Outta Control

There are moments in life when it is all turned inside out – what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible, and all your levelheaded efforts to keep a tight ontological control are rendered silly and indulgent.
~ Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project

That’s just how I’m feeling, with this eye bullshit. My wonk-ass skin suit, which has already banjaxed my sound system, is now threatening my vision. I’m afraid.

Fear cuts deeper than swords.
~ George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

My deepest fear right now, is that I’ll lose my sight. My mother, my Nf2 coping template, lost hers. She wasn’t stone blind but she didn’t have much. Frankly, I’m not sure how much she could see. I do know that reading became impossible. Yes, this was on top of being deaf. And, yes, this panics the shit outta me.

Do one thing every day that scares you.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt 

I do. I get out of bed.
It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.
~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

What’s left when sound and vision are gone?

Touch. Clay, fiber, the feel of water. What else?

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
~ Nelson Mandela

I’ll never vanquish my fears but I will get up out of bed, stand up, move forward and fight. I’ll put one foot in front of the other, jump through the hoops, walk the walk, do what I gotta do.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
~ James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

He was talking about something else but this resonates. In scary times I find myself preoccupied, thinking overmuch about people who’ve done me dirt. I realize that anger and fear, not hatred, fuel this illusion that I can control my fate. Where there’s rage there’s hope?

I believe I’m just adding an unnecessary, extra layer of angst to this tall cake of dread.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.
~ Helen Keller

Well, ya know, SHE would know!

Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.
~ Pablo Picasso

Huh. Interesting.

I know a blind potter when I was in college. There IS art after blindness just as there’s music after deafness.

I asked Ten if he’d go to percussion concerts with me. Would he go to places with impossibly loud music with me. I need to know – can I feel the beat? So far, in my limited experiences as a deaf concert goer, results are uneven. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. I need more, varied input.

He said yes.

Have I mentioned that I’m in love? BIG time.