My Partial Blindness
John L. Waters
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My Partial Blindness
Copyright 2000 by John L. Waters.
All Rights Reserved.
May 19, 2000
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The following "poem" was written by me this morning
before I took a bath and got ready to ride in on the
bus from Trinidad to HSU. Riding in on the bus I
revised the "poem" a bit and walking into the HSU
library I realized that I have always had a kind of
partial blindness which other people didn't recognize.
The result has been that I have been stressed more
than most people are stressed because people and
society just expect me to be normally sighted and
responsive to what is visible to normal people. But
with my partial blindness I've just not been able to
keep up the pace society has demanded I keep up.
Hence the difficulties which I allude to in this
"poem".
-------------------------------------------------------
Da Liberator
In 1964 at the age of 24
In Kansas I was a graduate student
Working under Doctor Charles Michener.
The expectation was that I would
Get a PhD in entomology.
There was a great deal of information
I was expected to assimilate
Through my eyes.
As a younger man I'd been
Taking so many courses
And assimilating so much knowledge
About so many different subjects!
But this wasn't enough for me.
It didn't address my main talent
Which wasn't really classroom study
And remembering volumes of technical terminology.
Since I was four I'd been expected
To just learn more and more
By going to classes at school.
For twenty years
Adults had been talking to me
And giving me classroom assignments.
But what was I to do of my own accord?
What was I to do out of my own choice?
What was my life all about?
At age twenty-four I didn't really know.
I really hadn't focused upon
A realistic career objective.
I'd just always been a student.
As a young boy
I'd had a keen fascination for brightly colored
objects
And in patterns
And I'd had a love of flowers.
Insects also stimulated me greatly
In their bright colors.
And I was fascinated by fire and by lights
Glowing brightly and stimulating my eyes
Better and better to see and feel better.
What I wasn't so stimulated by and fascinated by
Was social interaction and clever talk.
Other children laughed and talked easily
And cleverly, and with such animated faces!
To socialize was their main preoccupation.
But I was different.
As a student under Doctor Charles Michener
I was expected to see minute details
Using my eyes.
the venation in the wings of tiny bees
Was what I was being paid to study.
For hours each day I was expected
To examine tiny insects and identify them.
this just wasn't enough for me,
And my eyes never did work so well,
And I probably had autism so I couldn't really think
About what was really going on in my life,
And my eyes never did work well together.
I used my right eye only
To read and to examine fine detail.
In reality I had other problems as well,
In sensing the environment.
I'd always had these problems in perception,
But they'd never been addressed in detail.
I was expected to focus more and more
On the minutiae of the small print
And other details.
But my system rebelled.
I couldn't do the work anymore.
Never had anyone made such a detailed study
Of my own self and my own special abilities
And my own special disabilities.
I just didn't really count as a person.
Now I can see so clearly that
The reality was
That society expected me to adjust
To its needs without any concern over
My own abilities and disabilities.
Society took no interest in all
In myself as an individual person.
It was always my job to keep on
Working at being more extraverted
And more outgoing and less and less and less
Aware of my own personal condition.
I just didn't really count as a person.
Eventually the demands of college
Were just too narrow and too confining for me.
My eyes were expected to focus
Narrower and narrower upon
Tiny veins in tiny wings
Or upon some minutiae of print.
Istead, I took long walks
And I wrote long poems,
And I had vivid dreams at night.
My life kept hitting the brick wall
Of society over and over again.
I just didn't really count as a person.
The only way I could see to make
Any progress at all in life
Was forme to get a job
Doing something other than cramming in
More and more and more and more and more of
Other people's standards, goals, and ideas.
My mind had been over-worked
And over-stuffed with other people's ideas
And my own ideas just had never been important.
My own self had been negated so
I just didn't really count as a person.
Now I can see how at school
Children assert themselves physically
And learn how to be somebody
In their social interaction
And in their athletic games,
And the person who just can't perform as well
In the social interaction
and in the athletic games
Just doesn't really exist
In the eyes of that small society.
He just doesn't exist in reality
In the social world of ordinary people.
And this is a painful realization
For me to experience
In the isolation of my private solitude
As I am sitting and writing these words.
I can see now that
In all walks of life each individual person
Is striving to perform well at some task.
Metaphorically speaking
Life has put each person to the task
Of playing the role of being a monkey
At the feet of an organ grinder.
Leaving out the metaphor
And the poet-in-me
Each child is born
To be the slave of many masters,
And to be truly free is the impossible dream.
There is always that mill-stone,
With you, the ox, being whipped if you
Can't pull it 'round steadily.
If you lag, then society
Attacks you as unworthy.
You fail to do your part
In the eyes of people.
You fail to measure up to the social standard.
You fail to do your part
For the team, and for the enslavers.
People let you die in a gutter
Just because you can't excel at what ordinary people
Excel at.
Indeed this is a kind of social blindness.
The expectation ofme has always been
To fit into the social group
And focus upon the interest of some master or leader.
My own interests just didn't count,
And I didn't see the error in this approach
And I didn't complain.
I wasn't at all wise then.
I wasn't at all wise then
To the ordinary social game.
Eventually I just couldn't continue
In that vein any longer.
I failed to find employment
And then I failed to find a publisher.
I went forth in total freedom as a psychotic
With the feeling of being born again
And being free to be myself
Washed clean of all my sins
Despite my profound and lifelong
Disabilities.
God Damn!
Not even Lord Jesus could save me.
The trouble has been partly in my language
And in my choice of words.
At the age of thirty-one
And at the age of forty
I didn't really have the understanding
I have today at the age of sixty.
So I made adults afraid of me
Or at least I made adults feel
Uncomfortable in my presence.
It is just that I have
Multiple handicaps.
I still don't really count as a person.
Eventually I figure that
Some people will understand that I'm just
Standing apart and looking at people
From a distance and seeing
the social pattern the way it has evolved
Over so many thousands and thousands
Of past human generations.
Freedom is a word but children are not free.
Each child is born into a familiar pattern
Characteristic of that family tree.
And society expects the child to conform
To the higher social pattern as well.
School imposes yet a third pattern!
The free person can't conform to all these patterns
Enough to keep cultured people feeling comfortable
In his presence.
Cultured people are entirely bound in chains.
Or people cultured in the old way are
Unable to be truly free.
What is within a free person
Manages to get out of the prisoner's cell,
But even language is a cage!
In body movement I express the liberation
A healthy fetus strives for even
Before it is born!
In isolation the human fetus
Struggles so to be free
Inside of its mother.
In isolation I keep struggling to be free
Inside the womb of a mother-culture
That's been slow in recognizing me
As a person who has something important
To contribute to psychology, to education,
To philosophy, and to medicine.
-------------------------------------------------------
The preceding "poem" was written by me this morning
before I took a bath and got ready to ride in on the
bus from Trinidad to HSU. Riding in on the bus I
revised the "poem" a bit and walking into the HSU
library I realized that I have always had a kind of
partial blindness which other people didn't recognize.
The result has been that I have been stressed more
than most people are stressed because people and
society just expect me to be normally sighted and
responsive to what is visible to normal people. But
with my partial blindness I've just not been able to
keep up the pace society has demanded I keep up.
Hence the difficulties which I allude to in this
"poem".
-------------------------------------------------------
10:59 AM Friday, May 19, 2000
John L. Waters
johnlwaters@yahoo.com
The information on this page represents that of John Waters and not
necessarily that of Humboldt State University. John Waters takes full
responsibility for the information presented.
This page is maintained by: John Waters