One thing that’s always been a struggle for me when it comes to my dog is the fact that my dog can see things that I can’t see. Living out in the country side has it’s perks but it also has it’s disadvantages. One bit one is that we have rabbits, Coyotes (which there is a family of them now apparently. Two coyotes and four pups), foxes, deer and even a bear. This wouldn’t be too big of a problem (well okay, maybe the bear is a problem), but that’s not what I’m talking about. The point is that of course my dog sees all the rabbits and naturally wants to chase them. It’s hard to react when I don’t see the rabbit or deer for myself so he startles me by suddenly going wild wanting to go after them. There are some signs I’ve noticed about him like how attentive he gets with his ears pricked up and how he walks differently, but it’s always a shock when I’m just trying to have a nice walk, and he decides that he just has to chase the rabbits and deer.
All posts by pip.colman@comcast.net
The stories of non-vocal music
Now a bit of story time. When I was younger my older brother used to play the trumpet. He would play it in the school band. So of course at some points mom and I would go “watch” him play. I say watch, but I was never really able to see anyone on the stage playing. So one time m mom told me to just close my eyes and listen to the music instead of trying to see things. I remember this because it’s something that has stuck with me even now. Closing my eyes and listening to music that has no vocals to them unfold their own stories in my mind.
The reason this is so important to me is that this story telling through music actually spawned the idea for my novel I’m working on. Waiting for the bus after a long day I was just listening to my music. It helped that that day we had a talk in one of my classes about music and how it could be used therapeutically. That combined with my love for playing my flute turned into the idea I had, and every time I listen to music I get different feelings and it’s amazing.
Another thing that came out of this was a poem that I wrote (posted below) based on music. During my poetry class in college two years ago my teacher gave us an assignment. She asked us to take a picture and write a poem based on that picture in any way we wished. Of course given my lack of sight I talk to her about how I could do the project without having t be able to see. We came up with the idea that instead of a picture I would find a piece of music (without vocals) and I would write a poem based on that. I can’t say it’s a great poem, but it’s what came to my mind while listening to the piece. I’ll add a video of the piece as well so you can hear it for yourself.
Waves (A poem on Beethoven’s 7th symphony, movement 2)
By: Phillipa Colman
Rise and fall
violent and calm
Like a wave rises
through the ocean
mild, calm, lapping at the shores
merely tasting the sand and the feet of people.
Playful and gentle
Then, the strike of the large waves.
slamming into the earth, crushing all under it
The white foamy head the only indication
as it blots out the sun for that one second
Collecting power
crashing down
Then it calms,
The mighty ocean rests
letting the waves continue to lap the shore
mere whispers of the wave that has passed
small, barely cresting at all
Wet sand all that shows of their coming
Though all know that again
a wave shall rise up
to consume all in its way
To destroy and to eat at the earth
No matter how long the large waves last
or the small ones chase the shore
they will always move into each other
Through the calm will come the chaos
and after the chaos will come the calm
The calm and peace of the small waves will not last
but the large ones will cease
leaving only the calm once again
Why didn’t I know about this before?
Okay, so I just found out that I can get help from an independent living specialist from the CNIB even though I’m still on campus. I wish I knew this four years ago. Guess it’s never tooo late to get started. I’m sure the US has help like this as well so if anyone wants help with independent living and living on a college campus you should really look into getting help from someone even before you get a place of your own.
Rainbow!
Hey guys, look what I saw yesterday on my walk with my dog! I just looked up and I saw it. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a rainbow and apparently it’s a double rainbow. I can’t see it, but still it’s very pretty. I wanted to take more pictures, but my dog wanted to keep going. He was probably very confused as to why I we were stopping. That’s the good thing about the massive rain we’ve been having.
Old game graphics
You know something my brother probably wasn’t complaining about when we were kids? Being able to play both his and my Pokémon games. When we were younger we were only allowed to play our games when we went to dog-shows, but back then games were really hard to see. We didn’t even have colour let alone good graphics. So it was really hard for me to read what was going on in the game so it usually involved me having to ask my brother to beat the games for me. I suppose maybe he was complaining about the more “girly” games I had, but certainly not the ones like Pokémon that we both liked. Then again, who in my generation didn’t like Pokémon as a kid? That’s a whole other story right there, ahh the joys of Poke-mania. These days games are a lot easier for me t play, but looking back at the old graphics and systems reminds me of how horrible I was and how I had to run to my brother to beat the game.
The problem with ID pictures
You know, one thing that always confused me as a child was how people could tell what people looked like on ID cards. I understood that the picture was supposed to show the person, but since I couldn’t really see details on people’s faces I struggled to understand how they could tell if the person changed the colour of their hair or cut their hair or something of the sort. Now I understand it, but back then I just couldn’t figure out how it could possibly make sense. Good thing I never had to recognize someone by their picture.
Horse Riding
While I was at a family friend’s house having dinner the topic of horse riding came up, and it just made me miss the days I would ride horses in high school. It was a lot of fun even though I had a lot of strange things happen. When I have more money and time I’ll have to pick up horse riding again.
One time when I was trying to trot my instructor tried to show me what I was doing wrong, the only problem was that since she was in the middle of the ring I had to remind her that I couldn’t see what she was doing. I just did so well for myself that she forgot about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to see it, woops.
I also had times where the horse I as riding decided to be a bit crazy. Now this horse was very slow and lazy. Usually you would have to push her to get her going because she didn’t want to go, but maybe because it was a show (since the place I rode at put on their own little horse shows) she was feeling the excitement so she decided that not only would she make it easy to get going, but she would also go beyond what she had to do. My first experience with cantering and jumping, and it was unexpected.
Nope, that is defiantly a postbox
I’m not sure why I thought of this since I’ve been inside for the last two weeks because of getting surgery on my foot to get rid of a cist. Either way sometimes when I take my dog for walks I tend to daydream about various things like my stories. The problem is that sometimes it’s a bit hard to see what’s around me. Of course my dog is great at seeing things like that, but still. So somehow when I walk sometimes I see mailboxes, but I don’t actually see them as mailboxes. If I’m too far away from mailboxes I see them as people. Not sure how that happens, but yes, I’ve mistaken mailboxes for people before, at least I didn’t try to say hello because that would have looked really strange.
The (not so) fun subtitles
I’m sorry I haven’t written anything for a while we’ve been having some serious internet issues lately, but it’s all fixed now so I should be back to posting regularly.
Speaking of the internet there is something that bothers me that I’ve heard on the internet sometimes. there are some shows I like that originally are from other languages. Some people believe that the originals are better and seem to feel that people who don’t watch it in the original are somehow not as cool. I have nothing against peole who want to watch the original with subtitles all power to you, but can you imagine someone like me trying to read subtitles? I can because I’ve tried it before because apparently I just couldn’t wait. Well I learned the joy of having to stare at the bottom half of the screen so I have no idea what was going on in the scene, and on top of that have to pause every ten seconds in order to even know what’s going on. Then again, maybe I’m not cool in general, but that’s not the point. I just think it’s silly for certain people to try and read subtitles when there is a perfectly good dub that I can easily understand and can actually (somewhat) see what’s going on.
Though in all seriousness it has limited me a well. Like when I’m in a foreign language course and they want you to watch a movie in a different language, it does make it a bit tough. There was one class I was interested in in university that I had to drop simply because the movies we watched we’d have to watch them with subtitles, and that was just not going to work out. It’s a shame that class sounded interesting, oh well.
Kindle can read books! Yay!
One thing I’ve found out recently is that Kindle actually does have the ability to read books to you. While looking for books for my next year of college my mom and I were trying to figure out the best way for me to maximize my efficiency when it came to reading books. As a combined English and Creative Writing major writing and reading are a big part of the deal. Of course with a lot of reading there raises a dilemma, reading books takes way too long and sometimes I have no idea even what I’m reading. Listening to books is a lot of fun, but sometimes it’s hard to get direct quotes for essays. There were a few ways we tried to get by this, and they were met with moderate degrees of success. So we thought about a kindle because you can see the text as you’re reading it. The thing is we didn’t know if they had an audio function. So a bit of searching around revealed that in most cases the answer would be “no”, but some more searching came up with a bundle specially made for visually impaired and blind people that allows you to listen to the books. Which is great! So now I can listen and look at my book at the same time! Yay!