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Hamilton Adair, Virginia - Oliver Sacks - Describes the visions of blindness
Identifier
001351
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
More information about Virginia herself as well as her poetry can be found using this LINK
A description of the experience
Oliver Sacks – Hallucinations
I am maneuvered into a delightfully soft chair. I sink, submerged as usual in shades of night . . . the sea of clouds at my feet clears, revealing a field of grain, and standing about it a small flock of fowl, not two alike, in somber plumage: a miniature peacock, very slender, with its little crest and unfurled tail feathers, some plumper specimens, and a shore bird on long stems, etc
Now it appears that several are wearing shoes, and among them a bird with four feet. One expects more color among a flock of birds, even in the hallucinations of the blind. . .
The birds have turned into little men and women in medieval attire, all strolling away from me. I see only their backs, short tunics, tights or leggings, shawls or kerchiefs. . . .
Opening my eyes on the smoke screen of my room I am treated to stabs of sapphire, bags of rubies scattering across the night, a legless vaquero in a checked shirt stuck on the back of a small steer, bucking, the orange velvet head of a bear decapitated/ poor thing, by the guard of the Yellowstone Hotel garbage pit.
The familiar milkman invaded the scene in his azure cart with the golden horse; he joined us a few days ago out of some forgotten book of nursery rhymes or the back of a Depression cereal box.
But the magic lantern show of colored oddities has faded and I am back in black-wall country without form or substance…. Where I landed as the lights went out.