Abstractions



Imagine, if you will - you're deaf, dumb, and blind

And that only two of your senses infuse your mind ...

You can smell, and you can touch, and feel touched

But there's a limitation on that - quite well enough



For abstractions cannot at all be defined ...

Things like Love, and others not so well refined

For everything is defined via finger touches on one hand

As the other one is used to direct touch to a source grand



Water, for instance, can be (with touch) spelled out

But it's only a word - you can't know what it's about

Unless you can feel water trickling over your fingers

Then - that sensation stays with you - and lingers ...



Allowing you to remember this feeling the next time it's spelled

And so, the word - w-a-t-e-r, forms a certain mind-meld

Now then - take things like Light, and Dark, and Love

And you start to realize, without senses - they are above

 

In other words, how can you make any associations ...

Using touch - to remember those finer connections?

If they cannot be in a meld with remembered things

Then there's a hole in those concepts, and they can't ring



Love is something we each define in our very own way

But it's something for which we use our senses every day

We - those who can see, can taste, feel, hear, and smell

Are driven towards a definition using those safe propels



But, if you cannot see, or hear, and, by consequence - speak

Then Love is not such a clear picture, for it leaves you bleak

Such was the case with Helen Keller ... for she couldn't know

Exactly what she felt for Peter Fagan*, and why they came to blows



"The love which had come, unseen and unexpected ...

Departed with tempest on his wings" she later reflected

Saying - if she could see, she would have married

But ... without sight, only in her mind, could she carry



There may be a burden ... for without the ability to see ...

You cannot fully know sincerity ... wherever it may be ...

For it relies on sight, and hearing, more than it does on touch

And without those two senses ... you can't even know to blush



Well, Helen ... wherever you are in the universe right now ...

Know this ... in a sense, you were fortunate - and here's how



For without - you were way ahead of the game ...

For, even though that lack made you slightly lame 

It took away the focus from those two revealing traits

Allowing YOU to focus on the things which kept you straight



- Tristram



© Christopher W. Thomas

9am Tuesday, June 1st, 1999



NB

Helen Keller died on this date in 1968 

at her home in Westport, CT - she was 87

Despite being deafened and blinded by scarlet fever

at 18 months, she would go on, and with the help of 

her teacher - Anne Sullivan - to earn a college degree 

from Radcliffe, graduating cum laude with honors in 

German and English (1904)



* Peter Fagan was the newspaperman she befriended, 

whom she hired as her temporary secretary, and with 

whom she took out a marriage license. 

[She later dissolved the relationship after someone 

read the article (via touch) he'd written for his paper 

about their intended union.]