on blindness

As I was standing at the corner of 2nd avenue and 13th street, passing the time, my eye fell first on the blind man's walking stick at the opposite corner, then on the blind man and finally on the woman next to him. She was standing beside him and behind him and he was practicing making well defined arcs with his cane while standing. She seemed to be talking to him and he would nod uncertainly. He then started walking very carefully, the woman on his side, the stick defining arcs on the pavement, the passer bys avoiding them and looking down and me on the other side, just looking. They kept going up and down the street for about 20 minutes or so, trying new things like getting off the pavement and avoiding trash cans and it looked hard and frustrating. Automatically when I see a blind person on the street I usually assume they've always been that way, born into darkness and used to it. Maybe unconsciously I recall the story of the man who was born blind and found his sight in his forties only to realise that he couldn't function as a seeing person and missed the comfort of his darkness. I think they made a movie with Val Kilmer about that. I rarely sit and think of the people like you and me who suddenly lose their sight and how they must train and try in order to start living again. I was walking around a lot that morning lost in my own problems and never did I think that to just be able to walk and see where I'm going is reason enough to feel happy. Of course it isn't and as soon as the blind man and his teacher left the scene I forgot all about them.