The Yellow Pear

Oh, to be in love, it can make you blind; but, to be blind, can make your falling in love a rather senseless act in return. I've always thought of love to be blinding. As, when it is that a person falls for another, the senses grow blind to any of their lover's supposed imperfections. It's where the ears can no longer hear a lie, or when the touch can feel no wrong, the nose smells nothing foul, the lips and tongue taste no bitterness and the eyes are blind to any flaw. Blindness and love, in my life, seemed to have been a zoetrope of an interchangeable, nonexchangeable rotating notion of inspiration. It was the very force nurturing my will to stay alive, and I've accomplished tremendous things due to its fruitfulness. To be blind, is like the unraveling of one's own vanity, such as it is being in love. Its fabric has no power to veil love's truth and beauty before the eyes. For, love does not judge, criticize, condemn or avenge itself. Of itself, it merely extends and allows all else to be, just as it does by its own nature, desiring to simply be. Lest, however, it's waiting upon something or someone to return. Within the congenial relationship, we slowly strip ourselves of each outer facade until we are bare and naked. We observe that we are the same, finding ourselves in another and live together in a blind marriage of benevolence.

Therefore, I had invoked all of the powers of love and blindness, in order to become enlightened by them both. I had to decree for my ability to see. And, by such an occurrence, I am now refined and at peace with my love. Edgar has been my love, canvas, punching bag and friend along my journey to what we called "the day under the pear tree." It was a private joke between the two of us that still is just as remarkable in thought now, as it was then. He has been a companion and teacher to me, and always guided me back to what blind trust comes with blind love, along my rather enchanting life. For life is an enchantment. And Edgar was there for me even when things weren't always so.

Being born blind, growing up oblivious to it and assimilating what I had been taught specific to my condition, at first, wasn't all that terrible. However, in respects to those details in which helped me adapt to my surroundings and environment; the mistrust and resentment I had toward my condition once I was faced with the typical milestones the years of adolescence presented, was the intrigue that kept my little heart beating. And when reality came marching around, bearing bitter apples of truth during those years of dormancy, it was a profoundly felt experience for me to accept that I was a person unable. But then, there came Edgar to comfort me. Edgar was a boy, three or four years older than myself who my parents became quite fond of. He was an honest young man who'd help my mother bring in groceries and sit with me, during times I'd daydream while swinging on mother's porch swing on our front porch. I always sensed that mother liked the idea of Edgar being around my age, willing to be my friend. However, it was the normal urge for me to rebel and challenge any authority the typical adolescent child explores growing up, to oppose anything one's parents were unopposed to. So, at first, I aimed to dislike Edgar. Meaning to sort of bully the person I was secretly most fond and appreciative of, I tried my best to be stubborn and cruel to him; this, although I couldn't see him.

He did play a vital role in helping me cope with my realization of the fact that there was something other children were aware of, in which I was not. When I was told that I was blind, I had thereafter felt estranged and ostracized. In school, the other children read books and searched for rainbows while I read braille. I suppose it was then that I developed the skill to formulate, or better yet, envision the pictures I "saw" in my head by concentrating on my thoughts. They were images that had meaning to me, although they most likely would mean nothing to anyone else. Nonetheless, it allowed me to pretend that I was seeing something. For a little while, my world was full of shadows, abstract ideas and linear spaces. That, I sustained, while also being aware that, in reality, there is always depth and dimension to things or objects. Those kinds of things were explained to me throughout my years in school. I accepted the ideas outwardly to satisfy what appropriateness I was to present while engaging with other people. However, inwardly, they were just empty words, because I couldn't see them. I had longed to see, but coveted my desire to make the empathy I received from others less painful for them, as that would in return make the matter more bearable for me and allow me to maintain my poise.

Yet, no matter how poised or accurate I managed to be, I was trapped in a place no one could abide in with me, and congenially. Therefore, I became a recluse, where loneliness was a factor in my life, seeming as immutable as the the laws within the disciplines of math. As I grew older, firstly graduating from high school and then entering a university, the desire to see became more of a profound need, rather than a formal satisfaction. Edgar, however, was the knight without armor, that had rescued me. I had always wanted to know what the color yellow looked like, imagining in my mind what it possibly be without having any basis or reference. I'd sit under one particular tree with Edgar during the afternoons I had no classes, and he'd have prepared for me, a canvas and yellow paint so that I could try to invoke the color yellow by painting what I felt the sun looked like while listening to Edgar's descriptive words of the color.

He had invented an activity for me to practice everyday, having the purpose to exercise the use of the cones within the anatomical makeup of the eye; in which was opposed to the ability I did have, being the use of my rods. Within the anatomy of the eye, "cones" allow for the perception of color, and "rods" for the detection of light and shadows. Being that I had the ability to detect light and darkness, Edgar formulated a little experiment on me where he would take a flashlight, and put yellow tape over the lenses and shine it from and upper- diagonal position towards my eyes. He'd sit on my right side, as we both leaned back onto, what we would discover was a pear tree on the dormitory ground's garden. For days, then weeks and then months, nothing had happened. And, I, being the peculiar and stubborn girl that I was often became frustrated. I'd give Edgar a hard time about it, but he had only benevolence for me in return. One day, I even went as far as to give him a firm nudge with my elbow, after an attempt to carry on with his little experiment. However, being as clever as he had become, after all of his years working with me; this one particular day, he dodged my jab and I hit the tree instead. It was then that a yellow pear fell and hit me directly on the top of my head!

Now, before then, I had mastered my ability to be quite meticulous with my auditory sense having developed it into a skill, to promptly differentiate the range, measure and scale of pitches, decimals and striation in sounds. Without sight, I had learned how to envision what sound vibrations looked like in my mind. For an instance, distinguishing the chirps of birds of one breed from another. Their chords are heavily striated giving their songs melody like one played off of a harmonica. Now, that day the yellow pear fell onto the top of my head, with a solid "thud" sound, Edgar sought to attend to me quickly; however, it was the most odd sensation where, when I was "clonked," I saw stars. And then after blinking a few times and feeling the tears run from the peaks of my eyes, I could then see! Although things seemed a little blurry at first, and all that I could make out was what looked like a fading mirage of a young man sitting before me. It came as quite a shock, but more so a miracle.

Beguiled, like a child, I became excited and gay. Taking a few more blinks and then turning my head downward to examine the fruit that had endowed me, I could see! It was the pear, of course, and more lovely a pear than I could have ever imagined. I then got to see what mess I had made on the canvas Edgar had prepared for me (my interpretation of the "feel" of the color yellow). I chuckled when I thought of what magnificent and abstract a masterpiece I thought I was making when I couldn't see. I took a glimpse at the little red flashlight still beaming with yellow tape on its lenses, and then back to Edgar sitting there with his deep and mysterious eyes.

It was an extraordinary experience, divine even. One that, I am pleased to say words cannot describe, for, it is only a beauty that can be experienced by seeing it. In addition I must say that the color yellow was nothing like I had imagined it to be. Although I was close, having thought of it to be a primary "thing," in which was the only way I could refer to it then. I was glad when the correlation from my memory dawned upon me that, of the color wheel, yellow happens to be a color that cannot be made by mixing other colors together. For an instance, red and blue together make purple, however, there are no colors that could make red or blue by mixing because they are primary. The color yellow is exclusive to this detail as well. Delightful!

And although my prior notion of the color yellow was far more abstract from what it really is in reality, it was thought up from within the same dimension as love, being my heart and peculiar mind. For, it was at that very same instant, having seen the tree, Edgar in all his beauty and his pair of hazel eyes, that I fell in love with him, blindly in love... and the pear too!