I realized that I often overlooked the subtleties of touch, the nuances of sound and voice, and felt incapable of picking them up when I finally tried. All of a sudden I notice all of the signs that say, “Do not touch!” in museums, in stores, all the taboos. I notice how often this realm is prohibited, and I understand a little more why I was responded to so guardedly in the library.
I felt very much a visitor there; I knew I could leave when I wanted to. And perhaps I could not have understood my book any better had I sat there for several more hours, for days, still knowing that, when I chose, I could open my eyes.
Kristin L. Rakowski ’03, a Crimson editor, is an English and American liteartures and languages concentrator in Kirkland House. This summer, she interned for Art Education for the Blind and worked for the Circuit Court of Illinois. Somewhere in between, she rediscovered the foreign concepts of sleep and having time to herself.