[Nfbf-l] Do blind people really experience complete darkness?

[Alan Dicey]

Do blind people really experience complete darkness?
By Damon Rose BBC News, Ouch.
BBC journalist Damon Rose completely lost his sight as a child, but he says 
his world isn't pitch black. So what exactly does he see?

It's often assumed that blind people experience complete darkness, but in my 
experience this is far from the truth.

I appreciate this is going to sound odd coming from a blind person but when 
people ask me what I miss most about not being able to see, my answer is 
always "darkness".

Let me explain. I am one of a very small number of people who have no sight 
whatsoever. I'm properly blind. A "total" as we used to say at school.

I lost my sight 31 years ago thanks to ill-advised surgery, and on my blind 
person's registration certificate it has three, now very faded letters - 
NLP, no light perception.

The logical assumption is that when sight is snuffed out, a person must be 
left in darkness. If you dive under the bed covers you can't see anything at 
all. If you close your eyes then everything turns to black. So, blind equals 
black? It make sense, right? Apparently not.

Though I've had the cord cut between my eyes and my brain, it seems that the 
world has not turned black. All metaphors, similes, analogies, and literary 
flourishes about blindness and darkness should henceforth cease to be used 
because I'm saying it's far from dark. It is, in fact, quite the opposite.

So what replaces 3D Technicolor vision once it's gone? The answer - at least 
in my case - is light. Lots of it. Bright, colorful, ever-changing, often 
terribly distracting, light.

How do I even begin to describe it? Let me have a go. Right now I've got a 
dark brown background, with a turquoise luminescence front and centre. 
Actually it's just changed to green. now it's bright blue with flecks of 
yellow, and there's some orange threatening to break through and cover the 
whole lot.

The rest of my field of vision is taken up by squashed geometric shapes, 
squiggles and clouds I couldn't hope to describe - and not before they all 
change again anyway. Give it an hour, and it'll all be different.

If I try to block out all this distraction by closing my eyes it doesn't 
work.
It never goes away.

I miss those peaceful moments of near darkness: walking at night-time while 
focusing on the streetlights ahead, the atmospheric shadows in a room with a 
real fire burning, or traveling home late in the back of my dad's car 
glimpsing cat's eyes lighting up in the middle of the road.

For me, dark has come to signify quiet, and because my built-in fireworks 
never go away I describe what I've got as a kind of visual tinnitus.

When I first went blind I thought the brightly colored lights were a sign my 
eyes were trying to work again. It gave me some hope and I was quite 
fascinated by it. I used to sit and stare at it. Now I know that it's my 
brain making up for the fact that it no longer receives any pictures.

Some people of faith have occasionally tried to tell me that I'm seeing the 
after-life, and I never know how to respond to that. But what I have never 
been able to find out is whether other people who have no light perception 
also see what I see.

And, assuming that full vision and driving a car are not on offer, do they 
also long for a bit of darkness?

Source URL:
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-ouch-31487662

_______________________________________________
With Best Regards,
God Bless,
Alan
Plantation, Florida