[311/365] here's a piece of grit

[cosmolinguist]

I don't read stuff written about blind people directed for a general audience very often, and when I do it's only when I feel like seeing how terrible it is.

This is such a terrible article. It's very binarist about blindness/sightedness, it's very sighted-gaze, it's very dull.

Until the last few sentences, which I wish had citations so I could use them for my work, which is trying to make transport and streets better for blind people.

Research has found that blind people have more dreams about travel that involve unfortunate circumstances. Some of these dreams could potentially be considered nightmares. One hypothesis is that the nightmare content may mirror the difficulties blind people face while getting around in their waking life.

Huh. Until the pandemic, most of my nightmares were about travel, usually on planes. But I'm only one person, one data point.

I wonder if there's any truth to the barriers we experience in our journeys are so profound that they populate our nightmares.

I've been thinking about this for many days, since I first saw this terrible article.

Comments

[ashelterofpages]

…Wow, I pulled up that article, and the title made me twitch on sight.

I don't have nightmares about traveling exactly. Mine are more centered around people touching me and trying to steer me one way or the other or doing something I didn't ask them to do/help with. Sometimes I'll dream about being lost or forgetting where I am but that's not tied to my blindness, I think.

[cosmolinguist]

people touching me and trying to steer me one way or the other or doing something I didn't ask them to do/help with

Ugh, yeah, this is also something I hear about all the time for work! As well as experiencing in my everyday life of course (I screamed at the last person who grabbed me when I was ignoring his demand that I get on the bus before him).

Sometimes I'll dream about being lost or forgetting where I am but that's not tied to my blindness, I think.

Yeah, maybe the details are a little different for us but I think everyone gets to enjoy those. :)