Helen Keller

Around first grade when I learned about Helen Keller, I started reading all the little histories I could. I loved her. I loved the idea of her. I loved Annie Sullivan. I bought books with braille samplings and tried to learn the alphabet (failed, sadly, without more guidance). I also loved the romantic thought that we could be distantly related. Me! Related to Helen Keller who revolutionized education for the blind and the deaf! Helen Keller who contributed to society so selflessly!

But I never read any of her work. Just about her. Like many of my phases, I continued to appreciate Helen Keller but my interests turned elsewhere.

Until last week. Someone (Rachel Hadas, I think) in the reading series I'm digitizing mentioned The World I Live In, and I thought: "I've never read Helen Keller's writing! What the heck!" So I checked out the delightful volume published in 1910 and sweetly "vandalized" by many different readers' underlining and stars. After reading the book, my senses felt enlivened, suddenly aware of themselves and their purpose. My fingers touched my world with more awe. I appreciated my nose more. (And continued to ignore my tongue as much as possible to ward off nausea). My eyes and ears seemed like foreign creatures that I had never actually utilized before.

Helen's writing is intimate, honest, and plucky. Her spirit is obviously independent; stronger than I realized (stupid of me, I know). She essays on her daily experience--another surprise. Nothing really felt like a manifesto, although much of her world did require explanation. She ruminates on hands, communication, dreams, and mostly on the world that we create for ourselves--the reality of which is actually beyond our senses. We need self-consciousness and imagination to be human, not necessarily sight or hearing or common language.

Reading her essays was really like discovering a thoughtful and thought-provoking friend. I anticipate more reading.

Some quotations:

"Remember that you, dependent on your sight, do not realize how many things are tangible." --Helen Keller, from "The Seeing Hand"

I've been thinking about this as we wait for baby Charles. He is obviously real, alive--yet not quite tangible. But if I never see him, he's still there--right?

I wonder about the tangibility of faith, of souls, of sunlight and beauty. I want to be more connected to this tangible world (a moment from Charles Lamb, "New Year's Eve": "I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here." A favorite quote, applicable to so many different situations).

"The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we see, but on how much we feel." --Helen Keller, from "Inward Visions"

Same concept as "line upon line, precept upon precept"? That concept has always frustrated me--the immature person in me almost wants to cry out, "But I need more--more!" So. How to expand the capacity of the soul? How to feel more? Any suggestions?