Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: All right, everyone, we are on the air. Naomi, whenever you're ready, you can begin with your first reading.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Great. Thank you for having me. I'm going to start in the middle of the encyclopedia with a piece called Kindness, A kind friend suggests write about compelling strangers, that glint of connection illuminated in a moment, one stranger's hand gripping another's to step mind the gap from a brightly painted boat to the salt stiffened grass of an abandoned island in the Venetian lagoon. A shaft of sunlight passes over a landscape, the beauty real, then gone.
Compelling, but not in the sense of those invisible strangers who design algorithms that compel me to buy a used Yakwool cardigan and a pair of paisley print rubber cowboy boots on Thredup. Or those unjust justices who stole women's authority over their own bodies. Lucky me. I don't have a uterus anymore, so I can't be compelled to bear young.
No, I mean the compelling connection of a stranger's kindness, how kindness intertwines with kinship. Like when I'm walking with my cane out to my studio a half mile from my house in St. Paul, there's a guy sitting on the ledge in front of the old elementary school, the one now repurposed as a professional building.
His bottle in its brown paper bag sits next to him. As I pass, he says, can I ask you a question? And then, without pause, are you blind? And then, also without pause, starts to tell me about an old girlfriend, a flight attendant. She got glaucoma and then they fired her. Then he pulls up his trouser leg to show me his metal prosthetic and says, being blind, wow, that must suck.
Can I give you $10?
I don't take the money. But the kindness. By all means, I take the kindness.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: I love that. That was Naomi Cohn reading from her new work of essay collections that also serves as a revelatory memoir. The Braille Encyclopedia. Brief Essays on Altered Sight. Told in the form of imagined alphabetical encyclopedia entries, this meditation on progressive vision loss examines and illuminates cones, at first halting, then avid embrace of braille as part of relearning to read and write as an adult. Naomi Cohn is a writer and teaching artist whose work explores reclamation.
Her past includes a childhood among Chicago academics, involvement in a guerrilla feminist art collective, and work as an encyclopedia copy editor, community organizer, grant writer, fundraising consultant, and therapist. Naomi, welcome to the program.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: So early on in your book, you reflect on growing up surrounded by words Shaping your identity around language. How do these early influences affect your relationship with words after your vision loss?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Well, it was a big loss.
That was the language of love in my family. Like, when my parents couldn't be around, a book was like a form, a secure place to attach. You know, it was like a really good babysitter. And also when things weren't great in my family, it was something to escape into. So losing that was a lot.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: So if I'm picking up, if I'm hearing you correctly, so in your family, which I also mentioned in your bio, is a family of academics. The medium by which you guys connected was also through books and through language.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. It was like how my family got along. My parents had convinced us by the time we were five or six that getting to check a word in the dictionary was like dessert. That was fun. So, you know, once you've been conned into that world, then, like, to lose that or not to be part of it in the same way was hard. And I should also say that this was, you know, in the early 90s when I started to lose my sight. And so today there's a lot of really wonderful ways to access information and text and retain a relationship. And the options then were much more limited.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Sure. So the essay all details the tool that led to Lewis Braille's blindness. You also mentioned this essay, an awl like tool you use for making hand punch Braille. I was wondering if you could talk about the role the awl plays in your view of tools and how does it reflect the tension between creation and loss?
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Ooh, that's really a cool question.
Yeah, I do. I mean, I have no evidence, but I think that, yeah, Braille transformed something that had been this incredible source of trauma in his life, but it was also like something he was familiar with. And so that's kind of my guess is that it's like, hey, well, maybe I can use this to poke something other than injuring myself, which is how he may have lost his sight when he was a little kid in his father's saddle making shop.
But yeah, that little tool feels very similar in the hand. And I should also say that I also, before I lost my sight, I was very involved in sculpture and wood cutting. And so tools were also something that mattered to me in a tactile way in my life. So that's where I came up with the no evidence hypothesis.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: In between, you describe living loss between total sight and total blindness. Struggling to separate Braille lines. Has this awareness of in between states affected your worldview? At all.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Absolutely.
I just feel more and more that my own experience with definitions of blindness are very binary in our culture. Right. You can either, like, I was born with terrible, very deep nearsightedness, but because I could be corrected to 2020, I was considered sighted. And then someday you can't pass a particular test and then you're legally blind. So my own journey, understanding, like, how weird that was and coming to terms with, like, well, I still see all kinds of stuff, but there's lots of ways in which I am blind. I can't read text, street signs, faces.
Yeah, it's really opened up my view to sort of understanding in a more bodily way. Of course, I've always been supportive of folks who don't feel like they fit one gender or another, but having my own bodily experience of not being really one thing or another just gives me a more intuitive or understanding of that, if that makes sense. And, yeah, everything around me starts to leave, like, borders. Those don't make a whole lot of sense either. So, yeah, it starts to pile up.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Well, okay, let me. Yeah, let's explore this a little further here. So, I mean, so the definition in the essay of between is in the space that separates and I think living in that space, then do you think that offers you a unique narrative voice?
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Maybe.
Yeah, I think that that's the. Hopefully that the betweenness of the way I've written these pieces, some of them function as prose, some of them more like poetry. That that's not just a tricksy, wixy thing I'm doing.
It's a real reflection. It's a form that reflects my experience.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: I think it works well as a framing device, really, to frame it and forces you to think closely on a certain subject is why I think I really enjoyed going through your collection.
The essay Blind showcases multiple uses of the word blind.
I was going to talk about how. How does your play on language here deepen the reader's understanding of the many ways in which a person is not able to see? Because you talk about being blindsided or blind alleys. And I think when you read this, at least for me, it conjured different ideas, I think, about not seeing different objects.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So that piece, one of my first attempts to kind of wrestle with my vision loss was looking. But it was very early on, I did a journal entry that was just like, so what's in the dictionary about blindness? And it was all these incredibly negative things. And even today, it's still culturally really normative to use blind in a way that I think we wouldn't necessarily use some other terms of physical disability. So it's still. And I don't have a better alternative. Like, sometimes people are being really obtuse.
So, yeah, there's a way in which that language was a way in for me to start to wrestle with that. And then as I built, you know, years later, I built that piece up into, like, what I had come to know about blindness that most people like. When I started to lose my sight, I didn't know that only 10 or 15 people.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: I was just gonna ask you about that.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: Right, yeah. All those ignorances that sometimes. Sometimes my editors were super helpful in being like, you know, you sound a little mean about sighted people sometimes. And I had to come back to remember, like, I had all of. Like, sometimes I do get a little feisty about how people view blind folk, how sighted folk view blind folk, but I had to remember I had every one of those ableist attitudes myself when I first started to lose my sight.
And so I didn't know anything about. I didn't know anything more about blindness than most folks in my culture did at the time.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: In blood, you narrate the progression of your retinal condition as green clouds in your vision. How does color serve as a vehicle for describing the changes in your vision? Can you discuss how color perception evolved with your vision loss?
[00:10:52] Speaker B: So physically, I think I see color fine. My spouse is like, no, not so much. So, like, physically, I can't really discern a dark green from a dark blue from a dark, you know, brown. And I get dressed and then I go out in the sunlight and I'm like, oh, oh, maybe that wasn't such a perfect match.
But I think also color is really important in the whole collection because I. Again, I think I mentioned before, I have a background as a visual artist, and color was certainly part of how I enjoyed the world, and I still do, but it's maybe not as normative, if that makes sense. I don't know that I'm seeing what you're seeing. Sure.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: I think that's the case for a lot of people, though. True told.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: I don't know. There's a universal stand for color in a lot of ways. I face with my own family many.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Times and we can't know. Right, right.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: So body details. This I was curious about. So bodily details, physical adaptions to visual loss. How is your adaptive bodily experience influenced, your literary style, particularly your approach to sensory details?
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Also a great question. I think that at a very basic level, I used to be sort of Afraid of trying to describe things visually because I guess, shame, right? Like, oh, I'm not going to be as good at that.
So a lot of my writing for a while in poetry, which was more my form for many years, was just really to really notice the other senses. And I think one of the things that was fun for me in writing the braille encyclopedia was also just being like, oh, I still have all these visual experiences, and I'm going to lean into what I can say about them, what I can share about them.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: In braille, you describe your transition to a love of braille. Can you discuss the emotional and intellectual milestones in this journey and how it influenced your writing process?
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Well, braille, obviously, like, braille was so important to me. I didn't expect to fall in love with braille. Like, it was just a class in vocational rehab that you were encouraged to take. Like, try it out. See, so that was the whole sort of approach in my vocational rehab program was like, here are all these different tools. Which ones fit your life? Which ones grab you? And grail really grabbed me. And Also, I was 47 when I started learning, and I wasn't really good at it. But the really. In terms of my process, what really sparked me was having a way of keeping a handmade journal as opposed to doing all of my creative work on a computer in some digital way. So that had been important to me before I started to lose a lot of my sight. And so that was really a revelation to be like, oh, that I can do this again.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Your braille instructor, Cindy, she brings warmth and empathy into a challenging process. You talk about, how did Cindy's teaching style shape your views on learning and resilience?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: She just was a really great character. I mean, she. I say in the book that she could read two texts at once, right? Yeah. So she just was really amazing to me. Like, I couldn't. And when she was doing that, I was really struggling to understand, just to remember that, like, a1.in the upper left corner of a braille cell is an A. There was just so much to remember, and it was not using a sense that I was good at because it was all tactile. So I just was in awe. But also she just was so encouraging, you know, it was.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Code explores how braille conceals.
How does this private form of writing allow you to explore or express things that might feel limited in conventional print?
[00:15:17] Speaker B: That's definitely a little theme of the book.
One of the. And it comes back a few different times. And one of the things I sort of came to be aware of in learning braille. I didn't. I mean, I come across as a pretty brassy person. I'm not from Minnesota. I'm from the south side of Chicago. You know, like, people think I'm kind of out there, but in a lot of ways, I'm pretty much of a chicken in terms of, like, what I'm willing to put down in print.
You know, partly out of good motives. I don't want to hurt people's feelings, but also just, you know, it's scary being a writer in some ways.
So braille really opened up this different voice in my writing over, you know, over years. I started keeping this braille journal. And as I say, in the peace voice, like this different voice emerged.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: How has this. How did the new sensory dimension you're using influence how you connect to language and perception?
And I was wondering about the role how tactile memories play in constructing your personal narrative and visualizing experiences.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: That's a great question, because I think I no longer really know which sense is feeding what I'm doing.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Really?
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So I often think, oh, I'm reminded. Well, there's both like aging and you think you remember something and you made it up. That's one whole other category. But I think I see stuff. And when I'm put in a context where sometimes I'm forced to realize, oh, that was actually probably some other senses that I wasn't.
I would code something as sight when maybe I had heard it. Or it was a combination of memory, like, oh, I know where that button on the, you know, microwaves gonna be.
And I think I'm seeing it. But I really just know tactilely it's this combination of buttons or there's a little sound. And I don't even necessarily process that. That's how I'm making it up. So, yeah, it's part of that, like not being so boundaried about stuff. It's like, I perceived it great. I don't have to code whether it's visual or tactile or auditory.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: There's an essay. You depict the sensory freedom felt by blind students experiencing the outdoors. Do you see vision loss as also something that could be liberatory and like, as a means to deepen your relationship with the natural world or even to maintain your attention economy? When we live in a very visually overstimulating world, it is.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: I do sometimes say, wow, I'm really glad I can't see that somebody describes something to me. And it's.
Yeah, I think it can be a gift. It partly comes out of something difficult, which is that I do still do some things visually and it's very energetically demanding for my body. So I'm often worn out and tired by that. But it also has meant that I've just had to say like, oh, you know what? I can't watch bad TV that I don't enjoy. Like, sorry, I can't do Facebook. I'm really. And I am sorry. But it's also like, oh, to physically survive, I need to cut some things out. And there's definitely a space opens up there in terms of just being able to tune stuff out.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: I mean, like, I think a survey a couple years ago I saw said most Americans would say that they wish they didn't have social media, they wish it'd be offered less, but yet they somehow are just addicted to that newsfeed, that doom scrolling process.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah, and also the.
It is, you know, there is genuine community amid the ocean of stuff. And so I've actually been experiencing that lately because people are, you know, excited about my book for me and they share stuff. And like five days later I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know that you had taken the time to, you know, share my book or something. So. And then I feel all this guilt that I'm not being a good community member. But it is what it is, I guess.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Jealousy. This other essay you have differentiates jealousy from envy.
How did this distinction become meaningful in your journey with vision loss? And I'm curious how it influences your interaction with others who have sight.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: That was actually a piece I wrote pretty late in the process.
So it was one of those things where you think you're done with a book and you actually like, oh, I still have something to discern. And I don't actually even remember where I heard this definition, that jealousy is holding on to something too tightly that we have and envy is envying what other people have. And hearing that made me realize, oh, of course I do still envy folks who either were born without sight, and I do have friends who were born blind or blinded very early in life and they just don't have that sense of like, oh, I lost this thing.
You know, I shouldn't speak for other folks in a blanket way, but what I would tend to hear is maybe they're at a particular thing, like, oh, I wish I was able to drive or do X or Y. But all the visual sensations that I felt so much loss around was like, eh, yeah, whatever. I'm listening to My music or whatever that particular way was. So that was actually kind of helpful to realize. Like, oh, yeah, I do have all of this big bag of envy. Like, you can just, you know, get all that information and not have to plan. Like, if you want to just go for a walk and get lost, you can do that and you'll be able to read the street signs. And so I think it's one of those, like, oh, I don't think I'm ever like, I've done all my therapy and whatever. But there's always a new experience where you're like, oh, I wish I could do it the old way.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: How does. Has dreams changed for you at all as you've. As your vision loss increased?
[00:21:20] Speaker B: I still have a pretty rich visual world. Has they changed?
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Has it become more tactile? Do you have, do you.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: I don't really have tactile dreams. I still have very visual dreams.
There are. I think there are occasionally little tactile elements. There's.
Maybe sound is more important.
But yeah, my brain is still my brain. I mean, a lot of going blind, is that a lot of what, your brain? For most people, for fully sighted folks, 90% of sight is brain processing as opposed to what actually happens in your eye. We all are busy in our brains making sense of visual input.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: And so my brain still thinks it's kind of good at it. It's just then when I use another sense, it's like, oh, maybe that wasn't what I thought it was. Like, that wasn't my neighbor, it was a mailbox or whatever.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: In mirror neuron, you question if blind people experience empathy differently.
Has your understanding of this concept shifted as you interact with others without visual cues?
[00:22:37] Speaker B: I still don't really have an answer to that.
And actually one of my editors pointed out in the process of finishing the book that there are more recent studies that there are acoustic triggering of mirror neurons, which I wasn't aware of that when I learned that back in graduate school when I was becoming a therapist. But I think empathy is like a muscle. Like, if we want to be compassionate about other people's experiences, I don't think the lack of a particular sense is going to get in the way. And I certainly, you know, there's certainly plenty of fully sighted folks who sometimes I feel like, wow, did you really not take that in? You know, like, I don't think having sight makes us necessarily empathetic.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, I totally agree. So in nothing you discussed spaces beyond sight.
How did you reconcile the concept of nothingness with A life enriched by senses beyond vision.
Sorry, that's a big question.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a big question.
I hope in that the image in that piece is about how I perceive a bird hawk.
And my sense of it is that I hope it has. What I experience is simultaneously both the sense of like, being annoyed because I want to have a really clear view and see all the wonderful visual detail of that animal. And it's also like being out in nature, even just on a city street, and having that sense of close contact with another creature or being is still pretty wonderful.
So, yeah, I don't even know if I really know what nothingness is. But I do think there's been a shift in over the 30 years that I've been losing my sight that I don't feel as much of. It's just things being drained away.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Sure.
And I just got a two minute warning from our soundboard engineer, Eric, is my last question.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: So in knowledge, you discuss the desire to know the cause of your condition. How does the search for knowledge affect your acceptance of uncertainty in life?
[00:25:03] Speaker B: For me, the search for like, medical diagnosis or understanding was really pretty much a waste of time. And my life just got so much better when I stopped worrying about that.
And yeah, I think. I don't think there was a single moment where I was like, wow, everybody's life is uncertain and you know, everybody's gonna have stuff happen.
But definitely that's been the trend in my life is like, yeah, my sight. That was an adjustment for me not to make light of it. It was a big deal. But just like, yeah, stuff happens. That's like the human experience. We're all in that together. I think.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: This has been my time. Talk with Naomi Cohn about her encyclopedic memoir essay collection, the Braille Encyclopedia. Brief Essays on altered Sites from, Remind Me, the publisher I have on Tip of My Tongue, Rose Rose Metal Press. Yes. Which does plays the unique experimentation with genres. It's a wonderful press. Naomi, thanks for joining us on the program.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Thank you so much. It was a treat.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: And now this.
