When I Leave...
Exploring the Being and Appearance of Blindness

When I leave, so too does blindness.

When I leave, so too does blindness.

When I leave, blindness is forgotten.

When I leave, my blindness haunts me and, it haunts you.

When I leave, it's back to business as usual.

When I leave, you breathe a sigh of relief.

When I leave, you hope I never return.

When I leave, you stay.

When I leave, you want no one like me to dare enter your sight again.

When I leave, you destroy any chance I might have had.

You take my blindness, with sheer disgust, and you eliminate me.

When I leave, no one notices, I was already gone.

When I leave, you erase my tracks.

My words bespeak a story of entering and exiting; of appearing and disappearing; of being and perception; of sight and blindness. I wrote this poem as a way to preserve my emotion in a moment that, at the time, I was not yet ready to engage. This poem tells of my time as a blind graduate student. Or better, a visually impaired graduate student. Or, more descriptive, a partially blind graduate student. Nonetheless, a student somewhere between blindness and sight, on the border between the two (Healey, 2021; Kleege,1999; Michalko,1998; Omansky, 2006). It tells, too, of tracks, of my tracks and their erasure. What follows is my attempt to both unearth and follow these tracks.

"When I leave, you stay."

Leaving, an act, an activity, presupposes a coming, which itself presupposes an appearing. It presupposes a making-an-appearance, an entry, into … We do, all of us, make appearances; we do make an appearance into the world and into its many realms. It isn't always clear from where we make this appearance nor is it clear where we retreat, when we leave. What is clear is that we appear to others – to a you – to a you that stays when I leave.

What, however, do and can we make of our making-an-appearance? And, what do and can we make of our exit, our leaving? The work of Hannah Arendt (1978) may be helpful here. She says, "In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide" (p. 19). Any entry, Arendt tells us, is an entry into the world, for into what else can we enter? Moreover, when we enter this world we must enter from a somewhere. And yet, Arendt says we enter not from a somewhere, but from a nowhere. At first blush, this sounds absurd in its impossibility. To enter, we must come from somewhere. For this to be true and for us to come from a nowhere, we must conceive of "a nowhere" as a somewhere. Is it possible that there is a "where" that we might depict, as Arendt does, as nowhere, as neither here nor there? Can nowhere be understood as a somewhere, a somewhere not recognizable in a taken-for-granted sense? For us to appear from a nowhere can mean that from where we appear is seemingly a nowhere. Not knowing or being uncertain from where appearances come, makes it seem as though they appear "out of nowhere." This, of course, is the source of origin of creation stories – our need to make a somewhere out of nowhere. It is to generate an account of our being in the world and in the midst of myriad appearances. It is, too, to generate an account of the myriad of appearances of our being.

As Arendt says, Being and Appearing coincide and, they do so, in this world, in the world of appearances. In this world, Being and Appearing are themselves two appearances among many that may coincide. The "nowhere" from which an appearance emerges, from which it enters, must, therefore, make reference to the Being, often invisible, it brings with it. Might this be the "you" that leaves when I stay, the "you" who reads any experience?

While they coincide, Being and Appearing are different from one another. If they were not, they could not coincide. For Arendt, what is appearing, making an appearance, is Being. Being is always "there." It is never nowhere. The nowhere of which Arendt speaks may be understood as referring to the invisibility of Being and Appearing and may be read as the appearance of the invisible. Coinciding, then, may be read as making the invisible, the nowhere, visible; making what does not appear, appear. It is the Appearing of that which, by itself, cannot appear. In this sense, the appearance of Being is wholly coincidental. It coincides with what we already and always make appear.

"When I leave, so too does blindness.

When I leave, so too does blindness."

When I leave… Disappear into the nowhere from which I came somehow, my blindness comes with me. It, too, disappears. What sort of blindness appears with me? Like all blindness, my blindness appears into the somewhere of sight. It comes partially hidden by sight, partially covered, by it. This can be frightening. Sometimes it is difficult, always impossible, to make my blindness appear on its own, without sight. It disappears with me into the nowhere from which it came.

I leave; it leaves. It is as though I, as I enter the world of appearances, I enter it simultaneously as a blind person and as blindness. And yet, appearances of blindness abound and, do so, before my blindness or I enter. It is as though I embody blindness, as if I am it. This can't be true. What is frightening is that it feels like, without me, blindness is invisible. It appears with me as I enter and disappears with me as I leave. Can this be true?

"When I leave, blindness is forgotten."

Out of sight, out of mind. This is much more than a cliché; it also rings true. Who, for instance, sees blindness when a blind person leaves their visual field? It is easily forgotten. What leaves when I leave? What leaves when the blind person leaves? Blindness, of course, since it is forgotten almost instantly. Still, memories do linger, even bad ones; and, from the point of view of common-sense, blindness is a bad memory. A chilling reminder of what could, as though from nowhere, appear within the disappearance of sight and sights. It is best we forget. Out of sight, out of mind; out of appearing, out of being.

And yet, not only does the memory of blindness linger, it haunts 1 … "it haunts me." Blindness is itself haunting. And, it haunts you as well. Even though blindness, to borrow from Arendt, appears from a nowhere and disappears into a nowhere, its ghost remains. It may be out of sight and even out of mind, but it remains somewhere, a somewhere we can feel. We feel its presence even, perhaps especially, in its absence. The Being of blindness haunts us, and we often flinch (Manning, 2000) at its appearance and even at the sheer thought of its appearance. The feel of the possibility of its appearing lingers within us. "When I leave, so too does my blindness," but its ghost remains and haunts you.

The haunting presence of blindness is not tethered exclusively to its appearance in a somewhere. The feel of its being lingers in the possibility of its appearing and hangs in a nowhereness that, ironically, feels as though it is everywhere. The lingering feel of blindness complicates the being and appearing of it in that it presupposes both a specific being and a specific appearance. There is an image of blindness, one that for the most part, we share through our social imaginary. We conjure, seemingly from within, an image that is not only imagined but is also felt. Such conjuring happens even before blindness has darkened our doorway. It is this blindness – our image of what blindness is, of who is blind, and of how it appears – that complicates the being of blindness and thus its appearance. 2

This specter of blindness, the one we conjure out of the necessity of understanding, haunts both you and me. The ghost-like presence of blindness through the inescapable feel of its nowhereness, haunts not only a you who is sighted but also a you who is blind; and, perhaps more ghostly still, a you who travels on the narrow edges of a delicate border. The necessity of conjuring the Spector of blindness may be obvious for a you who is sighted since you live with blindness almost exclusively in its ghost form. But, so do I. As real as blindness is to me, its Spector remains and I, too, find it necessary to conjure a Spector in the cloak of understanding. The necessity of the Spector of blindness haunts both you and me so that when I do cross the threshold of your imagination …

"[…] you want no one like me to dare enter your sight again."

Everywhere and nowhere is the somewhere of blindness. As much as you want no one like me to enter your sight again, that is the somewhere I am. When I leave, I am nowhere to be seen; but, I am somewhere. Your nowhere is my somewhere. Your nowhere is sight, including that of blindness, unseen and my blindness is the same. I am you; I am sight, and I am me, both unseen.

It has been said that seeing is believing. If you do not see me, am I a figment of your imagination? If you do not see me, do you believe in my existence? If you do not see me, if you have only imagined me, if you do not believe in me "[then] no one like me [will] dare to enter your sight again." I exist in the nowhere that you see as nothing. And so, I linger as a haunting figure on the precipice of your belief in what you see. You may not see me, but I am here; you may not see blindness either, but it too is here.

"What one can and cannot see says something about you," James Baldwin (quoted in Brim, 2014) muses. What do you see when you can see? What don't you see when you cannot? These are relatively easy questions to answer. The harder questions are what can't you see when you can see? And, what can you see when you can't see? These questions and their answers say something about you. What is it you want to see when you do not want me to enter your sight again? What do you think you cannot see when I leave?

These questions may have answers. Whether or not we should answer them is another question. You want to answer these questions only when the answers say something about me. When it has to do with me; whether you want me in your sight or not, what would that do to your sight if I were in it? Better question – what would that do to your sight if you realized I was in it? If, when you look, you see me what does that say about you?

What does it mean to see yourself as blind? The rhythm of blindness (Healey, 2021) is difficult to see whether you are blind or sighted. What is missing in your world that you cannot see that? What is stopping you from seeing it, surely not blindness, or is it? How you can see blindness is also how you cannot see it. You can only see you in blindness, not blindness. When you look at me, you see, not me but, a you. It is difficult, at times disturbing, to listen to what is being said when we are the "you" of whom Baldwin speaks.

"When I leave, you destroy any chance I might have had."

You have replaced me with you. You have erased me. You have erased my tracks and replaced me with you. Is this the same for what you do and do not see? "When I leave, you destroy any chance I might have had."

What chance might I have had? A chance for what? Perhaps, the chance to be seen. This suggests that when I appear, it is not that I am necessarily seen. When I appear immersed in blindness, my appearance often disappears; it is forgotten. Appearances, in order to appear, need a chance to do so. My Being does coincide with my Appearance, but it needs the chance to coincide. The coincidental appearance of Being and Appearing intersects, in my case, with the being of blindness and its appearance. This, however, requires a chance, a chance for blindness and its appearance to intersect rather than to move parallel to one another. This parallel movement does not give the appearance of blindness the chance to be blind. What it does is to give you and me a chance to forget and still, the Spector of blindness haunts…

"When I leave, it's back to business as usual.

When I leave, you breathe a sigh of relief.

When I leave, you hope I never return."

When I leave, when you forget that I am blind, there is a return, a return to business-as-usual. Whose usual business? Life returns. The return of whose life? Your life. My life. The life of sight. You can breathe, once more. You can immerse yourself in the business-as-usual since sight once again becomes business-as-usual. You can live it and breathe easy.

Still, blindness does interfere with sight especially when sight is conceived of as a culture (Michalko, 1998). The world enters, appearing from a nowhere, before your eyes and disappears into a nowhere that is your sight. The world appears to you, in you, before you and instantly coincides with Being, the being of you Appearing in it. The Being and Appearance of you and your sight looking, seeing, appearing and being unfolds before your eyes and becomes the world in which you live, the world you can see and be in – this is your world and your culture and, ironically, mine too – sight. You do, as Magee and Milligan (1995) say, "…live in [your] eyes" (p.55).

The Being and Appearing of sight coincide before your eyes. You breathe it. You eat it. You taste it. You smell it. You touch it. You describe it. You live it. Your sight is, as Lynn Manning (2000) says, "a visual feast" (n.p.). You say, the eyes are the windows to the soul; you say, you eat with your eyes, your eyes feast upon something or someone; you say, "eye catching" as though you and someone or something have come in contact, eye contact; you ask, do you see my point?; you say, it is so good to see you; you say, you are a sight for sore eyes; you say… with your bewitching eyes.

Your eyes become you. And, you take this for granted. You forget that what you see is of your making and there are the moments when even you, like me, turn a blind eye to this. Blindness, however, does not allow for such things. It is one thing for you to turn a blind eye to me, to forget that I am blind and to live with the hope that blindness will never enter your sight again. But, it is quite another thing for me to forget that you are sighted. The ubiquitous and intrusive ways of your culture clouds my blindness so much so that sometimes, I too, forget that I am blind. When I partake in your business-as-usual I breathe no sigh of relief, I feel only your hope of exile 3 and I wonder, will I ever return? What chance am I missing when I retreat into forgetful eyes?

"You take my blindness, with sheer disgust, and you eliminate me.

When I leave, no one notices, I was already gone.

When I leave, you erase my tracks."

There are times, perhaps often, that I feel that what you think of my blindness is that it is nothing short of disgusting. You watch your images of me as they come near, and you flinch. You cannot imagine me for yourself. But, in those scary moments when you do, you feel disgust. It is disgusting, you imagine, to be blind.

And, what do you, what do we, do with disgusting things? We eliminate them. We try to eliminate, at least avoid, the disgusting thing – blindness. We prevent it. Failing that, we eliminate it through cure. And, failing that, we rehabilitate it, removing it from me, from you and place it in that "greater and single social whole" (p. 128) that Henri-Jacques Stiker (1999) speaks of. 4 We disappear it. (Titchkosky et al., 2022)

No one notices when I leave; "I was already gone." I was never there. Of course, I was there; how else could I be eliminated? Blindness, too, must be there otherwise, how is it prevented, cured, rehabilitated? Ironically, I am not there even though I am. My blindness is not seen as me. My blindness is seen only as something, unfortunately, that I have; but, not as something I am. 5 Eliminate something I have, eliminate my blindness; eliminate something I am, eliminate me.

People sometimes say, "I forgot you're blind." What are they forgetting? Clearly not me. I am there "right in front of their nose;" they are not forgetting me. They are forgetting I am blind. You sit, we talk and I "look like" you when I sit and we talk. My blindness is out of sight even when it is right in front of your nose. My blindness slips into your sight, ghost-like. It haunts us, both of us and…you forget, I forget. Better to conjure sight out of me than blindness (Healey, 2022c). No need to flinch, then.

When you forget that I am blind, you forget me, and I leave. You try, though, to ensure I do not return. You erase the path of blindness into sight. You erase my tracks; you erase the tracks that I might follow to return.

There seems to be no vacancy in the eyes, no vacancy for any other tenant than sight. There is room, but no vacancies. The "rooms" in the eyes are not made for blindness. The eyes need revolutionary renovation. Is it possible to renovate vacant rooms in the eyes so that blindness can move in? In one sense, this is precisely what rehabilitation does; it shapes and molds blindness until it fits into a room in the eyes. If not sight, blindness must, at the very least, appear as though it is, as though it belongs. The Being and Appearing of blindness in the world does not coincide when blindness is made to fit into the eyes. This is because blindness is not understood as a Being and thus has much difficulty appearing (Healey, 2021; 2022a; 2022b).

Still, I see you. I see your world and I see you seeing your world. Blindness shows me how you see and I see you creating the me you need me to be. Your culture may be sight but mine is both. My culture is Blind and it sees more than one world. Blindness is not another view of the same world. It builds another world (Hull, 1997).

The land of blindness and that of sight seep into one another They form a world of both intimacy and distance, a world yet to be imagined.