were given the utilize of my eyes, say, for just three days. And while I am imagining, suppose you, besides, gear up your heed to work on the problem of how yous would employ your own eyes if y'all had merely three more days to see. If with the oncoming darkness of the third nighttime you knew that the sunday would never rise for you once again, how would yous spend those 3 precious intervening days? What would you near want to permit your gaze rest upon?
I, naturally, should want well-nigh to see the things which take get dear to me through my years of darkness. You, too, would want to let your eyes residual long on the things that have become dear to you and then that yous could take the retentivity of them with you into the night that loomed before yous.
If, by some miracle, I were granted three seeing days, to be followed by a relapse into darkness, I should split up the menstruum into three parts.
On the first solar day, I should want to see the people whose kindness and gentleness and companionship have fabricated my life worth living. Beginning I should similar to gaze long upon the face of my beloved teacher, Mrs. Anne Sullivan Macy, who came to me when I was a kid and opened the outer world to me. I should want non merely to run into the outline of her face, and so that I could cherish it in my memory, but to report that confront and find in information technology the living evidence of the sympathetic tenderness and patience with which she achieved the difficult task of my education. I should like to see in her optics that strength of character which has enabled her to stand up firm in the face of difficulties, and that compassion for all humanity which she has revealed to me and then often.
I do not know what it is to see into the middle of a friend through that "window of the soul," the center. I can merely "see" through my finger tips the outline of a face up. I can detect laughter, sorrow, and many other obvious emotions. I know my friends from the feel of their faces. But I cannot actually moving picture their personalities by touch. I know their personalities, of class, through other means, through the thoughts they express to me, through whatsoever of their actions are revealed to me. But I am denied that deeper understanding of them which I am sure would come through sight of them, through watching their reactions to various expressed thoughts and circumstances, through noting the immediate and fleeting reactions of their eyes and countenance.
Friends who are near to me I know well, because through the months and years they reveal themselves to me in all their phases; but of casual friends I have merely an incomplete impression, an impression gained from a handclasp, from spoken words which I take from their lips with my finger tips, or which they tap into the palm of my hand.
How much easier, how much more satisfying it is for yous who tin meet to grasp quickly the essential qualities of another person by watching the subtleties of expression, the quiver of a musculus, the flutter of a hand. But does it ever occur to you to utilise your sight to see into the inner nature of a friend or associate? Practice not near of you seeing people grasp casually the outward features of a face and allow it go at that?
For example, can you describe accurately the faces of five adept friends? Some of you tin can, but many cannot. Equally an experiment, I have questioned husbands of long standing almost the color of their wives' eyes, and often they express embarrassed confusion and admit that they exercise not know. And, incidentally, information technology is a chronic complaint of wives that their husbands do non notice new dresses, new hats, and changes in household arrangements.
The optics of seeing persons soon become accustomed to the routine of their surroundings, and they really see but the startling and spectacular. But even in viewing the most spectacular sights the eyes are lazy. Courtroom records reveal every mean solar day how inaccurately "eyewitnesses" see. A given event will exist "seen" in several different ways by as many witnesses. Some see more others, but few see everything that is within the range of their vision.
Oh, the things that I should see if I had the power of sight for merely three days!
The first day would be a busy ane. I should telephone call to me all my dear friends and await long into their faces, imprinting upon my mind the outward evidences of the beauty that is inside them. I should let my optics rest, too, on the face of a baby, so that I could catch a vision of the eager, innocent beauty which precedes the individual's consciousness of the conflicts which life develops.
And I should like to look into the loyal, trusting eyes of my dogs -- the grave, canny little Scottie, Darkie, and the stalwart, agreement Great Dane, Helga, whose warm, tender, and playful friendships are and then comforting to me.
On that busy showtime day I should also view the small uncomplicated things of my home. I desire to see the warm colors in the rugs nether my anxiety, the pictures on the walls, the intimate trifles that transform a house into dwelling house. My optics would rest respectfully on the books in raised type which I have read, but they would be more eagerly interested in the printed books which seeing people can read, for during the long night of my life the books I have read and those which have been read to me take built themselves into a smashing shining lighthouse, revealing to me the deepest channels of human life and the human spirit.
In the afternoon of that first seeing day, I should have a long walk in the woods and intoxicate my eyes on the beauties of the world of Nature, trying desperately to absorb in a few hours the vast splendor which is constantly unfolding itself to those who can encounter. On the fashion home from my woodland jaunt my path would lie near a subcontract and so that I might see the patient horses ploughing in the field (perhaps I should see merely a tractor!) and the serene content of men living close to the soil. And I should pray for the glory of a colorful sunset.
When dusk had fallen, I should feel the double delight of being able to see past artificial light, which the genius of man has created to extend the power of his sight when Nature decrees darkness.
In the night of that showtime day of sight, I should non be able to sleep, so full would be my heed of the memories of the mean solar day.
The next day -- the 2d day of sight -- I should arise with the dawn and come across the thrilling miracle past which night is transformed into twenty-four hours. I should behold with awe the magnificent panorama of light with which the dominicus awakens the sleeping earth.
This twenty-four hour period I should devote to a hasty glimpse of the world, by and present. I should want to come across the pageant of man's progress, the kaleidoscope of the ages. How can and then much be compressed into one day? Through the museums, of class. Often I have visited the New York Museum of Natural History to impact with my hands many of the objects there exhibited, but I take longed to run into with my eyes the condensed history of the earth and its inhabitants displayed there -- animals and the races of men pictured in their native environment; gigantic carcasses of dinosaurs and mastodons which roamed the earth long earlier homo appeared, with his tiny stature and powerful brain, to conquer the animal kingdom; realistic presentations of the processes of evolution in animals, in human, and in the implements which human being has used to fashion for himself a secure domicile on this planet; and a grand and one other aspects of natural history.
I wonder how many readers of this article have viewed this panorama of the face of living things equally pictured in that inspiring museum. Many, of course, have non had the opportunity, but I am sure that many who take had the opportunity have not made use of it. In that location, indeed, is a identify to apply your optics. You who see tin can spend many fruitful days there, but I, with my imaginary 3 days of sight, could only have a hasty glimpse, and laissez passer on.
My next terminate would exist the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, for but as the Museum of Natural History reveals the material aspects of the world, so does the Metropolitan show the myriad facets of the homo spirit. Throughout the history of humanity the urge to creative expression has been almost every bit powerful every bit the urge for nutrient, shelter, and procreation. And here, in the vast chambers of the Metropolitan Museum, is unfolded before me the spirit of Egypt, Hellenic republic, and Rome, as expressed in their fine art. I know well through my easily the sculptured gods and goddesses of the aboriginal Nile country. I have felt copies of Parthenon friezes, and I accept sensed the rhythmic beauty of charging Athenian warriors. Apollos and Venuses and the Winged Victory of Samothrace are friends of my finger tips. The gnarled, bearded features of Homer are dear to me, for he, also, knew blindness.
My hands have lingered upon the living marble of Roman sculpture as well equally that of afterward generations. I have passed my hands over a plaster bandage of Michelangelo's inspiring and heroic Moses; I have sensed the power of Rodin; I have been awed by the devoted spirit of Gothic forest carving. These arts which can exist touched have pregnant for me, but even they were meant to be seen rather than felt, and I tin can only guess at the beauty which remains subconscious from me. I tin admire the simple lines of a Greek vase, but its figured decorations are lost to me.
And so on this, my second day of sight, I should effort to probe into the soul of man through his art. The things I knew through touch on I should at present see. More splendid still, the whole magnificent earth of painting would be opened to me, from the Italian Primitives, with their serene religious devotion, to the Moderns, with their feverish visions. I should await deep into the canvases of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt. I should desire to feast my eyes upon the warm colors of Veronese, written report the mysteries of El Greco, grab a new vision of Nature from Corot. Oh, there is and then much rich meaning and beauty in the art of the ages for y'all who have eyes to see!
Upon my short visit to this temple of art I should non be able to review a fraction of that great world of art which is open up to you. I should be able to get only a superficial impression. Artists tell me that for a deep and truthful appreciation of art i must educate the eye. One must learn through experience to counterbalance the merits of line, of composition, of form and colour. If I had eyes, how happily would I embark upon and then fascinating a report! Yet I am told that, to many of you who have eyes to encounter, the globe of art is a nighttime night, unexplored and unilluminated.
Information technology would be with extreme reluctance that I should leave the Metropolitan Museum, which contains the key to beauty -- a dazzler so neglected. Seeing persons, however, do non need a Metropolitan to find this key to beauty. The same key lies waiting in smaller museums, and in books on the shelves of even minor libraries. But naturally, in my limited time of imaginary sight, I should choose the place where the key unlocks the greatest treasures in the shortest time.
The evening of my second 24-hour interval of sight I should spend at a theatre or at the movies. Even now I often attend theatrical performances of all sorts, only the action of the play must be spelled into my hand by a companion. But how I should similar to see with my own optics the fascinating figure of Hamlet, or the gusty Falstaff among colorful Elizabethan trappings! How I should like to follow each move of the svelte Hamlet, each strut of the hearty Falstaff! And since I could see simply one play, I should be confronted by a many-horned dilemma, for there are scores of plays I should want to run across. You who take optics can see any you similar. How many of you, I wonder, when you gaze at a play, a movie, or whatsoever spectacle, realize and requite thank you for the phenomenon of sight which enables you to enjoy its colour, grace, and movement?
I cannot savour the dazzler of rhythmic motility except in a sphere restricted to the touch of my easily. I can vision simply dimly the grace of a Pavlowa, although I know something of the delight of rhythm, for oftentimes I can sense the beat of music equally it vibrates through the floor. I tin well imagine that cadenced motion must be i of the nigh pleasing sights in the earth. I take been able to get together something of this by tracing with my fingers the lines in sculptured marble; if this static grace tin can be so lovely, how much more acute must be the thrill of seeing grace in motion.
One of my dearest memories is of the time when Joseph Jefferson allowed me to touch his face and hands every bit he went through some of the gestures and speeches of his beloved Rip Van Winkle. I was able to catch thus a meagre glimpse of the earth of drama, and I shall never forget the delight of that moment. Just, oh, how much I must miss, and how much pleasure you seeing ones can derive from watching and hearing the interplay of speech communication and movement in the unfolding of a dramatic performance! If I could see only one play, I should know how to picture in my mind the action of a hundred plays which I have read or had transferred to me through the medium of the transmission alphabet.
So, through the evening of my second imaginary solar day of sight, the great figures of dramatic literature would oversupply slumber from my eyes.
The following morning, I should again greet the dawn, anxious to discover new delights, for I am sure that, for those who accept eyes which really see, the dawn of each twenty-four hour period must be a perpetually new revelation of beauty.
This, according to the terms of my imagined phenomenon, is to be my tertiary and last solar day of sight. I shall have no time to waste in regrets or longings; there is too much to see. The first twenty-four hours I devoted to my friends, animate and inanimate. The second revealed to me the history of man and Nature. Today I shall spend in the workaday globe of the present, amid the haunts of men going nearly the business organisation of life. And where can one observe and then many activities and weather of men every bit in New York? So the city becomes my destination.
I kickoff from my home in the serenity little suburb of Forest Hills, Long Island. Here, surrounded by greenish lawns, copse, and flowers, are neat little houses, happy with the voices and movements of wives and children, havens of peaceful residue for men who toil in the city. I drive beyond the lacy structure of steel which spans the East River, and I become a new and startling vision of the power and ingenuity of the mind of man. Busy boats chug and scurry about the river -- racy speed boats, stolid, snorting tugs. If I had long days of sight alee, I should spend many of them watching the delightful activity upon the river.
I look alee, and before me rise the fantastic towers of New York, a metropolis that seems to have stepped from the pages of a fairy story. What an monumental sight, these glittering spires, these vast banks of stone and steel -- structures such as the gods might build for themselves! This animated picture is a part of the lives of millions of people every day. How many, I wonder, give it so much equally a 2nd glance? Very few, I fear. Their eyes are blind to this magnificent sight because information technology is and so familiar to them.
I hurry to the top of i of those gigantic structures, the Empire State Building, for in that location, a curt time ago, I "saw" the city below through the eyes of my secretary. I am anxious to compare my fancy with reality. I am sure I should not be disappointed in the panorama spread out earlier me, for to me information technology would be a vision of another world.
Now I begin my rounds of the city. First, I stand at a decorated corner, merely looking at people, trying by sight of them to sympathise something of their lives. I run across smiles, and I am happy. I see serious conclusion, and I am proud. I see suffering, and I am compassionate.
I stroll down 5th Avenue. I throw my eyes out of focus, so that I come across no particular object but only a seething kaleidoscope of color. I am certain that the colors of women's dresses moving in a throng must be a gorgeous spectacle of which I should never tire. Just perhaps if I had sight I should be like most other women -- too interested in styles and the cutting of individual dresses to give much attention to the splendor of color in the mass. And I am convinced, likewise, that I should go an inveterate window shopper, for information technology must be a delight to the centre to view the myriad articles of dazzler on display.
From Fifth Avenue I make a bout of the city -- to Park Avenue, to the slums, to factories, to parks where children play. I take a stay-at-home trip abroad by visiting the strange quarters. Always my optics are open up wide to all the sights of both happiness and misery so that I may probe deep and add together to my agreement of how people work and live. My heart is total of the images of people and things. My eye passes lightly over no single trifle; information technology strives to touch and concord closely each thing its gaze rests upon. Some sights are pleasant, filling the heart with happiness; merely some are miserably pathetic. To these latter I do not shut my eyes, for they, also, are role of life. To close the eye on them is to close the heart and mind.
My third 24-hour interval of sight is drawing to an stop. Maybe at that place are many serious pursuits to which I should devote the few remaining hours, just I am agape that on the evening of that last day I should again run abroad to the theatre, to a hilariously funny play, then that I might capeesh the overtones of comedy in the human spirit.
At midnight my temporary respite from blindness would cease, and permanent night would close in on me again. Naturally in those iii short days I should not have seen all I wanted to run across. Only when darkness had over again descended upon me should I realize how much I had left unseen. Merely my mind would be so crowded with glorious memories that I should have fiddling fourth dimension for regrets. Thereafter the touch of every object would bring a glowing memory of how that object looked.
Possibly this short outline of how I should spend 3 days of sight does not concur with the programme you would set for yourself if y'all knew that you were about to be stricken blind. I am, however, sure that if you really faced that fate your eyes would open up to things you lot had never seen earlier, storing up memories for the long dark ahead. You would apply your eyes every bit never before. Everything you saw would go love to you. Your eyes would touch and embrace every object that came within your range of vision. Then, at last, you would really see, and a new world of beauty would open itself earlier you lot.
I who am blind can give 1 hint to those who see -- one admonition to those who would brand full utilise of the souvenir of sight: Utilise your eyes as if tomorrow y'all would be stricken bullheaded. And the same method tin be practical to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would exist stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with enjoy each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never olfactory property and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to yous through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight must be the most delightful.
Copyright © 1997 by Helen Keller. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; January 1933; Three Days to Run into; Volume 151, No. 1; pages 35-42.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/33jan/keller.htm
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