[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

[cosmolinguist]

Makes a lot of sense that you'd have that anxiety about the presence and usability of your wheelchair.

I'm really surprised that masks haven't featured more in my dreams -- I've had one memorable one where I thought I was wearing a mask but it was somehow floating away all the time. But mostly I am in buildings and crowds and don't mind at all, in my dreams. It's very weird.