Blessed are the Blind

It was late on a Friday, but early in the whole quarantine period -- which had yet to end but still had an “early” quality in Damien’s mind. His friends from high school had set themselves up on a computer screen in hard lined boxes. It was nice to see their faces. Damien’s friend John was alone in his house. His parents were somewhere. John looked at his door. 

“What?”

“I thought I saw something.”

“Something, or someone.”

“A shadow.”

“What would be worse, something or someone?” Damien asked.

“Someone.” Said John. “Ghosts aren’t real.”

But John, Damien wanted to say, of course they are. 

Damien believed in ghosts like he believed in sharks or the perfect pair of sunglasses -- They must be out there somewhere, just below the surface, just beyond the counter. 

Lately, Damien, like many people, had not been sleeping well. He was home, really home.  His parents’ house was red brick with a full front and backyard. It was in an old neighborhood. Damien liked to take walks with his dog around this neighborhood and imagine that he was in the same place a hundred years earlier. He liked to think that instead of layers of sepia or bright technicolor, as is always the case with images of the past, that maybe the past existed in the same colors as the right now did.  

Damien remembered when he was little he would spin in circles and stare at the telephone wires. He would lie on his back and see the trees crowd themselves and the sky flip around and thought that maybe this was how it all really was. That the illusion, the delusion, was the stability of our world. The world was floating, flinging itself through infinite space in endless circles; it must be less stable than the verdant, static greenery of an old neighborhood. 

His suspicions were confirmed in his college’s visual studies class. The professor was a young woman with sleek black hair.  Albrecht Durer’s self portrait presented itself behind her. 

“How are we really seeing?” she asked. “Can we ever be sure that we see the same things? Is that great looking pink scarf in the third row the same pink for me as it is for you? Don’t you see the problem here? We cannot check -- there is no confirmation between language and color. I mean you can get people to agree on wavelengths and everything, but can you really be sure that when I say green, I mean green in the same way you do?” 

Damien sat up straighter. 

“Look at Durer here. Yes, it is interesting to create a self-portrait of yourself as Jesus, the vanity, huh? But more than that look at the eyes.”

           Damien squinted.

“They are uneven, watery, transient, as if his gaze is about to lift, to flicker away. Look at these eyes and know that they are human.  It is unmistakable, obvious in a way. We know human eyes from all else. We can feel the weight of the human gaze – it is heavier with judgement.  One argument for the existence of God was the human eye. It was postulated that nature could never create something so perfect.”

           Damien’s eyes were not perfect. He needed glasses. His head hurt from trying to make out the smudged notes next to the picture. 

           “But you know what?” The professor shook her head for effect. Her hair fell around her shoulders; the effect was evident. “The human eye sees nothing. Our pupils dance around and catch snippets of reality. We receive truly minor inputs of information -- yes no, no yes -- and then somehow we create this.” She waved her hand through the hair.  “This incredibly detailed and accurate representation of the world. But you must admit. It is only human; it is fully subjective.” Damien thought she was looking at him, no through him. What are the lyrics? I’m looking through you, where did you go.  

           “Seeing is believing? No. Believing is seeing. Sight is a statement of your belief.”

But now Damien was lying in his childhood bed with balled-up sheets and a dull night sky. He was neither dreaming or thinking; he couldn’t tell what he was doing or how long he had been doing it. He looked around. He was definitely in his room. He slept in the attic. A leaky skylight, slanting walls, and greening copper fixtures on the sink marked the room as his. 

           Damien’s body felt tense. He didn’t know why.  His breath was short. He didn’t want to roll over and fall asleep. It took a minute to recognize the feeling – fear. Amongst the utter banality of his room, Damien was shivering with fear. 

           And then all at once Damien remembered why he woke up. “Damien”. He had heard his name in his ear. From the night that swallows all, Damien was called back out. Damien sat up. He tried to remember more. What was the tone of the voice – urgent? Angry? Loving? Damien felt the weight of human gaze.

           Damien looked around the room. He couldn’t see anything. His eyes felt slow and false. There were shapes of green and dark phosphenes across the shivering night shadows. He took a long breath. And as it always does at night, nothing made any sense. Darkness brought obscurities, insecurities, bubbling up. 

“I’m here” Damien said. To no one.  He was still straining to see in the dimness. Damien knew none of this was real. Nothing had said his name, nothing had called to him. The same nothing that filled all the spaces in the quiet neighborhood parks. 

Damien closed his eyes. Milton wrote Paradise Lost while blind. He claimed that he received full lines of text in verse while he slept.  Who knows what abnormalities haunted Durer, what images presented themselves to the famous melancholic? “Damien”. This time Damien was sure. The sound echoed through him.  For a second, he could see. Then, it all flickered before him. It winked and darkened with his faith.  The small holes through which we see the real of the world, the sensitive pupils that make the universe known to itself, were just that – holes. Damien stopped. He stopped seeing. And he waited to hear more -- a new sermon on the mount: blessed are the blind, for they will see what they want.