Touching the Rock summary

For sighted people, it’s difficult even to imagine the experience of a world of complete darkness. Still, it should come as no surprise that the blind have an acute sense of hearing.

Traveling on the London Underground in 1984, John observed the ease with which he could distinguish the wheels on the rail from the engine or the brakes. He noticed how the cycle of movement and human activity repeated between stops as people entered and exited the automatic doors at each station. John also appreciated how the wind sounded different when the train was leaving the platform than it sounded when the train was approaching it.

It’s not uncommon for people to view blindness as a handicap. They might, therefore, be surprised to learn that blind people are able to travel with an exceptional degree of independence.

The blind navigate the world through the soles of their feet and the tip of their long white cane, which serves as a tool of perception rather than as a walking stick. By waving the cane from side to side, the blind gather information about their path forward.

In his early years of blindness, the author struggled to transition from sighted life. He was surprised to hear a woman being interviewed on a radio show called In Touch and disclose that she had adjusted to losing her sight in the short span of two weeks. At a conference for the blind, however, the author found out that losing one’s sight later in life increased the time it would take to adjust to living in a world of complete darkness.

During his turbulent period of transitioning to blindness, the author observed differences between the blind and the sighted that revealed a fundamental insight into the human condition. Take eating. If you’re sighted and have ever felt hunger triggered by the mere sight of food, it’s because, from childhood onward, the sighted are conditioned to associate desires with visual images. In some cases, they might feel hunger, but when they see food in front of them, hunger transforms into or blends with the desire for the specific food in sight.

Between 1983 and 1986, John underwent a period of intense dreams and nightmares. Unlike his waking life of darkness, these dreams often unfolded in vibrant colors, featuring images from his memories and often revealing his most deeply felt grief and anxieties. More often than not, his anxieties about blindness related to his role as a father and husband.

In one dream in 1984, John was making love to his wife in a pub before someone announced that the blind man’s wife and daughter had been in an accident. Outside the back door of the pub, John’s wife and first-born daughter Imogen were in a car. In the dream, he ran toward them before finding out that it had been a false alarm and that both of them were safe.

Since he lost his sight as an adult, John mostly circulated in the company of sighted people. He often felt social marginalization as a result of misconceptions about blindness or failed social interactions. In general, the most complicated challenge of blindness lay in creating and maintaining friendships.

In his early years of blindness, John found that not only did he become a burden to those with whom he engaged, but also that, when in a group, he would become stuck talking to a single conversation partner. To prevent this from happening, he developed a technique to change conversation partners and take initiatives at social gatherings. 

During his years of adjusting to blindness, John often struggled with the grief of losing his sight and experienced occasional depressive periods.

One of his worst bouts of depression occurred during a visit to Australia in summer 1984. As he had not seen most of his family since losing his sight, the trip was filled with frequent confusion as he navigated a new environment and got to know his parents as a blind person. Most painful, however, was his inability to share the experience of travel or point out places from his memories to his children.