Paul Hostovsky

Dot Dot Dot

The way his hands danced across the braille page, it was a beautiful choreography to behold. His left hand beginning each line, handing it off to his right hand halfway across the page, the right hand finishing the line as the left moved down to begin reading the next line. Left hand to right hand to left hand to right hand. Expert, fleet, like a concert pianist, or like relay runners in a race, the handoff accomplished seamlessly over and over, line by line down the page, page by page through the book, book by book through a lifetime of reading.

My roommate Gilbert was blind. “RLP,” he said. “Can you say ‘Retrolental fibroplaisia?; No? RLP will do then.” He was a preemie. Back when they put preemies in oxygen tanks and sometimes left them in there too long. He went blind as an infant, before he could even lift his head.  I met him at the National Braille Press, where he was a proofreader and I was what they called a transcriber, though really I was just a glorified input typist. I didn’t know braille yet back then. I would type into the computer the text of whatever magazine or book the Braille Press was publishing at the time, then hit the button that initiated the transcription software that converted it all into braille. That was the beginning of the process that also involved proofreading the initial galleys for errors (Gilbert’s department), then programming a machine that embossed the braille onto zinc plates that they’d run through the enormous Heidelberg presses which in turn embossed the braille onto braille paper in the basement of the building at 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston. The collating department, also in the basement, would then collate by hand all  the pages into braille books and magazines.

Gilbert and I moved in together shortly before I left the Braille Press (I was only there for a year), but we remained roommates for five years. It was during this time that I learned braille. Actually, I learned it visually first, because the dots cast these tiny shadows that make it possible to see them in the light. (Think of a country of igloos as seen from an airplane on a sunny morning in the Arctic.) It took me about a year to master the hundreds of configurations of dots that make up the letters, punctuation, composition signs and contractions of braille. It was like learning a new language, and I knew it would be helpful for leaving notes to Gil, making shopping lists, and writing down phone messages for each other (this was before cell phones). And then, after a year or so of reading braille visually, and writing it, and especially watching Gilbert read it with such speed and virtuosity, I began trying to read it tactilely myself. As though of their own volition my fingers started gravitating toward those dots, trying them, plying them, and eventually, after months and years of practice, I was able to read it, slowly, with my right index finger. Nothing like Gilbert, though, who grew up with braille and read it with two hands, as fast as any sighted reader can read  print. I can only read it with the tip of my right index finger. And I’m quite slow. Compared to Gilbert, I’m as plodding as a tortoise. I’m only a little better than that sighted first- or second-grader whom the teacher has asked to read aloud from a print book in class, and who does so haltingly, occasionally stumbling over words, having to sound them out when getting stuck. But still, I can do it! I can read braille with my finger. Just like a blind person. And I’ve been reading it with pleasure--physical pleasure--ever since.

Reading with my fingers--reading digitally, if you will-- slows me down, in a good way. It’s a good thing. As a writer, and a reader, it’s one of the ways I maintain contemplation, focus, and sanity in this digital age we all live in. On the subway, for instance, while most if not all of my fellow passengers are hopelessly--blindly--hooked up to their smartphones and tablets, I sit there with 40 bound pages of embossed braille in my lap, serenely reading the latest issue of Syndicated Columnists Weekly with my finger, blithely scanning the poor, benighted, plugged-in ridership with my eyes wide open.

I like the idea of touching the words. I know that’s just a romantic notion--I mean, braille readers aren’t more “in touch” with the words than print readers are--but I like it nonetheless. Though it took me some time to develop the sensitivity required to read with my fingers, I don’t think braille has made me a more sensitive reader per se. But it has made me a more versatile one: I can read with my eyes closed; I can read with the book closed (my hand tucked inside it, reading); I can read in the dark when my wife wants to go to sleep and has turned off the light; I can read in the dentist’s chair while he’s drilling away; I can read while walking; I can read while driving--left hand on the wheel, right hand on the dots, eyes on the road--eyes on the road!

I used to worry that people who saw me reading braille in public--on the subway, say, or in a Starbucks--would think I was blind or pretending to be blind. A sighted person reading braille, after all, is a rare sight, wouldn’t you say? So for a long time I was in the closet about my braille reading. I only read at home, or in my car. Or, if I ventured out in public with my braille, I would read it furtively, sort of cloak-and-dagger, braille-in-coat-pocket, keeping it hidden under my jacket or inside my knapsack, fingering the dots clandestinely, feeling somehow vaguely illicit about the whole thing. At the Starbucks, for example, I would build a little fort on the table around my braille magazine--backpack, cup of coffee, folded sweater, water bottle--ramparts surrounding the treasure of the dots, hiding the braille so that no one would see me reading it and mistake me for a blind person, or a blind impostor, or a blind wannabe.

I am not a blind wannabe. But I do love braille. I love the physicality of it. There’s something deeply satisfying about using your sense of touch to access language, knowledge, the world. And I love the irony of choosing it--preferring it--over the digital technology that is everywhere around us shouting its claims of “the world at your fingertips.” Of course, there are braille computers and braille technology too--so-called refreshable braille or paperless braille. But I prefer the paper myself. I’ve always preferred the paper. And while, admittedly, I am writing this little essay on my laptop, I do still have a manual Royal typewriter at the ready, with a fresh ribbon, for the times when we lose power (which has happened three times already this winter).

Braille is a beautiful thing--a beautiful dying thing. Fewer than ten percent of blind people actually know braille. Yes, it’s still taught to totally blind children, but any child who has some usable vision or “low vision” will often be steered instead toward large print and audio books. And if that child later loses their residual vision, all they have left is audio, which is especially unfortunate because being read to is not the same thing as reading. The latter is active while the former is passive and fraught with problems. For example, there are many things you have no access to when you are being read to. You can’t see how words are spelled, or where a paragraph begins or ends, or what sort of punctuation is being used (semicolon or period? Em dash or comma?). The use of italics, parentheses, ellipses, etc. is all invisible, inaccessible, if you’re being read to. But if you’re actively reading (print or braille), then you notice these things, you see them and you learn them and you grow fluent in them. With braille, you can linger over a passage, savor it, reread it comfortably and easily. Not so with audio. It’s possible for a blind person to be an audio reader all her life and remain functionally illiterate. And most blind people who have lost their vision in adulthood do tend to opt for audio rather than braille. Because learning braille is difficult. And the older you get the more difficult it is, just like with any language. Braille isn’t a language--it’s a code--but it can accommodate any written language on the planet. When I first learned it, I was in my early twenties and I had none of the attendant grief and/or denial that a person who is losing their vision will likely experience. For me, it was just a hobby, something to do, a game, a curriculum of puzzles. More than anything it was fun! It was all about words. And I have always loved words.

In braille, there are some 200 contractions--or shortcuts--which means most words aren’t actually spelled out letter by letter, but, rather, contain these contractions that are symbols for clusters of letters or smaller words within words. As an example, the word “distinguished” contains 4 contractions (dis, ing, sh, ed). The contractions for the words and, the, for, of, and with can occur alone and also within words, such as the and in Andrew, the the in Catherine, the of in roof, the for in fork, and so on. In addition, almost every letter in the alphabet, when standing alone, stands for a whole word. B is but, C is can, D is do, E is every, F is from, etc. F with a dot five in front of it is father. M with a dot five is mother. M all by itself is more. There are also certain lower-cell contractions (to, into, by) that attach to the subsequent word or character without a space in between, though this does not occur in print. Many things in nature attach to the subsequent character. Barnacles. Burrs. Baby sloths. And so do certain lower-cell braille contractions. Braille, you see, like poetry, is all about compression, and there is a kind of poetry of braille that only a braille reader can appreciate. All those words within words. And the tactile delight of a string of words that all employ the same kind of braille contraction. In this sentence, for example, “You can do as you like but it’s just that people like us will not go,” all of the words are whole-word contractions, meaning each word is reduced to a single letter, usually but not always the initial letter. So in braille, that sentence would look like this:  “Y  c  d  z  y  l  b  x’s  j  t  p  l  u  w  n  g.”  It’s the ultimate compression, distilling language down to the first letter of each word in the sentence!

I remember my roommate Gilbert telling me that the word ice in braille always reminded him of a little hill--the upward-climbing i, the crest of the c, the downward-sloping e.  I never forgot that, and I think of it whenever I come across the word ice in my braille reading. And my DeafBlind friend, the poet John Lee Clark, has written that Andy in braille is a square; Sandy is a square with a ponytail. (The AND contraction looks like a left bracket, and is the mirror image of the braille letter Y, a right bracket. So together, they look like a square. And the S in front looks like a ponytail.).

And then there’s this: I often see braille where no braille is intended. I see it everywhere out in the world--it’s a little like hearing voices--in anything that is dotted, spotted, freckled, dappled or stippled; letters and even words call out to me from the patterns of bolts on machinery, bolts on the girders of buildings and bridges, polka dots on men’s ties and women’s dresses, the arrangement of eggs left in the egg carton, the configurations of lighted windows in a house or a building, a splash of freckles on a forearm or decolletage. It’s the weirdest thing, but I see it; I see the dots everywhere and I can’t help connecting them.

So yeah, it’s a little weird, being an avid braille reader who is sighted. But I love it! I love how it slows me down, which is a good thing, even though I wish I could read braille faster. But wanting to read faster runs counter to that desire for slowing down, for going slow, for being more present, for being, literally, more in touch with the world. It’s my therapy, reading tactilely. It feels good to do it. I think braille should be taught to sighted people, the way sign language is taught to hearing people, as an elective, or to fulfill the foreign language requirement. Why not? Sign language is “in,” it’s extremely popular. By some accounts, there are more hearing people than Deaf people who know sign language. Braille isn’t “in,” not the way sign language is, but it’s just as fascinating and beautiful and amazing, and whenever sighted people see it they always exclaim how cool it looks and how on earth can you read this? And who knows, when you develop the sensitivity in your fingers—like I did— to be able to read tactilely, perhaps you also develop a greater sensitivity—by association, by osmosis, or by pure metaphor—in your heart. I kind of like to think so.

Paul Hostovsky has won a Pushcart Prize and two Best of the Net Awards. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and braille instructor. Website: paulhostovsky.com