[stylist] I will not Walk by Sight (second version)

[Jacobson, Shawn D]

Helene

Thanks for reading it.  I appreciate the good words.

Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of helene ryles via stylist
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2015 10:08 PM
To: Writers' Division Mailing List
Cc: helene ryles
Subject: Re: [stylist] I will not Walk by Sight (second version)

I liked this story. Good work.

On 02/11/2015, Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Shawn,
>
> Chris gave some great comments already. This is definitely a revision 
> but still some errors and typos just to be aware of. Like Chris, I'm 
> not a huge fan of this particular style of writing, but you are 
> consistent in both style and voice throughout entire story.
>
> Chris mentioned it, but there are several places where you use the 
> same word in close proximity. Right in the second para it kicks off 
> with the word fortune.
>
> You also use past participles a lot. The past perfect tense is over 
> done and keeps you in passive voice. I know there's a tendancy to use 
> past perfect tense when the subject addresses the past, and then 
> within that section they address the past, but it becomes too much and 
> drags the sentence structure and story down.
>
> So much better with erotic or sexual descriptions (not sure what else 
> to call it, LOL) Gives us enough description and detail without making 
> us blush, smile. In particular, I like the following: And the dream 
> was especially good that night.  My dream lover came touching and 
> stroking with special fervor as if she had heard our speculations and 
> had felt joy from them.  The night ended with what felt like a full 
> body kiss that left me howling with pleasure with a voice that had to 
> ring through the whole commune.
>
> Good job with the working metaphor, especially with the feeling of 
> difference. It works on many levels. And I like the religious 
> connection and imagery.
>
> Bridgit
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of 
> Jacobson, Shawn D via stylist
> Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 12:14 PM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List (stylist at nfbnet.org) 
> <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Jacobson, Shawn D <Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov>
> Subject: [stylist] I will not Walk by Sight (second version)
>
> Dear Stylist.
>
> Below find the second version of my story "I Will Not Walk by Sight".  
> I would like to thank Bridgit for her comments.  I think the story is 
> a lot better for her imput.
>
> I hope you enjoy it.
>
> Shawn
>
> I Shall Not Walk by Sight
> by Shawn Jacobson
>
> Dear Pastor, I am writing to tell you why I have not been in church of 
> late.
> It has been a while, and I know that you keep track of those who miss 
> the Sunday service, so I know my absence has been noted.  My 
> explanation follows.  You will think me quite mad, unhinged by 
> nightmares and the abnormal life I have led, yet I feel the need to 
> tell my story so that you can understand the journey I am about to take.
> It started at my hot dog stand in the middle of town.  The Baltimore 
> police were telling me to move on so as not to bother others on the 
> street.  I explained that I wasn't bothering anyone, just trying to 
> make a living.  It was my good fortune that the policeman left giving 
> me a warning, but such fortune cannot be trusted for long.
> I was preparing for the next confrontation when I saw a woman carrying 
> a cane, the kind I should carry but am too lazy or too proud to bother with.
> She came up and leaned against the cart.
> "Jeff, it's been ages since I've seen you" she said.  "How are you doing?
> Remember me, I'm Poly, I used to go to meetings with you."
> "OK I guess" I said.  "Just had a visit from the law, otherwise it's 
> the same old thing."  But what have you been doing with yourself.  
> Your Federation friends all miss you."
> Oh that" she said.  "I've been living with some other blind folk, kind 
> of like a commune where we can be together and not feel weird, a place 
> where blindness skills are normal.  And we have all kinds of fun" she continued.
> "You're welcome to join us.  That is, unless you really enjoy selling 
> wieners and being harassed by the cops."
> I had remembered Polly from National Federation of the Blind meetings.  
> I remember her taking me arm one day and leading me to a chair; she 
> had joked about leading me down the aisle, but I had been too clueless 
> to read anything deeper into her humor.  She had been a fixture in our group.
> Then,
> about a year ago, she had stopped coming to meetings and we fell out 
> of touch.  Her reappearance had reminded me of our friendship.
> I remembered those days as we talked.  Then she asked "do you want to 
> come with me and experience how we live?"
> At that, I left my cart and followed her.  I guessed that the boys in 
> blue would do with it whatever they wanted.  At that point I didn't 
> care.  For it was as if a new revelation of personal emptiness had 
> come over me.  I felt a compelling need to fill the hole in my soul 
> with something; a commune of blind folk might be the filling the whole 
> needed.
> "I see you aren't using a cane like you should" Polly chided me as we 
> left the cart and walked out of the respectable part of the city 
> "we'll get you back in the habit before you know it; once you stop 
> pretending you can see, you'll get right back into the swing of it" 
> she continued as she swung her cane.
> We continued leaving the business district and heading into 
> Baltimore's heart of darkness, a place where only fools walked without 
> trepidation.  We continued past increasingly rundown buildings past 
> shambling meaningless groups of people killing time.
> As we continued, I noticed a tall thin man, or maybe he was an older boy.
> He wore loose pants, a T-shirt, and a ball cap with an "X" on it.  I 
> noticed these details since I was still using my eyes for whatever 
> they were worth.
> This stranger followed us, a predator of the city seeking prey.
> I was about to warn Polly of trouble when, suddenly, she turned and 
> gave him a peculiar look and, for no reason I could deduce, he 
> scampered off into the blighted cityscape.
> We're almost there" Polly said as we approached a building falling 
> into shambles "the commune I was telling you about".
> It was old, a line of row houses being allowed to return to nature.  
> The block it occupied was forgotten; one of those places between areas 
> of urban renovation, put apart from all such endeavors, an unplanned place.
> The people too seemed outside of any urban plan.  I remembered some of 
> them from Federation meetings of the past, but they had not stayed 
> with the movement.  There was Jill, who decided that the work of the 
> movement would keep her from having time for her family, the movement 
> can devour your life.
> There was Kim, who thought that we should be a therapy group and Alex 
> who had been encouraged to leave after begging during one of our conventions.
> Beyond them, there were a lot of vaguely remembered folk who had come 
> to one or two meetings and had lost interest.  And then there was Joe; 
> he was different.
> "You remember Joe" Polly said to me "you had some common interest.  
> You two can room together" Polly told me with the assurance of a 
> master planner whose ideas are never questioned.
> I had not realized that she meant me to stay there, but that didn't 
> bother me at all.  Jake, whose garage I had been bunking in, would not 
> miss me.  I could come back for what little stuff I had another day.
> And I looked forward to rooming with Joe.  When I met him, Joe worked 
> for NASA analyzing pictures of other planets.  His job fit into our 
> shared interest in science fiction and all things astronomical.  We 
> were two space heads trapped in a world of people who would not lift 
> their eyes from the ground.
> In particular, I remember him discussing a project where NASA would 
> shoot a beam of particles at Europa and map, through some process 
> using quantum entanglement, Europa's innards to see if there really 
> was an ocean below the ice.  "There may be life there" Joe had 
> exclaimed excitedly "and it may even be intelligent though whatever 
> civilization it built would not be comprehensible to us.  And after we 
> map Europa," he continued "we can go on to Ganymede, and then on to 
> the rest of the outer planets.  Pluto may even have a liquid ocean 
> beneath its surface."  Joe was over the Jovian moons with the 
> prospect.
> Then Joe had dropped out of everything.  In a fit of lousy timing 
> astounding even for the Government, his project lost funding.  He left 
> NASA over some office squabble and lost interest in the Federation.  
> The last time I saw him, he was at a meeting, in the corner, griping 
> about everything and everyone.  We all thought it very sad. He left 
> the Federation in a cloud of rumors and gossip about personality 
> issues and organizational feuds.
> I sympathized with Joe.  Before my hot dog days, I had worked in an 
> office and had prospects for greater things.  I also had an apartment, 
> not a large one but large enough for one person, all I expected to 
> need.  It was a stable and comfortable life.
> But my boss was big into visual communication and my body language was 
> always wrong, always offensive in a way that I seemed too alien to 
> understand.
> "IF you weren't blind," he said with exasperation "I would say that 
> you were antisocial.  But you're blindness problems I just can't 
> understand.  You have to understand that I'm not a counselor, it's not 
> my job to figure out your life."
> I ultimately left in a move that engendered mutual relief.  And that 
> started me on a string of bad decisions which left me selling wieners 
> on the street and living in a garage.
> "How was your work going before you left?" I asked him that night 
> before going to sleep.
> "Great for a while" he said.  "We had actually taken pictures of the 
> waters of Europa and had observed some structures at the bottom of the 
> moon's sea that looked strange, not natural at all.  Then, well, you 
> know the story, typical Federal mess.  They closed down the Europa 
> project and didn't want me on anything else.  I was frustrated, just 
> fed up with the whole stupid business.  I came to NASA to explore 
> space, but I ended up learning about bureaucratic stupidity."
> "I hear you brother" I said around a yawn.  I drifted off to sleep 
> surrounded by the creaking noises of the place.  In my dreams 
> something came to me.  She, or at least I presumed it was female (for 
> it was not human) came and started touching me all over my body.  It 
> was dark, so I could not describe the being save that the touch was 
> soft, feathery and cool.  The touching was interspersed with kisses 
> and playful pinches.  It moved over me in a weird, but increasingly 
> pleasant manner.
> The next morning I awoke slowly with the night's dreamy pleasure still 
> flowing through my mind.
> "How did you sleep?" Joe asked.
> "Pretty good" I replied "had a really weird dream though.  Not bad, 
> really nice, but...."
> "I know" Joe replied, as though this were normal. "It happens a lot here.
> I'll start your training in the laundry room then."  I was glad I had 
> gotten clothes from the stockpile, gleaned from thrift stores, kept 
> for new arrivals.  "Here" Joe continued handing me a pair of eye 
> coverings I recognized as sleep shades used to teach partially sighted 
> folk like me how to function blind.
> "You'll need these.  You can't fit in here without the true blindness 
> experience."
> That was my introduction to what we call the sense of presence.  This 
> is not a good word for it, there are no good words for it since it is 
> not common to the human experience, but we call it that for want of a 
> better one.  This sense allows us to know where things are and some 
> things about them.
> Smooth
> surfaces leave the feel of eating chocolate while rough surfaces leave 
> the feeling of having a mouth full of salt.  The presence sense 
> doesn't help with color; it would be no use at all with the touch 
> screens that new appliances have, but the ancient washers and dryers 
> here have buttons and dials.  The new sense works just fine with these.
> Later, when training in the kitchen, I learned that hot objects 
> observed through the presence leave a feeling of disgust in the 
> stomach.  "You'll never burn yourself if you heed the presence" 
> remarked Sue, who used to be a cook before she dropped out of the 
> working world.
> And so the next few weeks went.  I would put on my sleep shades in the 
> morning and would go to various tasks to learn to heed the presence.  
> I found gardening to be especially relaxing even though sharp, thorny 
> plants observed through the presence left me feeling like I'd tangled 
> with hot peppers; the kind I put on hot dogs for adventurous customers.
> You should know pastor that, like the early Christians described in 
> your sermons on the book of Acts; we shared all things in common.  We 
> would eat our meals together rotating through the houses that were still habitable.
> We also shared chores so that no one person needed to do all of the 
> hard work required of those who live in these conditions.  The money 
> that came in, and I never knew where it came from, was used for the 
> common good. I guess you would say that Polly's description of this 
> place as a commune was correct.
> One night, a member of our group brought beer back to the commune.   Joe
> and
> I drank some before going to bed.  I remembered visiting Joe at his 
> apartment before he left NASA.  We watched some SciFi travesty that 
> was so bad it was funny.  Space monsters chewed up the Earth with the 
> help of cheap special effects that were as cheesy as a Wisconsin fond 
> du.
> The beer made Joe open up some and he started telling me about Europa 
> again.
> "If such places produce intelligent life than there may be a lot of it 
> in the universe.  After all, many of the outer moons could have such 
> seas, and then there are the rogue planets that wander between the 
> stars.  Some of these may have hot enough interiors to heat the ice to 
> water.  There are probably a lot more of these oceans within the 
> darkness than there are Earlike planets."
> "Really" I asked.  "You think there are that many planet sized ice 
> balls in interstellar space?"  I had read an article about 
> interstellar worlds a while back, but I hadn't remembered details.
> "Could easily be" he said.  "There might be a whole lot of kinds of 
> intelligent sea creatures.  And if they could cross space to visit 
> each other, well....."
> "Like a federation of ocean races?" I asked taken with the new concept.
> With thoughts of intrepid space exploring squid swimming through my 
> head, I drifted off to sleep.
> And the dream was especially good that night.  My dream lover came 
> touching and stroking with special fervor as if she had heard our 
> speculations and had felt joy from them.  The night ended with what 
> felt like a full body kiss that left me howling with pleasure with a 
> voice that had to ring through the whole commune.
> And then there was a less pleasant experience that occurred not much later.
> It happened on the way back from the store, a neighborhood shop 
> valiantly striving to stay in business.
> Polly and I were weighted down with bags when the presence showed me 
> danger, a couple of men following us.  I was wearing sleep shades at 
> the time so I would not have been able to give you a description of 
> the men at all, but I knew they were trouble.  I got a sense of 
> predation, like they were hunting us down, following, waiting for the 
> right time to attack.
> Then I heard a voice in my head.  "Use the presence to reach their minds"
> it
> said.  "Notice them and dig deeper, deeper into them.  Find what will 
> make them stop" it continued.
> By now, I was totally freaked out, but I saw no other way to avoid 
> robbery, or a brutal death.  I tried the presence; there were the men 
> following us, and, yes, there were their minds.  Suddenly I saw it, 
> something with red eyes, a rat, but huge, with razor sharp teeth.  
> Never mind just how, I put the image into the mind of the closest man.  
> Suddenly, piteous screams rent the gathering dark.
> "Rats!" the man howled "They're gnawing on me."
> "There aren't any rats, you're just bugging" the second man said.
> So I put the image in his head too.  He began to scream louder than 
> the first as we hastened back to the row houses.
> "That was great!" Polly gushed as she gave me a great wet sloppy kiss 
> "you're getting real good with the presence."
> I remembered the hug and kiss she had surprised me with one night as 
> our group celebrated the new job of one of our members.  That embrace 
> had been pleasant, a bit of unexpected joy in a life coming apart, but 
> this was better.
> The next day, one of our group read The Baltimore Sun on Newline, an 
> audio service we have, when he turned to me.
> "Didn't you and Polly go to the store last night?"
> "Yes" I replied "what of it?"
> "Paper said that the police found a couple of young men in the alley 
> last night, just of our route to the store."
> "Oh" I asked.
> "The police say they were smashing their heads into the pavement, said 
> they were trying to get the rats out of their heads.  Really weird" he 
> continued.
> "Rats in the head" I replied.  That would be weird alright."
> "They figure these guys got into some designer drugs gone bad; the 
> paper says there'll be an autopsy, but they don't expect to find 
> anything definitive."
> I knew better of course, and it did make me sad that the men had died.  
> I had certainly not wanted to kill them, just wanted to travel in safety.
> But this feeling was muffled, as if I was considering doings on Mars; 
> for I have become increasingly removed from the rest of the world, 
> like this place we live is special, a place apart.  The rest of the 
> world just does not intrude here.  Besides something more horrific 
> would befall me a couple of days later that would blunt the sharpness 
> of the memory.
> It happened on an evening when I was tired and wanted to get an early 
> night's sleep.  I had been busy picking up debris from around the 
> property, clearing walks so that we could travel.  It had been a long 
> job since loose roofing from some of the row houses had fallen during 
> a bad storm.  I just hoped to get some sleep and not creek like the tin woodsman the next day.
> Well, just as I was drifting off, there was a tumult from the unit 
> next door.  Joe and I ran to investigate.  I didn't put on my sleep 
> shades, strange since we almost always wear them, so I was depending 
> on eyesight rusty from not being used; it was only good enough to keep 
> me from using my presence sense, yet I would see enough to give me the horrors.
> We ran into the living area to see a cloud of, well, not darkness as 
> much as the mere absence of light  Then something came out of that 
> darkness, something with tentacles, feelers, and other limbs beyond 
> description .
> All
> these were in a jumble extending from a scaly body.  It looked like it 
> had been dredged up from the deepest ocean, like it was never meant to 
> be viewed by man.
> I felt compelled to watch as Polly ran towards the abomination; then, 
> she wrapped her arms around its body rubbing her body against the 
> scales in what was obviously a loving embrace.  Somehow, I tore my 
> eyes from the sight and there were other creatures, each more horrible 
> to behold than the last.
> They emerged from the darkness.  Each of them caressed two or three of 
> my erstwhile companions.  I saw Joe and two women fondling a 
> particularly ugly crab-like monstrosity.
> Pastor, you will remember that I was always more tolerant of 
> difference among people than most in our congregation.  In fact, I 
> lost several friends chiding them for only wanting to evangelize to 
> folk like them and reminding them that churches that spurned different 
> folk would surely die.  Indeed, I took great pride in my advocacy of 
> the glories of diversity.  Yet, when I saw Polly with the thing she 
> was hugging, and realized that I was meant to join them in this union 
> of flesh, I was overcome with revulsion.  I ran for my room screaming 
> and lay in bed that night shaken to the center of my soul for I 
> realized that the horror that Polly fleshly joy in the lover of my 
> dreams.
> It seemed natural that such a night should end in nightmare.  I walked 
> alone in a hot place.  Volcanos of sulfur spouted about me and a 
> swollen red orb filled the sky.  The light cast by this orb was 
> insufficient for sight, so I stumbled through bubbling pools of 
> scalding liquid creaming with the heat and the terror of it all.
> I awoke and found myself alone.  I searched the entire row of houses 
> finding no one at all.  My calls for my companions echoed through the 
> place bringing no reply.  After searching vainly for what seemed like 
> pourers, I made a humble meal of cereal and milk and sat down to 
> consider the coming day.
> What followed were days in which I considered what I been through.  I 
> realized that Joe had not told me the whole story about, his mapping 
> of Europa.  He must have gained the attention of what dwelt there.  
> These beings had reached out, back across the void to our world, 
> seeking kindred spirits of like mind.  They had found them here and 
> there, disaffected people tired of the world we live in, searching for a new reality.
> But not all creatures could share in the presence.  My guess is that 
> people who can see cannot use this sense given that I can only use it 
> while wearing sleep shades.  Perhaps the sense of presence requires 
> that part of the brain most of us use for sight that sight somehow 
> drowns out the presence ability.
> In these days, I also considered a return to the world.  Should I go 
> back to my family where I would be loved but would still feel myself a 
> burden?
> Should I go back and try to rescue my hot dog cart from the police and 
> start again living a meager existence on society's edge?  Perhaps I 
> could find an office to work in, I still had the skills.  I could be 
> beloved, inspiring, a blind guy made good.  I could be first in the 
> affections of my co-workers and the first to be presumed responsible 
> when the copier malfunctioned, the special employee with a special 
> problem.
> And I am sure you are wondering why I don't return to the church.  
> Indeed, I did find the joy of the lord there, and went often to seek 
> inspiration in the quiet of the chapel.  Yet there was always the 
> feeling of separation from the rest of the congregation, of not 
> fitting in, of being different, different, different, in a place that 
> found comfort in the ordinary, a church that worshipped a normal God 
> for a normal people.
> And I do not think that the good folks here would like the theology I 
> have learned her.  If these creatures that I have seen are God's 
> creations and if they share God's image, then the all mighty must be 
> more like one for Lovecraft's elder gods in wondrous strangeness than 
> the old man in the sky that I worshipped as a child.  I would probably 
> be a disturbing force in your congregation.
> And so, I had my reasons not to care about the outside world.  My 
> experience with the presence had left me with the feeling that the 
> world was entirely caught up with appearance games that I no longer 
> wanted to play.
> Throughout this struggle for my future, the nightmares continued one 
> solitary walk after another through increasingly hostile worlds.  The 
> worst, even worse than walks through smoggy wastelands or noxious 
> quagmires was a journey over a rocky landscape on some forgotten world 
> wandering between the stars.  The meager light of distant suns failed 
> me as I stumbled, yet it showed me the great emptiness of space, a 
> void so immense that it dwarfed to insignificance the greatest thing 
> that man could imagine.  I woke the next morning whimpering in dark 
> awe.
> I remembered my last meeting with Polly.  We embrace, hugged, but I 
> had felt clumsy in the process, somehow embarrassed by our meeting or 
> my unsureness at what I was supposed to do.  What was meant to be the 
> overture to romance became a failure of my ability to show affection.  
> Later I learned that she had met someone else.
> I found myself envious of the nightmare creatures I had seen.  For all 
> of their ugliness, they seemed to have the ability to show affection 
> that I lacked.  Contemplating this, I found myself sinking into a well 
> of self-disgust.
> Pastor, I know that you have said that we may be closest to God's 
> grace when we are in the midnight mood of despair.  But here, feeling 
> the self-loathing of one who cannot love, I felt close to nothing 
> good, like I must wander this world alone forever.  And in this bleak 
> mood, I pondered the coming day.
> I was always a lonely child and loneliness led me to take refuge in 
> tales in which the aliens were better folk than the people I knew.  
> Maybe it was this peculiar inclination of mine, or maybe it was the 
> lonely days I spent in this place, or maybe it was the long nights 
> spent walking nightmare worlds, but my revulsion at what I had seen 
> that crazy night was being replaced by longing for the community that 
> I had experienced.
> So that when my dream companion returned to replace my solitary 
> nightmares, I opened my arms without question.  I no longer cared what 
> it looked like, for appetences no longer mattered to me.  I didn't 
> care how or who it loved, or who it might love in the future.  I 
> returned to it with relief, no, I should say joy, for that is what I 
> felt.
> And its attentions were more fervent than ever before, probing deeper, 
> loving more intensely.  It touched, rubbed, caressed and kissed with 
> exquisite zeal as if it were a shepherd seeking out a little lost lamb.
> Like a little lost lamb, I only wanted to return to my shepherd, and 
> to its fold.
> So I wait for my dream lover, my guide and friend, to return for me to 
> take me to the community that I found, lost, and hope to find again.  
> For they have found a new world, a cure for the dissatisfaction I feel 
> with the world in which I live.  Just as Paul longed to be taken from 
> this Earth, so I long to travel to ocean depths beneath the ice, to 
> new strange places where I will feel at home.  I know not what I will 
> do when I get there, how I will live or all the things that I will 
> experience.  I do know that when I attain this new realm I will not 
> walk by sight.
>
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