At this point in my life, I have made an ally of my retinitis pigmentosa. My blindness now bends to my will, and serves me as I see fit. As an artist, I've challenged my blindness, and it has successfully met that challenge. The same applies to my role as a substitute teacher. What my students attempt to exploit as a weakness, they discover to be a power I wield with confidence. Of course, considering the nature of degenerative vision loss, this was not originally the case. My RP was a mischievous phantom that haunted the back of my eyes, ready to cloud each new visual experience. It obscured far less than it does now, but it chose the most inconvenient times to exert the power it had over me. At such times, my options were to either hope for an adequate visual experience or resign myself to self-pity.

There is a particular instance that I wish to relate, an experience that began while I was being tossed about within a limbo of hope and despair. But before I continue, I wish to make clear that my intention is not to glorify vision, and thereby alienate those of us who have been blind since birth. As a member of your culture, I am as honor bound to you, as I am to myself. Ultimately, what I intend to emphasize to all readers, sighted, partially sighted or blind, is that the human eye is obsolete.

It was June of 1985, a year after my diagnosis. The occasion was a whale watch, which took place a matter of five kilometers from the south most shores of Massachusetts. The sky was without a single cloud. The breeze flowed gently enough to make the sun's heat pleasantly tolerable. The vessel, forty-two feet long and fourteen feet at its widest, rocked smoothly as the calm Atlantic waters lapped at its hull. The international rule, pertaining to the "whale watch," was that a tourist vessel could not weigh anchor, but could drift in an area that was occupied with these phenomenal creatures. Also, the captain was to essentially start his drift from a hundred or so feet away. If the vessel drifted too close, the captain was to move his vessel back to the required distance.

It was at this time in my vision's degeneration that I could still see well enough to walk without a cane. However, I found that seeing was tremendously problematic in expansive brightly illuminant areas, such as open fields and open oceans. Depending on the intensity of the light, I would resort to one pair of sunglasses or another. Yet whatever I had at my disposal, I was not able to see the pod of common dolphins that swam along side the ship. I could not see the fin back that made its very unusual appearance or the appearance of a right whale. And I could not see the multitude of humpbacks feeding a hundred feet from me or any of the breeching -a great lunging up through the surface, and splashing backward- that took place somewhere beyond.

Yet I was able to hear the surging and the straining of water through the baleen of feeding humpbacks. I could hear the great splashes made by the breeching juvenile males. And I could also clearly hear the oohs and aahs of all my fellow "sighted" passengers. My resentment was not enormous during those moments. After all, they were just whales, was what I'd told myself. I passed the time as I could, following those who were able to see for themselves what I was only able to see in books or on television.

Eventually, despair or the phantom haunting the back of my eyes led me away from the main group. While the majority of sightseers were photographing the apparent "hot spot," I made my way toward the bow. I stationed myself there at the very front most of the vessel. Lost in my spiritual limbo, I stared blankly at the surface, unaware as to exactly how close I was to it. I watched the pools of sunlight cradled in each ripple, unaware of the great depth that receded beneath. Suddenly, I became aware of a gentle frothing and splashing to my immediate starboard. Within the first few seconds of my attention's redirection, I was still feeling the affects of despair, like the seconds between sleep and waking. Presently, the silence of my mind was broken by the realization that I was gazing into the left eye of a humpback. I could not hear or smell or feel anything around me as I watched the creature's seven-foot long lateral fin gently slapping the surface beside the hull. From what I was able to see, I surmised that the whale was nearly thirty feet long. Subsequently, I brought my visual attention to match the humpback's gaze, a gaze it held with an eye that was conceivably as large as a volleyball. I stood there, transfixed, my mind empty of all thought. And as suddenly as it began, the experience ended. My humpback drifted downward and away as the crowd of sightseers realized its presence. They were inevitably disappointed, but that's life.

In retrospect, I realized that I was under that great creature's scrutiny. Yet exactly how was I being seen by that particular humpback? How might a potentially distant relative, weighing in at three tons and driven by an appetite for plankton, perceive me? Why take the time to observe me? If I know anything about the humpback race, it is that their vision is not exactly their greatest asset. They determine spatial relationships; navigate their way from ocean to ocean, and echolocate plankton concentrations via sonar. Peering out from within the edge of its element, perhaps my humpback acquaintance saw me as a indistinct arrangement of colors, if it could in deed perceive color. But what if, in reality, it was feeling me more than it was seeing me? Humpbacks have eyes, and therefore they must see. However, they are designed to not depend entirely on their vision. Upon the birth of a humpback calf, its mother brings it immediately to the surface to take its first breaths. From then on, they are inseparable for the duration of that calf's development into an independently feeding juvenile. The relationship they establish is a feeling relationship. Research has shown that the humpback race relies on a system of sound signatures, a sonic language complete with nouns, verbs, and all other conventions inherent to all language. Hence, they do not require vision.

Our race is no different or at least there are those among us that live lives as sensitively as the humpback. Just as human mothers lament upon the death of their children, so do humpback mothers, swimming the oceans as their stillborn infant slowly disintegrates on their backs. Those graceful giants of the sea are keenly sensitive. We, sighted, partially sighted or blind, are keenly sensitive. Perhaps my melancholy introspection radiated itself enough to emit a signal that was perceptible to my humpback acquaintance. Perhaps it was a female who had suffered a loss along the way. Perhaps she understood my loss, yet could not fathom why I would be so upset over losing a part of me I didn't necessarily require. I do not believe that I personally hold the key to the universe. But I am absolutely sure that coincidence and random contingency are on the heavier side of cosmic justice. I offer up those terms as what defines God. Take it, sighted, partially sighted or blind, as you will. I also believe with conviction that if I could speak humpback, I would have understood the following message.

"There is far more to the world that meets the eye. What you visually perceive can blind you in that it has no meaning. What you feel your way to find has the truest, purest meaning. Understand this, and you will be free."

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