A short fiction story about a young man seeing the world for the first time
It’s five in the morning on a Tuesday. A young man, age 17, walks out to the middle of Lions Gate Bridge and stops along the walking path. He approaches the railing of the bridge’s edge and looks down at the water, 364 feet beneath him.
Then he looks up at the sky. He pauses for a moment, breathing shallow breaths and shaking noticeably. He climbs over the top of the railing and sits on it. His legs dangle over the side like a small helpless child in a chair hundreds of feet too big for him.
He murmurs to himself aggressively. “Hello?” a voice suddenly says with a questioning tone behind him. Having not initially noticed anyone, the younger man jumps with a startled jolt, just before catching himself.
He turns around to see an old man, in about his 70s, leaned up, sitting against a jersey barrier on the walking path just a few feet away, slightly blocked by a bridge beam. He is alone, has large sunglasses on, and has a cane resting beside him.
“Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was here,” the young man says. “No problem at all,” the old man says with a chuckle, keeping his head straight forward and not looking directly at the young man.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he continues. The young man looks back around at the water and sky again. “Yeah,” he replies with a downward, deflating pitch. “Well, that actually doesn’t sound that nice,” the old man responds.
“It feels like it is, but I can’t see a thing.” Putting two and two together, the young man asks with hesitancy, “Oh, are you…um, visually impaired?” “Yeah, I’m blind,” the old man says, laughing at the young man’s attempt to be unnecessarily inoffensive.
“Ever since I was born.” “Oh, I’m sorry.” “Don’t be,” the old man says with another subtle laugh. “Is it nice a day?” “I mean, the sun is coming out.
A little overcast but mostly a nice day, I guess, yeah.” The old man smiles and nods without saying anything for a moment. “I’m Lou, by the way,” the old man says. “Nice to meet you, Lou. Tyler.” Tyler turns back around and stares intensely at the water again.
After a couple moments pass, Lou interrupts, “If it is a nice day, do you think you could do me a favor?” “Uhm, s-sure,” Tyler responds reluctantly and unsurely, turning around to face Lou again. “Could you describe it for me?” “Describe what?”
“Just whatever you see—the sky, anything.” Tyler pauses for a moment, then gets off the bridge’s railing and sits next to Lou. He leans back and looks up. “Umm, well, the sky is mostly light blue right now.
There’s a bunch of clouds scattered across it, which are a light-ish grey with a sort of orange edge to them. They’re fluffy looking, like cotton balls or maybe the inside of a cushion.
The sun is behind one big one right now, so it’s sort of glowing through and adding these rays and an orange layer to the bottom of the sky. It all blends together.
No hard lines, just seamless colors, and textures mixed perfectly. It looks kind of nice right now, actually.” Lou clenches his face slightly like he is seeing it in his head.
“What do the blue and grey and orange look like, though. And the glow and fluffiness and niceness. Would you mind describing those for me too?”
Tyler pauses for another moment. “Ok. Uhm. The orange looks warm, like heat,” Tyler says, and then pauses trying to think about where to go from there.
“What does it mean for you when something looks warm? I never really understand that” Lou quickly interrupts. “It’s kind of like pure and bright and intense.
At least for the orange. You could probably feel it without even actually feeling anything warm.” “And the blue?” “The blue is light like it’s been washed or faded or something. It’s also hitting the water under the bridge right now and reflecting a similar color.”
“What does the water look like?” Lou asks. “Right now, this water kind of looks like…maybe like jagged melting glass that…I don’t know, it’s almost pulsing. It looks alive. It’s kind of ominous. Over there, there are a bunch of rocks scattered around on the edge of the shoreline.
They kind of look like headstones.” “Are there any rocks around us right now?” Lou asks. Tyler looks around the ground. “There’s some small like pebble-sized ones, yeah.”
“What do they look like, close up? All the details?” Tyler grabs a small handful of rocks from the ground surrounding them and brings them right up to his face. “They just sort of look like rocks, I suppose.” “No, but what makes them look like rocks?”
“I guess…they’re round, but also not. They look earthy if that makes sense. There are a bunch of little, tiny lines and divots running up and down each of them.
They have slightly different patterns but none of them are symmetrical, so the shapes and patterns don’t really match or look like an actual shape. This one’s kind of cool.” Tyler picks out and holds up a single rock. “Why is it cool?” Lou asks.
“I don’t know. I like the shape. It’s also kind of transparent. Like you can almost see through it.” “How would you describe seeing through something?
I never really understood that either.” Tyler, trying his best to elaborate, continues using other details and items and sensations to compare to.
This continues further and further into other, even more minute and obscure depths of the visual dimension of reality.
Eventually, with each item and detail, Tyler reaches a point where he struggles to find the words or comparisons to explain any further, and each time, he finds himself experiencing a strange sensation, noticing how absurd and fascinating everything is, how complex and hard it is to describe anything fully, to see and understand anything fully.
He repeatedly gets lost in this and almost loses track of himself. Lou, picking up on this each time, moves on to something else, keeping the back-and-forth conversation active and alive. The two spend an hour and 22 minutes doing this together.
While Tyler is still describing items and visual insights, not even aware of how much time has passed, somewhat suddenly, Lou says, “Well, I ought to let you get back to your walk now.
That was very kind of you. Thank you for doing that.” Tyler somewhat suddenly snaps back, dazed and detached from his regular state. “Yeah…yeah. No problem. I hope that helped a little bit.” Tyler pauses for a moment before getting up, still sort of adjusting back.
“So, you could kind of form pictures of all that in your head?” he asks. Lou pauses for a moment, staring forward. “No, not really.” “No? What…what do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve never seen anything before. Only a little bit of light perception. So my mind has no visual reference points. I really have no idea what anything could possibly look like. It’s all just nothing.” “What do you mean by nothing? I don’t even really understand that.”
“Well, exactly. If I explained nothing to you, it would sort of being like you describing something to me. It just doesn’t work.” “Why did you just have me do all that, then?” Tyler asks with abrupt confusion and a small, frustrated laugh.
“I find that people often say it’s important to look inward. You know, like to find strength or meaning in life or whatever else people say. But I can only look inward, and I’ve found that it doesn’t get you very far.
The most enriching moments, the most enriching experiences, what keeps life worth living, I think, are when you’re looking outward. At least metaphorically.
For most of us, almost all the time, we are looking inward, at ourselves, thinking about how things matter to us or because of us or with us at the focal point, concentrated on how we look and how we act and how important we are—or aren’t.
But if you really look inward, there’s nothing there. Trust me, it’s all I see. We are out here.” Lou points out and down with both hands, waving them in small circles.
“In every little detail, of every little thing, in every little moment—in immersing into all the unfathomable features of the simple and mundane, and in realizing, viscerally, what it means that you can perceive at all. That is where, I think, life is.
“You did in fact just help me right now, Tyler, just to be clear. I’m not some sort of selfless sage. Anytime I feel like I can help someone who can see, perhaps see better, selfishly, that’s my way of seeing the world.
I believe if there is any kind of spiritual experience, or whatever you want to call it, it’s not when you look in to find yourself, but when you look out to lose yourself.”
Tyler tries to process the strange twist while the two exchange a few more friendly words back and forth. After just a couple more minutes, the two say a sincere goodbye and express a mutual appreciation.
Then, Tyler gets up, goes his separate way, and at least for this day, returns home. Lou will return to the same spot at around the same time tomorrow and many more days to come.
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