Intersections
Aug. 4th, 2020 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paragraphitiTitle: Intersections
Author: A whole bunch of us
Fandom: Original
Prompted by:blue_mouse
Prompt: Nonfiction about the intersections between plurality and blindness
Intersections
1
When you are blind
(and there is no audio description)
you learn to listen
more carefully to the sounds in
the movies you watch. You make inferences
about what's going on. An actor screams
and you infer that someone is hurt. You learn
that a squeal of happiness
And a cry of despair
sound different. You learn
perhaps (As we did)
to differentiate the sound of laptop vs. desktop,
and you focus on the dialog
for context clues.
2
When you aren't alone in your head
you learn to listen
to the flavored thoughts
of the people behind your eyes.
They all sound different
even if you don't hear voices
and only get thoughts and emotions.
Some are better at communicating than others.
Just like with movies, you have
to learn to tell their contexts,
Their nuances, their flavors
and it's important for them
to learn the context of front.
They must learn to navigate in a sighted world
even if subjectively they can see
the body can't so they adapt.
They have to take Orientation and Mobility like anyone ese,
learn to use the long white cane
or to work with a dog if that's the system's choice,
And it's not always easy,
but even sighted headmates have
to navigate the world with their ears
and fingers. At least for us
the skills usually transfer well
and most of us are sighted in our own right,
even those who were born here, because
As a group we were raised as if we were sighted
As much as possible.
We've actually been told
that we "act sighted"
and the fronter at the time
wanted to laugh and say
"That's because I am"
but that wouldn't have worked, because
Our eyes give it away.
But being blind, and being a group
are not things we're ashamed of.
3
We did not learn to use
a white cane till we were
in our sophomore year of high school, though
most blind folk learn when they are
in third grade,
or earlier, so it becomes
Second nature, the cane becomes
an extention of their arm,
their hand and wrist develop the rhythm so
they don't cramp after half an hour
(Like our hand does)
But when we were little,
we had to rely on other "friends"
On the playground and some
took advantage of that fact.
"Play what I want to play,"
they said, "Or we will leave you here."
Being left alone, in the wide expanse
of empty playground when you
don't necessarily know your way around
Is a scary prospect,
And you either learn to be a peacekeeper
or to be defiant,
sometimes both at once.
There's a balance to be stricken
In blindness and plurality
between being a peacemaker and a doormat,
Between balancing and advocacy
telling your headmates you can handle
the scary thing, and asking them
to help you advocate.
You are never truly alone, and some are better
at advocating, some better
at balancing, some are capable
of telling people to go
and soak their heads, you will play
By yourself right here, where you still know
your way around.
4
When you are blind or plural
the world isn't made for you.
When you're both, it's a double hit sometimes.
You all want friends, want entertainment, want fun
But Braille books are expensive,
and even the cheapest Braille book is $10 and that's for
a coloring book
with just nine raised-line pictures, and till recently
Nobody realized that blind children would want to color
Like sighted people do.
Nobody has yet figured that
Blind adults and children fronting in blind bodies
Might want to color as well, but that's ok because
when we were children, our teachers took
regular coloring pages, copied them onto copy paper and
went around the outlines with a hot glue gun,
And we had crayons that our mom
used a Braille labeler
to label the colors on and before that
we had crayons with bits of fabric
and other textures on,
Each texture a color.
Green was a square of paint,
purple a dot of glue and our favorite
red, a bit of corduroy,
Some of the very very smalest of us,
still associate red with corduroy
and green with the cool smooth paint
even though we can see colored lights if they
are very close to our face.
Sometimes, in our brain, if you want to convey a color,
you send an association with texture instead.
5
Our blindness has influenced
the way our system works. We have trouble
picturing human beings as their actual size
And that's not including the nonhumans,
So picturing them as plastic doll-sized versions of themselves is easier,
Though it's just an analog
For the visual parts. We can imagine the size of people,
because we know what standing next to tall people is like,
and short people, shorter than us,
and we know the feel of
having a child hug your legs.
We use all these feelings to map inworld things
onto the body. We never have the problem
of looking into a mirror and seeing
ourselves as we look instead of the body,
But we do have other things,
like Axel forgetting that he
doesn't specifically have to duck to avoid the
shadow of the cabinet door
that some other fronter
or someone else in the house has
left open. The body is
almost three feet shorter,
and he won't be slammed in the face,
though even so their's a tchnique for blind people
who are trailing the walls, where they put up an arm
to block themselves from being struck in the face,
and Axel and anyone taller, tends to do that, just
out of force of habit.
(Poor Optimus Prime probably
has it the absolute worst. His body doesn't map
at all onto this one and he has to picture it
like a robot controlling another bot,
Or a meat mecha as chucky
Called it once when he
was trying to convince Codee that we were all real.)
Speaking of Chucky, he has to stop and remember
that he is not two feet tall,
that he can reach things on the pantry shelves
(But still not the very top shelf because
short human bodies are like that.)
The feeling of being taller maps more easily
For some reason.
But everyone must learn to navigate
The world and to listen
To each other and to the context clues,
the sound of an open door
because it sounds different from a wall
which sounds more solid. You can do this too.
Go and stand against a wall
in a quiet place, close your eyes
and listen, and you can tell
if you're listening closely that a wall sounds solid
but if you walk to a door, the sound is hollow, more empty
and if you listen and learn, you'll discover how to spot other things
Like trees are like columns of walls and sometimes
they smell different, but you have
to disregard some of the visual input
and calm your mind to learn to feel
your surroundings
and incidentally that's also,
A fabulous mindspace to hear
what headmates are trying to say, too.
Author: A whole bunch of us
Fandom: Original
Prompted by:
blue_mousePrompt: Nonfiction about the intersections between plurality and blindness
Intersections
1
When you are blind
(and there is no audio description)
you learn to listen
more carefully to the sounds in
the movies you watch. You make inferences
about what's going on. An actor screams
and you infer that someone is hurt. You learn
that a squeal of happiness
And a cry of despair
sound different. You learn
perhaps (As we did)
to differentiate the sound of laptop vs. desktop,
and you focus on the dialog
for context clues.
2
When you aren't alone in your head
you learn to listen
to the flavored thoughts
of the people behind your eyes.
They all sound different
even if you don't hear voices
and only get thoughts and emotions.
Some are better at communicating than others.
Just like with movies, you have
to learn to tell their contexts,
Their nuances, their flavors
and it's important for them
to learn the context of front.
They must learn to navigate in a sighted world
even if subjectively they can see
the body can't so they adapt.
They have to take Orientation and Mobility like anyone ese,
learn to use the long white cane
or to work with a dog if that's the system's choice,
And it's not always easy,
but even sighted headmates have
to navigate the world with their ears
and fingers. At least for us
the skills usually transfer well
and most of us are sighted in our own right,
even those who were born here, because
As a group we were raised as if we were sighted
As much as possible.
We've actually been told
that we "act sighted"
and the fronter at the time
wanted to laugh and say
"That's because I am"
but that wouldn't have worked, because
Our eyes give it away.
But being blind, and being a group
are not things we're ashamed of.
3
We did not learn to use
a white cane till we were
in our sophomore year of high school, though
most blind folk learn when they are
in third grade,
or earlier, so it becomes
Second nature, the cane becomes
an extention of their arm,
their hand and wrist develop the rhythm so
they don't cramp after half an hour
(Like our hand does)
But when we were little,
we had to rely on other "friends"
On the playground and some
took advantage of that fact.
"Play what I want to play,"
they said, "Or we will leave you here."
Being left alone, in the wide expanse
of empty playground when you
don't necessarily know your way around
Is a scary prospect,
And you either learn to be a peacekeeper
or to be defiant,
sometimes both at once.
There's a balance to be stricken
In blindness and plurality
between being a peacemaker and a doormat,
Between balancing and advocacy
telling your headmates you can handle
the scary thing, and asking them
to help you advocate.
You are never truly alone, and some are better
at advocating, some better
at balancing, some are capable
of telling people to go
and soak their heads, you will play
By yourself right here, where you still know
your way around.
4
When you are blind or plural
the world isn't made for you.
When you're both, it's a double hit sometimes.
You all want friends, want entertainment, want fun
But Braille books are expensive,
and even the cheapest Braille book is $10 and that's for
a coloring book
with just nine raised-line pictures, and till recently
Nobody realized that blind children would want to color
Like sighted people do.
Nobody has yet figured that
Blind adults and children fronting in blind bodies
Might want to color as well, but that's ok because
when we were children, our teachers took
regular coloring pages, copied them onto copy paper and
went around the outlines with a hot glue gun,
And we had crayons that our mom
used a Braille labeler
to label the colors on and before that
we had crayons with bits of fabric
and other textures on,
Each texture a color.
Green was a square of paint,
purple a dot of glue and our favorite
red, a bit of corduroy,
Some of the very very smalest of us,
still associate red with corduroy
and green with the cool smooth paint
even though we can see colored lights if they
are very close to our face.
Sometimes, in our brain, if you want to convey a color,
you send an association with texture instead.
5
Our blindness has influenced
the way our system works. We have trouble
picturing human beings as their actual size
And that's not including the nonhumans,
So picturing them as plastic doll-sized versions of themselves is easier,
Though it's just an analog
For the visual parts. We can imagine the size of people,
because we know what standing next to tall people is like,
and short people, shorter than us,
and we know the feel of
having a child hug your legs.
We use all these feelings to map inworld things
onto the body. We never have the problem
of looking into a mirror and seeing
ourselves as we look instead of the body,
But we do have other things,
like Axel forgetting that he
doesn't specifically have to duck to avoid the
shadow of the cabinet door
that some other fronter
or someone else in the house has
left open. The body is
almost three feet shorter,
and he won't be slammed in the face,
though even so their's a tchnique for blind people
who are trailing the walls, where they put up an arm
to block themselves from being struck in the face,
and Axel and anyone taller, tends to do that, just
out of force of habit.
(Poor Optimus Prime probably
has it the absolute worst. His body doesn't map
at all onto this one and he has to picture it
like a robot controlling another bot,
Or a meat mecha as chucky
Called it once when he
was trying to convince Codee that we were all real.)
Speaking of Chucky, he has to stop and remember
that he is not two feet tall,
that he can reach things on the pantry shelves
(But still not the very top shelf because
short human bodies are like that.)
The feeling of being taller maps more easily
For some reason.
But everyone must learn to navigate
The world and to listen
To each other and to the context clues,
the sound of an open door
because it sounds different from a wall
which sounds more solid. You can do this too.
Go and stand against a wall
in a quiet place, close your eyes
and listen, and you can tell
if you're listening closely that a wall sounds solid
but if you walk to a door, the sound is hollow, more empty
and if you listen and learn, you'll discover how to spot other things
Like trees are like columns of walls and sometimes
they smell different, but you have
to disregard some of the visual input
and calm your mind to learn to feel
your surroundings
and incidentally that's also,
A fabulous mindspace to hear
what headmates are trying to say, too.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-22 07:01 am (UTC)If you know the place well, you can almost navigate by it.
-Codeine