For anyone who writes stories, makes music or does any sort of creative art, this has to be one of the most common questions you are asked, and one of the most common questions you want to ask others.
Dreaming
It’s a mysterious thing. I think so many people are curious about it, even people who themselves are involved in the creative arts, because it’s not always concrete and logical (those aspects do come into play, of course). Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly where that first seed or flash or image or idea originated.
Sometimes you know. The idea for Total Eclipse of the Heart, which I wrote originally as a short story and am now having fun working into a screenplay, came to me pretty much fully-formed in a dream, including some of the dialogue. Actually in the dream I was taking a screenwriting class (which at that point in time I had never done in real life) and struggling with writers block, then came up with this idea for the story and in the dream I was reworking it and molding it. There were so many details, so many subplots and so much complexity for a story that came from a dream.
That has never happened before or since but it was pretty cool when it did. It kinda made me feel like I had to write the story.
And faces—nothing has given me more trouble. Eyes, those most important details of a face, are too small to make out unless I am close enough to make out with someone. I didn’t know what color my last boyfriend’s eyes were until after we had been dating for almost six months. Whenever we were close enough for me to discern their color, he kept his eyes closed. I didn’t see his eyes until we were riding a city bus on our way to a concert on an early May evening, squished next to each other on the seats. He turned slightly to me, the light was just right, and I finally saw out of my right eye that his left was brown with textured traces of gold, simultaneously soft and hard in color.
Last year, I was watching TV on my 24-inch computer monitor, sitting less than a foot away, and saw a close-up of someone rolling her eyes. At thirty, I was seeing that gesture for the first time and it was nothing like I had imagined. Inspired, I wanted to get a glimmer of what it is to read feelings in eyes, so I watched Grey’s Anatomy, scrutinizing characters during emotionally wrought scenes, their faces taking up my whole screen. Though I felt all the feelings from the context, the music, the minute changes in pitch and inflection in their voices and the larger facial gestures, I could see nothing in the eyes.
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This is an excerpt from an essay in which I explore a few different aspects of albinism and blindness.
The first few days of convention are filled with Division meetings, meaning that instead of meeting as a huge assembly (that will come later), at any given time there are several different special interest groups meeting at once. Parents of blind children, blind parents, seniors, diabetics, piano tuners, ham radio operators, lawyers, antique car enthusiasts, crafters, technology buffs, they all have divisions and meetings. There are also meetings for new members, presentations from different schools for the blind, presentations by guide dog schools where you can “test drive” a guide dog, meetings on how to build up local chapters, demos of new adaptive technology, plays put on where the directors and actors are all blind, salsa dance classes taught, attended and deejayed by blind folks, a mock trial put on by blind lawyers and the list goes on. We take frequent breaks in our room because the stories are true, it is a little overwhelming.
There’s also the Independence Market, a technology and adaptive aid exhibit hall in one of the hotel ballrooms and it is something to behold. Along every inch of every wall, and through several makeshift hallways in the center, there are endless tables and displays, each draped in a different company logo. Most of the booths feature technology items—braille notetakers, digital book readers, screen-reading software packages, handheld iPhone-shaped gadgets that act as magnifiers and also play music and videos. Apple is there with the real iPhones, which are accessible right out of the box, the new technology rage among the blind. There are several flavors of talking medical supplies, every size and shape of magnifier and audible GPS devices. There are random non-techie booths, like the FBI doing job recruiting, and a booth selling Braille Bibles brailled in over 27 languages, including several Indian ones like Hindi and Malayalam.
I go by myself to the science and engineering division meeting, where I meet people who are interning for NASA and a totally blind girl who’s majoring in biochemistry who guesses people’s heights (while they are sitting down) by voice. Even though I’m slightly slouching, she guesses my 5’7” spot on. The NASA thing gets me. When I was younger, I thought I wanted to do something like that when I grew up, but back then my visual impairment would have been a deal-breaker. That’s one of the great things about a convention like this: you get to really see that things are changing, that blind people are making inroads and finding success in all kinds of careers and hobbies.
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This is an excerpt from the essay “Blind Conventions,” a recounting of my first experience at a blind convention held by the NFB. This piece is apropos because I’m currently en route to my 2nd NFB convention. I’m sure there will be lots of fun crazy, funny, weird and inspiring stories that I’ll be tweeting along the way! These conventions are always surreal.
I can’t read the nuances of faces but mine is a direct display of every undulation in my emotional current. My face is a one-way mirror.
Still, others often don’t see my personal, particular face.
People sometimes asked if my albino friend and I were twins. We were nine years apart and my face was longer, drawn while hers was rounder, more full. Worse yet, at an albinism conference, my dad came up to the girl next to me and told her it was time to go, mistaking her for me.
My face is at once expressive, transparent and invisible.
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This is from a class I took called Personal Essay Writing. The assignment was to write about your face in EXACTLY 100 words. No more, no less. It led to a lot of obsessive editing.
I’m a writer currently living on Orcas Island. I do fiction, poetry, essay, memoir and more. I also do freelance copy-editing and writing coaching, so if you’re interested in either, feel free to contact me for details.
I have a booth at the local Saturday Market where I have stories, memoir chapters and poetry for sale in little chapbooks, as well as CDs of a live performance I did last summer where I read writing pieces to an audience to raise money to get to a writing retreat at Esalen put on by The Sun magazine. Again, if interested in any of the above, contact me and I’ll hook you up.
My main jaunt at the Market booth is tarot reading. I use the Aleister Crowley Thoth deck for card readings of spreads ranging from one card to fifteen cards, with tons in between that address all sorts of specific or general issues. I offer over-the-phone and in-person readings by appointment, and incorporate astrology and numerology into longer appointment readings.
My current project and biggest time consumption is a memoir about my college years and the “school of life.” It’s titled Learning to Swim and I’ll probably post pieces of it here at this site. I have albinism, a genetic condition that affects 1 in 17,000 Americans. For those who aren’t familiar with it, albinism results in little or no pigment, and greatly reduced visual acuity (often legal blindness). I think I have an interesting story to tell as a girl growing up in America with a disability and looking different, and experiencing the world in all its anguish and beauty in a very deep way. I want to hold up the experiences to the light and let the reader peer at them very closely, the way I peer closely at everything.
Of the first major draft of the project, my first reader says:
“This is a book about vision (literally and metaphorically), about extreme courage, seeking to make your way and not settling for less, with a musical soundtrack that serves as its own journey providing clarity and perception along the way.” ~Stargazer
Chrys Buckley 