Once was Blind but Now I See

So when I read this I started thinking about the idea of not just physical blindness but being blind to things mentally. As in not acknowledging that an item is there because of ignorance or just not wanting to. People are blind, and make themselves blind, all the time. I could walk into a room filled with people but only see one person because I've made myself blind to everyone else. I could even focus my attention to one subject, say english, and completely forget that math exists. This is a problem and there are many that have it, or so I believe. I feel as though Borges is talking about reintroducing oneself to subjects and breaking down the walls that create the blindness. Borges does this himself as he learns Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian. He finds new sounds, new words that trigger emotions and meanings. It's a discovery that clears away blindness. It's also this discovery that he encourages his readers to do. For even those that can see are blind as the old hymn states; the way to clear our sight and help us see again is to reveal truths, and to spark our bored minds.

Now I'm not saying that it wasn't interesting that a blind man wrote poems and books, because it was. I really didn't know that some of those authors were in fact blind; nor the strange coincidence that librarians in charge of great stacks of books were also blind. The way he described his blindness was rather interesting; for there was still color but no blackness. It's like trying to understand how a deaf person hears. Do they hear nothing or do they at least hear mumbles and echoes? His description did keep me enthralled.

But why a person would want to voluntarily go blind is a matter that I haven't fully understood. He stated that Milton did that. In a fleeting line, Borges says that it is so that "reality would not distract" (384). This line is odd for I would think that reality would lend to fuel creativity but the line is also paired with a statement of castration. So would the reality be of pure distraction? This would possibly go back to my idea of perhaps they aren't blind at all. Perhaps they are just trying to seclude themselves from the common distractions of life to dive into the work that they have. Work of learning new things.