Yes, it was sad, very sad. I thanked her nonetheless, deeply, sincerely.
But later that night, when the other guests were gone and she and my brother and sister-in-law were asleep, I found my way to my study, where I had placed the trumpet. Secretly, I worried that I would not be able to find it and would have to ask for help. It was in its case, right on my desk. As I opened it, the clasps snapping back seemed awfully loud. I took out the trumpet, covetously. It was not that I intended to play it, although I did insert the mouthpiece and put the instrument up to my mouth again, like kissing it. Then I just held it against my chest. I liked the heft of it. I liked the way it felt through the fabric of my nightshirt. I ran my finger around the rim of the bell again. And again a sound: not just a tone, but music and, with music, joy—pure joy, the sort of joy that is also a prayer. I think that in writing these remembrances, prayer has been my companion all along.
18
My Blindness Balance
Sheet: Assets
Happily, balance sheets feature two opposing sets of figures: debits and assets. I’m rich in the latter.
In spite of the abuses I have suffered, both emotional and physical, I am healthy.
Not seeing people’s facial expressions can be a good thing. The words spoken to me by the ugliest, most disfigured, most poorly dressed person imaginable may come to me with a weight equal to those from the most splendid face and physique. I do not judge a person on looks because I cannot. For me, the tone of voice and the content of the speech are what matter.
While I can’t see, per se, I do have an elevated sense of place, of objects around me—I can feel their distance as clearly as if I could see them. For example, when I play basketball, it is easy for me to dodge a defender, to launch an accurate shot from the top of the key, and slide through big men toward the hoop. I sense the distance of people from me in waves. (I should add this capacity has its limits. Bill Bradley—the one-time Princeton all-American and former New York Knick, All-Pro, NBA champ, and US senator—humors me as he would anyone in our rare games; then when the game gets tight, Bill turns up the heat, clamps down on me, and scores almost at will.)
Because I was blessedly gifted with sight until my junior year in college, I have stored mental images of the world upon which I can still draw: great art and architecture, colors and shapes, and the faces of my old friends, my family, and my wife. My manic prowling among museums and art galleries in New York seems in retrospect like the activity of a squirrel preparing for winter. To this day, I collect art, visiting galleries often with Jerry Speyer, just as we did back in our undergraduate days, or with an art consultant who acts as my eyes. From learning at Columbia how to identify entire drawings from a single line or section, I can in a similar way put together a work of art or an entire room.
Sometimes I even commission work. Some years back, I asked Frank Stella to turn the prototype of the speech-compression machine I had invented into a piece of art. The machine had helped launch my business career, and I wanted to honor it. Frank thought about my request for six months and worked on the project far longer than that before he presented me with a soaring metallic structure with my prototype right at its heart. I can’t see the sculpture, of course, but I can feel it, even sense it, and I know exactly what it looks like—although that might not be exactly what it looks like at all.
If not for my blindness, I would never have made deep friendships with many of those who have helped me, from my readers to my close college friends to my business colleagues. Each has been an individual light in my life.
I have been all over the world. What I have experienced of it is, on balance, more good than bad. In all those places, no one has lifted my wallet or kidnapped me for ransom.
I’ve had to learn how to live with fear and risk.
Sue earned a master’s in special education and an MBA in finance. Her White House work during the Clinton years has been a blessing to us both. Would she have done all that if I had not gone blind? Who knows?
I am not aware of recent signs of aging in other people. I know my wife is slightly younger than I am, but I see her ageless and beautiful.
My family is healthy and, I believe, happy.
Having to develop other ways to see the world has benefited me in multiple ways. One I have mentioned often in these pages is the imagination, a twin of scholarly thought. Imagination seems to me more a generalized mental activity than a path to a clear-cut end result. I can say only from personal experience that memory and imagination, in my darkened life, percolating within the mind, often blend indistinguishably. For better or worse, I am perforce
