I imagined the world a sort of Heaven

I read a few years ago, quite a fascinating book on Niagara Falls. One of the author's observations was that people are often disappointed upon first viewing the Falls. It did not seem to them to be so grand as they had imagined. However, the author asserts (and quotes several literary luminaries who recounted their experience) that when people return to the Falls each day, they begin to sense the great power of that mighty rush of water (it does, after all, drain four of the five great lakes). One of these authors (and sadly, i do not recall which) stated that she actually reached a point of overwhelming awe, bordering on irrational fear of the power of nature displayed before her, and her insignificance in comparison.

Without having the least authority for making the statement, i would opine that these people with newly restored sight would eventually come to see the variety and detail of the visual world for the wealth it represents. I once stood on the edge of a common pasture, of a morning in winter, taken by the activity of the small birds who were already active and singing loudly as the sky lightened. The field was covered in rime, and as the sun rose above the horizon, i saw that common pasture flash into a beauty which no artist could ever hope to portray.

Perhaps these people need to be taken into the untrodden ways.

I am so easily overwhelmed visually that I can totally understand the Niagra Falls disconnect. It often takes repeated visits or viewing of something before I can assimilate everything.

In a way, it is very much what like newly-sighted people experience, an overload of information, impossible to process.

Despite your lack of authority, your "untrodden ways" is, I think very true.

The man the article centers on relates that everyone thought he would have a huge list of things to see but all he really wanted to do was go home. I suspect his home and family were his pasture and birds.

In my imagination I can almost see your memory.

It was what i would call achingly beautiful, Boom, i actually stood there with tears streaming down my cheeks . . .

bookmark

That is interesting to think about Boomerang. In the case of blind people having only the images which their inner eye created for them for so many years and to suddenly be confronted with the often seedy, less than perfect reality that is the fact, must be disappointing. It must be like anything that we delude ourselves about before we are faced with the reality -we imagine it as better or more beautiful or that it will be more exciting than it often turns out to be in reality.

I had a friend who said he tried conscientiously to live his life without preconceived expectations- so he would not constantly be disappointed. At first I thought this was kind of a depressing attitude to take, but the more I got to know him, the more I realized he was one of those people who seemed to get really excited about everything. I loved being around him - he found wonder in the mundane all the time. I struggle to do the same, I think it's harder for me (not to expect too much) because I tend to be an optimist and hopeful, but at the same time, that optimism which leads me to have high expectations, also allows me to see reality with a slightly rosier hue, I think. So it all evens out.

Interesting topic. I'd be interested to see how the perceptions of these people change as they are sighted for longer periods of time.

-- John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Aiden, your friend reminds me of the underpromise-overdeliver rule I've always tried to run my business by but never tried to apply to life in general. He might really be onto something there!

Kids have that capacity, that capacity to be stunned by something, probably because their experience is so limited. It would be nice to be able to retain it.

As Setanta points out, at least we can still experience it because sometimes the world just explodes with beauty when we least expect it. We remain capable of being surprised, and moved by what we see.

And as our eyes adjust to a place and we have a context to really "see" it in, I think we learn to see it differently.

When I first visited Maine with an eye to moving there from North Carolina - I viewed everything very negatively. I didn't want to move - so I just saw this grey, bleak place that seemed pretty desolate and uninviting- and just different than any other place I had lived. The first night we were there we ate at this restaurant in this tiny little town and I said, "Oh, I could never live here". Well, we moved to Maine anyway and when we were looking for a house about six months later, we went back through that same little town. I kept saying, "What a nice little town. Why haven't we ever been here before?" My husband said, "We have - this is where we ate in that little restaurant that first night." I said, "No way - I know I haven't been here - I would have remembered it". I didn't believe that I had been there until he showed me the restaurant we ate at. It took me six months of getting used to Maine, and knowing where to look to see its particular brand of beauty for my whole vision of the place to change. We bought a house in that town and loved living there for eleven years. I wonder if that will happen to these people who've been blind until now. Maybe as their sight adjusts - they'll find the beauty.

I've been thinking about your moving to Maine story all afternoon. It really gets to the gut level of seeing as something much more than just one of our five senses. Finding the beauty in something requires so much effort.

In my own life I can relate your experience to mine with parenting. I never wanted to be a parent. When I became a godmother I was thrilled but still, while it was a nice place to visit but I didn't want to live there. Then, two and a half years ago I found myself living there when my godson moved in right before his second birthday.

Now we are working towards adopting him and I can't imagine a day without him.

But learning to SEE the surprising beauty of parenting was a long, uphill climb; a serious disconnect between my imagination and reality.

Another article I read the other day, this one on photography, mentioned what they called "the digital deluge" wherein we now see so many pictures that they have really stopped having any meaning and they no longer evoke emotion or memory or curiosity.

Thinking along these lines, imagine being blind and then being able to see. Talk about overload. At a certain point things just start seeming pointless.

The same is probably true for experience. We can DO so much more now and with very little risk. Want to climb Mt. Everest? Go to the North Pole? That's not uncommon anymore.

Heck, you can ride a roller coaster sitting in a building. All thrill, no risk.

The landscape of parenthood - now there's one that takes a lot of adjusting to. At the beginning, I was terrified, confronted by all the pitfalls and possible missteps - but like you, soon realized that having this incredible new person in my life made all the risk worth it. (As an aside - my son is our biological child, but we adopted our daughter- if you ever want to talk about adoption - I'm an enthusiastic proponent - again, like you, fully believe it is the best conscious decision I've ever made and thank God every day that by some miracle this particular little girl who was living across the country from me ended up as a part of my life- a miracle that is just as amazing as the whole process of pregnancy and giving birth in my opinon).

Your last post is interesting as well. We've been living in England since Sept and taking loads of pictures everywhere we travel. My son was remarking on the fact that the pictures never quite live up to the real thing. I agree. Also, we haven't quite been able to achieve the excitement we first felt when we stepped out of the plane and onto the soil of another country. So yes, I see what you're saying - we become overloaded and jaded when everything starts to seem commonplace. Sad, isn't it?

We are getting very close to adoption. We will have had legal custody for one year next month (physical custody for two and a half years) and it will have been one year since we heard from Mo's dad in July.

That's when we can go back to the attorney and start adoption proceedings!

I have a weird jinxy feeling by talking about adoption too much right now but I'm sure to have a million threads about it in the upcoming months and I very much look forward to hearing your story and I thank you for offering to talk about it with me.

I work as a photographer and I confess to being particular while trying to always be diplomatic. My family emails me thousands of pictures - most of them of the same thing taken seconds apart. I'm constantly telling them that I would just love to have one nice print that I can frame instead of a barrage of emails.

In photography school they really stress editing your images down to the best, then editing that image down to its essentials. I think every new digital camera should come with instructions on how to do that!

Travel photos are a great example of that. It is so hard to capture the rhythym of a place in a photo. When I first moved to Oregon I couldn't stop looking and photographing everything. Having grown up in Oklahoma and Texas, Oregon was like another planet. Now I look back on those photos and wonder what in the world I was thinking by reducing it down to meaningless images.

Now I really enjoy when someone comes to visit and I can take them around and show them things without preparing them with photos beforehand. I pick up on their excitement and it makes me excited all over again.