¿Puede una novela ser despiadada a la vez que irremediablemente humana? Saramago nos demuestra que sí, que es posible diseccionar a la sociedad y desmantelarla dejando al descubierto lo más perverso de ésta y sus gobiernos y aún así hallar el ímpetu por la supervivencia, la dignidad y unos insólitos atisbos de nobleza en medio de un país en ruinas.

La novela empieza con contundencia. Un hombre como cualquier otro varado en el tráfico un día cualquiera. Con una salvedad, se queda repentinamente ciego. Éste es el comienzo de la manifestación de una epidemia inesperada e inexplicable que avanza con fervor cobrándose la vista de sus víctimas y son los primeros perjudicados de este irrefrenable mal los que van a constituir nuestro núcleo protagónico. Reunidos en un manicomio que sirve como centro para la cuarentena impuesta por el gobierno, se ven segregados, excluidos e incluso eliminados a balazos probando que la dignidad humana cae de rodillas ante el miedo y que la autoridad de desentiende rápida y fácilmente de su compromiso con el ciudadano.

El aislamiento, la falta de recursos y la privación del sentido del que somos más esclavos no demoran en corromper el espíritu de los involucrados orillándolos a una realidad oscura en el sentido figurativo pero también en el literal, donde prima la voluntad del más fuerte y se da rienda suelta a los más arbitrarios y perversos abusos. En este contexto la ética, aunque presente en los discursos y discusiones de los ciegos, se ve doblegada y corroída. La pluma de Saramago explora este torbellino de degradación y violencia con un cuidado ejemplar, una prosa absorbente y una astuta decisión de no proporcionales nombres a los personajes sino de presentarlos en base a características vagas intensificando la noción de que podrían ser cualquiera.

El libro es tenso, demoledor y se halla repleto de planteamientos existencialistas. Es rico en personajes, complejo en su abordaje y sin lugar a dudas inolvidable.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

What an irony that a book which holds, loss, filth, loot, stomp, cruelty, disorientation, putrefaction, injustice, helplessness, murder, rape, misery, nakedness, abandonment, death and unimaginable suffering in its bosom, left me with a climactic emotion of beauty, overwhelming beauty! Beauty of what you ask? That of resilience, that of courage, that of insurmountable human spirit which perhaps hits its zenith when it is brutally pinned to the bottommost pit.

Blindness has a chilling plot – a city where people start going blind, without a warning or faintest history. A man behind a car, a robber escaping from the back door, an ophthalmologist reading reference book, a call girl in the midst of making love – this moment, they are going about their business and the next, they are blind. As this terrifying infliction gains the proportion of an epidemic in shuddering no time, the state machinery jumps into action by hoarding the blind and the contaminated and dispatching them to a quarantine. The events that unfold thenceforth grow into a numbing testimonial of limits that humankind pushes with the weakest of hands but the strongest of beliefs.

Saramago slits his heart and lets the blood do the talking, for how else does one explain the impeccable conjuring of a land that is crumbling under the consistent attacks of physical needs and rising from the tireless crenellating of mental walls, at the very same instance?

n  n    With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.”n  n

The blind stay close and maintain proximity akin to a herd of helpless antelopes; always alert but not without a sinking feeling of falling prey, eventually. In the midst of this nebulous blindness, food makes a demand and water makes a cry, shit gets spilled and showers run dry. Bullies emerge from within them, like ugly exhalations of a poisonous body, often unaware of its obvious power of self-destruction. n  n   

Arriving at this point, the blind accountant, tired of describing so much misery and sorrow, would let his metal punch fall to the table, he would search with a trembling hand for the piece of stale bread he had put to one side while he fulfilled his obligations as chronicler of the end of time, but he would not find it, because another blind man, whose sense of smell had become very keen out of dire necessity, had filched it.

n  nWhat do we know what we are capable of? Of the high we can inspire ourselves to? Of the lows we can shovel ourselves to? Do we even know that if thrown into the arms of gut-wrenching starvation and mutilation, our lofty ideals can turn evanescent and the feral desire to survive at any cost can reign supreme?

n  n    she knew that if it were necessary, she would kill again,
And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question,
When what is still alive is already dead.n  n

But it is from these repugnant ashes of human extremities that the human spirit arises. Like a new-born phoenix, it breathes in short puffs but never stops breathing. A fledgling resilience, no matter how threatened, pervades the blind group, who hobble painfully towards a future that is white in their blindness but imaginable in their collectiveness. When a lonely hand is clasped and a crying baby is cuddled, when a single soul performs vigil and the wasted sacrifices, when the timid find voice and the brave, their clan, the world remains no longer white; it regains its colour.

While reading this book, I felt its power in every page, its vulnerability at every turn. In many ways, it was an allegory of life. For every burden placed on our soul, there is a corresponding lever to dispel it. There is a solitary character who miraculously retains sight, throughout the book. And a consistent persuasion is all it takes to become free. Should that come easy, blessed we are. Should that come with unexpected caveats, memories we will have (or be).

n  n    We are already half dead, said the doctor,
We are still half alive too, answered his wife.n  n

This is not just a book you read, it reads you too. It is not a book that you can shelve, once it is read - it stays with you. Will you dare pick it up, let it stare into your soul?

I read this over 10 years ago and it is still very present in my mind. It has repeatedly come back to me, I have been recommending it and thinking about it. Yes, also worrying a bit more.

Without spoiling it the story is quickly told: blindness spreads like a disease. It is terrifying in that it just happens, suddenly life is very very different. Also it doesn't only happen to you, it happens to others. As more go blind, more must deal with life without seeing. It gets very very nasty very quick.

The next remarkable attribute of this book is the way it is told. People don't have names, they are only described. The mother, the wife, the doctor. Sentences unfold and meander, flow long and wash your awareness with them. Saramago's chosen style builds the engrossing atmosphere. Just for this I wish I could read the original Spanish.

This book is among the greatest for me. Special among the few. Read it, if you dare.

What kind of a person is it who relishes reviewing the books he hates and quails at the thought of reviewing his five-star books?

It would appear that that could be a description of me. Well, the reason's obvious - it's great fun to boot a bad book and some bad ideas all around this site, a chance for a few jokes, a laugh, a song and a hand grenade, a couple of pints of Scruttock's Old Dirigible and everyone goes home with a smile on their face, no harm done. Not so easy to describe greatness, something so strange and awe-inspiring that your keyboard falls silent, abashed. So this is the book, this Blindness novel, which was so hard to read, so painful, so strange, so brilliant, that I don't really want to sing its praises or recommend it to everyone because everyone won't like it and those who do might not be glad they read when they finally fall over the threshhold of the last page back into the light of some sort of sanity and order we hope, and look back and shudder. Well. You have to read this one, but I didn't tell you to.

I finished this masterpiece last week and I let it to sink in a little bit before reviewing it. The power of this book was quite overwhelming at times and I had to stop reading for a few days at a time. I do not think there are many books that disturbed me like this one. Maybe Never Let Me Go but there the message was much more subtle.

Some say that the structure of the book makes it very hard to read. I suppose the voice in my head did quite a good job in reading it as I did not encounter any difficulty to follow the narration. What made it difficult to read at times were the images and smells that were projected into my brain. At some point It seemed that excrement odor was rising from the pages in front of me.

Short version of the plot. One day people start to go blind without any prior symptom. Frightened, the Government tries to restrain the blindness epidemic by isolating the blind people. The quarantine is not successful and more and more people go blind. The book focuses on the life of a few "patients" locked and guarded into a mental institution, among who lives the only person immune to blindness. The loss of sight reduces people to their primal instincts (good or bad) and soon we are witnesses of some unimaginable horrors in the fight for food/supremacy/life and to the demise of all social and moral institutions. However, there are people that still try to help and to keep a bit of humanity and decency.

“If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”

I thought that the book is a metaphor of the people that are walking through life without thinking about the violence and cruelty that is in front of them, their ignorance of anything that could menace their civilized life. I believe the book brings forward our fear/avoidance to see our mortality and the insignificance of our lives.

“I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”

“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”

“This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice.”

I’ve read more than my share of post-apocalyptic novels where humanity is suddenly wiped out by a sudden plague or enslaved by aliens, attacked by zombies, buried under snow or under volcanic ash. I have even read one about people going blind overnight in The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. Yet, none of them managed to touch me so deeply and to disturb me out of my comfortably numb daily routine as Jose Saramago’s account. There are no teenage chosen ones to pull us back from the brink of extinction, no armed to the teeth Rambos to drive back the forces of evil, no scientists to discover a cure by the 25th hour. The blindness epidemic is as unavoidable as the radiation cloud closing in on the last survivors of the atomic holocaust in Neville Shute’s novel 'On the Beach' (my top choice for post-apocalyptic novels until this one).

Blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone.

While the description of the affliction and of the progressive dissolution of all social and moral institutions is ‘concrete and real’, (... no imagination, however fertile and creative in making comparisons, images and metaphors, could aptly describe the filth there.) I believe the correct way to read the novel is as a master metaphor of going through life blind to the fragility of our existence and of our ‘civilized’ way of life, ignorant or indifferent to the abuses and the violence going on all around us.

This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice.

The phrase ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ has been used before, and the way the unnamed government in the novel reacts to the first cases of the epidemic (first denial, then frantic damage control, later isolation and military guards with trigger happy fingers) is sadly reminding me that life beats fiction as I watch the unfolding events and the mass hysteria in the ongoing Ebola epidemic.

I will not delve too much on the plot, as I believe the message is more important than the details. I could make a comparison and say the novel is kind of like Lord of the Flies with adults instead of children, devolving all the way back to the animal instincts, to predator and prey and ruthless selfishness. But it would be a false image. Yes, there is a group of isolated people in a kind of concentration camp, and yes, some of these people try to take the law into their own hands and treat others as slaves, but throughout the novel there is an enduring inner core that still distinguishes between right and wrong, there are still people who try to maintain their dignity and their integrity, who are ready to fight back and help a person in distress.

The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed, it was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quaternary, when the soul was little more than muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.

There is a writer at one point of the story, blind himself, yet still trying to put down on paper his thoughts in unintelligible scribbles going up and down and crosswise over a blank page (my favorite cover of the novel among several). It may be interpreted either as a pointless exercise, as the ultimate failure of art to help with real life and death problems, or as the irrepressible spirit of man that refuses to go silently into the night, that fights back against oblivion and hopelessness:

... words inscribed on the whiteness of the page, recorded in blindness, I am only passing through, the writer had said, and these were the signs he had left in passing. “Don’t lose yourself, don’t let yourself be lost!”

I have looked through the rest of my bookmarks, and all the quotes I have selected are a reiteration of the basic conflict between the material dissolution and the persistence of the moral spirit. I believe they are self explanatory:

If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.
---

The tuning knob continued to extract noises from the tiny box, then it settled down, it was a song, a song of no significance, but the blind internees slowly began gathering round, without pushing, they stopped the moment they felt a presence before them and there they remained, listening, their eyes wide open turned in the direction of the voice that was singing, some were crying, as probably only the blind can cry, the tears simply flowing as from a fountain.
---

You have no idea what it is like to watch two blind people fighting. Fighting has always been, more or less, a form of blindness.
---

Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters.
---

Dying has always been a matter of time. But to die just because you’re blind, there can be no worse way of dying. We die of illnesses, accidents, chance events. And now we shall also die of blindness, I mean, we shall die of blindness and cancer, of blindness and tuberculosis, of blindness and AIDS, of blindness and heart attacks, illnesses may differ from one person to another but what is really killing us now is blindness. We are not immortal, we cannot escape death, but at least we should not be blind.

" لاأعتقد اننا عمينا بل اعتقد اننا عميان عميان يرون بشر عميان يستطيعون ان يروا لكنهم لايرون "

اخيرا انتهيت من الرواية . فى العادة اقول هذه الجملة لان الرواية سيئة لكن هنا الحالة مختلفة هى من الروايات السوداوية بالنسبة لى بدايتها كانت رواية رعب ليست بدايتها فقط بل بأكملها لان فكرة العمى بالنسبة لى مرعبة .
ان تصاب فجأة بالعمى وانت تقف فى اشارة المرور ثم تتفاجأ بأنك أصبحت أعمى وهذا العمى من نوع مختلف فى العادة يقول الاعمى ان كل شىء اسود لا هنا الحال مختلف كل شىء ابيض ثم تبدأ هذه الحالة فى الأنتشار والجميع يخاف ويريدون ان يبتعدوا عن هذا الشخص فى العادة عندما تجد شخص اعمى فربما ستمد يد المساعدة لكن هنا لا ستبتعد عنه خوفا ان تصبح مثله بل ستطرد هذا الشخص بعيدا عنك سترغب فى قتله للتخلص منه ربما نتخلص من هذا الوباء .


"“عندما يموت الوحش يموت السم معه” "

عندما يوجد شخص اعمى تمد له يد المساعدةعادة يجد من يساعدة على التأقلم والتعامل لكن عندما يصبح كل من حولك اعمى ويصبح مجتمع بأكملة أعمى لايوجد من يفعل شىء اّّذا خرجت من منزلك لن تستطيع ان تعود لايوجد ماء لايوجد كهرباء بل لايوجد انسانية هل العمى هو السبب فيما يحدث ام هذا هو حقيقة الانسان

إن كنا غير قادرين على العيش ككائنات بشرية، فدعونا على الأقل نفعل كل ما بوسعنا كي لا نعيش كالحيوانات تمام"

"“عندما نكون في محنة كبيرة وقد أصبنا بوباء الألم والكرب عندئذٍ يصبح الجانب الحيواني في طبيعتنا أكثر وضوح"

ان تكون المبصر الوحيد وترى كل مايحدث ليس فقط تشعر به او تتخيله بل تراه ولاتستطيع ان تفعل اى شىء

“لا يسعكم أن تعرفوا، ماذا يعني أن نكون مبصرين في عالم كلُّ من فيه عميان، أنا لست ملكة، بل أنا ببساطة تلك الإنسانة التي وُلِدت لترى هذا الرعب”


"“تمنت بصفاء لو أنها تعمي أيضا, تخترق القشرة المرئية للأشياء و تلج عمقها, إلي عمائها المدوخ غير القابل للشفاء”

العمى من الروايات التى تعمدت ان يكون لى قراءات اخرى بجانبها خوفا من تأثيرها فأنا اعرف جيدا تأثير هذه الروايات على حالتى النفسية فنصيحة لمن مثلى ان يحتاط من هذا الامر .

ملحوظة : الرواية مليئة بالحوارات ليس سرد فقط لكنك اذا نظرت لها لن تشعر ان هناك حديث واحد لن تعرف من يتحدث ومتى انتهت الجملة ومتى بدأت الاخرى ستجن فى البداية وستتهم الكاتب بالغباء والاستفزاز لكن ستعتاد بعد ذلك
لم اكن اعرف ان الرواية تحولت لفيلم لذا سابحث عن الفيلم واشاهده
التقييم ٤.٥

١٤ / ٥ / ٢٠١٧

- تخيّل أن تعيش حياتَك بعد أن تقفد فجأةً نورَ عينيك و أصبح كل ما تراه ستاراً أبيض ، هذا ما يدور حوله الرواية ، أبدع فيها كاتبها بوصف و فهم النفس البشرية و تقلُّباتها و ردود أفعالها .


- فتجده بشكلٍ بليغ يصف أحوال الشعوب و الحكومات و المشاعر من خوف و يأس و قنوط و رجاء فكان وصفه دقيقا معبرا .
تعيش في هذه الرواية الخوف و الرعب الذي يصاحب هذه الفكرة و كيف يستطيع البشر أن يفعلوا أشياء لم تتخيل قط أن يفكروا فيها حتي ، فكانت تجربة فريدة ترى فيها الناس يتبعون فيها غرائزهم و ينحطّون إلي أدني مستويات الفكر و الحضارة.

- و تدرك بعد ذلك أن الاكثر رعبا أن يصاحب هذا العمي فقدان الامل فيتبعه ذلك فقدان الفضيلة البشرية و تُرى ماذا سيحدث بعد ذلك غير الفساد و الدمار الذي سيحل بالعالم و من يسكنوه فالكل سيقولُ : نفسي نفسي .



- أعجبتني الشخصيات و عشت معها خوفها و أملها و يأسها .
- لم يعجبني حقيقة اسلوب الكاتب التجريدي و الذي يصعِّب القراءة احيانا فلا تعرف من يتحدث الا بعد مشقة .
- كنتُ اريد أن أرى المزيد من الاحداث و لكن قلة الاحداث كان شيئا مقصودا من الكاتب إذ أن الرواية كان غرضها عرض طبيعة الانسان النفسية و قد أوفي الكاتب هذا الجزء .
- لم يكن هناك اسماء بالرواية رغم كثرة شخصياتها و ذلك أنّ الاسماء لم تعد مهمة في عالم أبلغُ ما يمكن أن تقدم به نفسك قولُك بأنك أعمي .
- ترجمة محمد حبيب كانت جيدة.
- الرواية بها بعض الأوصاف و المشاهد الصعبة لا تناسب الجميع.

- الرواية لها فيلم لم يكن جيدا و لكن نجح في تقديم الشخصيات و الأماكن بشكل ممتع .

- بالنهاية كانت رحلة ممتعة مفعمة بالاحاسيس رغم وجود بعض الاسهاب

Imagina que estás en el coche parado esperando a que el semáforo se ponga en verde un día cualquiera...y de repente empiezas a verlo todo blanco. Te has quedado ciego de golpe...y el resto de gente también.
Así empieza Ensayo sobre la ceguera, una historia con características distópicas donde el ser humano va a tener que adaptarse a su nueva condición.
Conocía la premisa de esta historia pero no imaginaba que la forma de contarla sería tan bruta, sin finuras ni romanticismos, tan escatológica y extrema.
Saramago intenta explorar la esencia del ser humano sometido a una situación brutal, lo que permanece cuando no queda nada (ni convenciones sociales, ni valores, ni siquiera tu propio nombre).
Aunque hay algunos momentos de la trama que me molestaron un poco, fueron muy puntuales y tengo que decir que los personajes femeninos me parecieron los mejores.
En cuanto al estilo, es importante conectar con él, forma parte de la historia y puede costar acostumbrarse. Es tan especial que hasta creo que puede definir que la obra guste o no.
Recomendaría no saber mucho más, entrar en la lectura "a ciegas" para que la experiencia sorprenda más.

Shocking and enormous the universe of the Portuguese writer - the bright universe you are called to live through a fantastic story that is horribly unlikely to real.

This famous book begins with a pandemic of blindness somewhere-anywhere, which is unexplained and extremely unprecedented, rather transmitted, so that in a few days the society of suddenly and abruptly blind and helpless people is created.

This society is quarantined by prominent governmental actors and the rule of law that is still not lacking in sight ... it is - as we all know - before the pandemic is being abolished.

In this new society of white blindness prevails pain, panic, tremor, despair, and all about human nature in the face of the unknown and the absurd. They are described by the writer as remarkably cynical and intimate - somewhat away from the nervous breakthrough - as well as plausible.
We are therefore beautiful and poetic to the collapse of all. In the abolition of everything, institutions-bonds-barriers-moral-ideas and, above all, the logic and sobriety of culture in the animal's mentality of the jungle.
The next stage is the mutation of people - our fellow human beings - here begins the horror reading and the importance of the writer. Simple and everyday our neighbors are mutated from naturally calm and polite creatures to murderous rapists and blacksmiths. With a spin, a shine, all the limits are broken down without hope and consolation.
Somewhere here is that you wish you had not touched this holy damn book. Here somewhere you realize the hell of the cursed is a step away from you. And here somewhere you realize that this book is legacy and true literature.

The writer desperately unpleasant and cynical but bright and loving leads us to paths that could change the world.

Just amazing!

De los mejores libros que he leído en mi vida. El mejor de Saramago sin duda.

n  Estimado, José Saramago,

Tu obra «Ensayo sobre la ceguera» me ha conmovido por completo. Gracias a tu historia he aprendido lecciones importantes, entre ellas, la más importante de todas, ser consciente del regalo que he recibido al momento de mi nacimiento. Desde hoy, y hasta el final de mi existencia, te prometo valorar cada día de mi vida porque tengo la oportunidad de disfrutar de mi sentido de la vista. A partir de ahora observaré con cariño y detenimiento los colores, los rostros de mis familiares, los animales y la naturaleza que me rodean. Cuando me sienta desorientado o desanimado recordaré tu historia, y al hacerlo traeré a mi memoria tus lecciones; lecciones que me invitan a practicar la gratitud por lo que aún no pierdo y por tener la oportunidad de volver a intentar en lo que he fracasado anteriormente. Gracias a tu relato distópico ahora podré ver el mundo de una manera diferente.

Gracias por esta historia, por tus moralejas, y por decidir convertirte en escritor. Espero que en el otro mundo exista correspondencia, para que puedas comprobar, por medio de este mensaje, que siempre existirán lectores que recordarán y agradecerán tus historias porque dejaste un legado muy bello y valioso en este mundo. Muchas gracias por todo.

Te envía un gran saludo, tu seguidor, Steven Medina.
n

Reseña completa más adelante.

Whether you interpret it as an allegory or otherwise, you will find that most of all Blindness is about being human, and the virtues and vices that define the fundamental human nature.

In a world full of blind people, where the civilization as we know it has completely deteriorated, people are no more identified and judged based on their profession, social status, outward appearances etc. All that remains to distinguish one person from another is one's voice, and the kind of person one is. When people are struggling for survival, trying hard to hold on to life, they drop all the outward pretenses and reveal their true nature. Their actions and behavior mirror the person they are on the inside. And this is how Saramago lets us see every shade of human nature and manages to effectively convey the psychological impact of the epidemic by describing the actions of the people in this blind world.

We, as the human race, take pride in the civilization we have built for ourselves and how we have changed the world in a way that no other life forms could. Blindness brings forth the horrifying truth about how soon the entire system and entire civilization crumbles to nothing if we lose just one of our senses. People are reduced to living in unimaginable filth and rummaging for food and water like animals.

"We're going back to being primitive hordes, said the old man with the black eyepatch, with the difference that we are not a few thousand men and women in an immense, unspoiled nature, but thousands of millions in an uprooted, exhausted world, And blind, ..."

"There must be a government, said the first blind man, I'm not so sure, but if there is , it will be a government of the blind trying to rule the blind, that is to say, nothingness trying to organize nothingness. Then there is no future..."

On the positive side, even in times of utter hopelessness people do all they can to survive. The spirit which keeps them going and struggling to go on living commands respect.

The narrative voice comes across as very honest. The narrator gives a transparent description of what is going on, without ever trying to mitigate the horrors of the situation or to poetize people's misfortune. The narrator maintains an emotional distance and does not offer any judgement on what it observes. The narration, however, is not dry by any means. There are tender moments with love and compassion, and several darker ones which leave one gasping in horror. The writing, though simple, is laden with meaning. And many of those ideas are easy to identify with and understand, since they are not too far from the human nature that we encounter in real world too. They are often things we already know and understand, but haven't looked at them in the way Saramago presents them.

"....since we know that human reason and unreason are same everywhere."

As a dystopian novel, Blindness is a very convincing one. I remember reading Lord of the Flies which, too, is about complete break-down of civilization. I could never understand what could possibly give rise to murdering instincts in those innocent kids. With Blindness, on the other hand, it is difficult to imagine how things could have been any better than the way they have been portrayed in the book.

"No, I am not an optimist, but I cannot imagine anything worse than our present existence. Well, I am not entirely convinced that there are limits to misfortune and evil."

Saramago does not try to provide justifications for the course things take, but everything we read about there is very possible and does not leave room for doubt. It was specially the section about people in the asylum which makes this book memorable for me. One can't possibly read through that section without a lump in the throat. The feeling of hopelessness that prevails is haunting.

"..blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone."

Blindness is a reminder for us to be appreciative of several things that take for granted, but without which our very existence can crumble.

"..when the experience of time has taught us nothing other than that there are no blind people, only blindness."

"..I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see."

"If you can see, look. If you can look, observe. (From the Book of Exhortations)"