Dreams That Come True, as published in Personality, (December, 1927)
Transcription
"The Dreams That Come True"
--When One who Can neither See nor Hear Finds Joy in a Flower Garden
by Helen Keller
II
"Where the soul need not repress
Its music, Lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind."
This is a drowsy day when the summer breeze comes languidly to my cheek, tempting me to go out to my little screened tent, stretch out and dream with the irises and bee-haunted pinks.
There is the hour when the morning sun kisses me awake, and the hour when the burden of material things drops from my shoulder, and I drift to Slumberland. There are hours of breathless haste to catch up with the letters that cover my desk, hours of glad expectancy when a beautiful dream seems about to come true, hours fragrant with tender memories; and always there are the endlessly varied hours I spend with the thinkers and poets and philosophers of all times! How can there be a dull moment when my books are all about me!
I live in a thought-filled world. Those who have all their faculties have no idea what wonderful gardens lie hidden behind the dark silent walls. The very silence vibrates to my every mood and to every consciousness I have of other's existence!
Because silence is such a sublime kind of poetry, it puts soul and meaning into all the vibrations which find their way to me through the channels of touch. There are footsteps of those I love in the house passing and repassing, there is the sudden bark of my beautiful long-eared Great Dane. Every now and then huge trucks filled with material for the new boulevard that is being built not far from this street rumble by, shaking the house and sending little showers of dust down upon the furniture, and instantly I feel astir with the fierce, splendid, never-resting activity of New York. Some time ago I had a breathless moment when twenty aeroplanes rushed by on their way to the Lindbergh parade, and several of them came so near the house I distinctly perceived the roar of the motor through the walls of my study. What a crowd of admiring, far-gazing thoughts that vibration started on the wing. As the birds follow summer, so my mind again followed in the vision the dauntless youth who had crossed the Atlantic alone. Out there, on trackless levels of the night, I again saw him. In my own soul I recreated that agony of solitude, the lurking herd of fears and doubts, the awful abysmal dark. I tried to imagine his thoughts as he drove on and on, sensing the primal mystery -- darkness as inaccessible as God's light. In the world's market, where they sell all things, he had bought a dream, and carried it on dewy wings into the shining east, his plane swaying with the winds and curving with the clouds! My spirit seemed to stand still as I imaged him losing the celestial trail and leaping into the unmeasured void, with a million white-faced deaths blowing across his path! Because I know the dark so deeply, I had peculiar sympathy with him guiding his plane that like a lamp grimly burned in ice -- now rising above the treachery of fog and sleet, now swooping seaward, hunting an unseen course as a blind man feels his way in the dark! But at last, fluttering down the golden bar of dawn, he glimpsed the dim rim of earth, and all the glory of a mighty day shone upon him! All this the Artist within brought thrillingly to my consciousness as I felt the sonorous roar of those planes speeding over Long Island to do him honor. And what other marvelous pictures he conjured up for my delight! They come fast, they come fast -- the Fliers crossing the Pacific, fliers who seek to read the baffling secrets of mist and snow and airy heights, fliers who overtake the swiftest fires and quench them, fliers who shall charm shut clouds to pour bounty upon thirsty fields, fliers who shall bear messages weaving a chain of friendship to encircle the world -- peacebringers who shall outspeed strife and hate, and dare and dare, and yet again dare until all men walk the earth unafraid, brothers one to another!
I have other sensations which bring me warm, human contacts with the outer world. The sense of smell is most precious and important in my every day world. It brings within my reach a multitude of little joys which take the place of color and light. The atmosphere is charged with countless odors, from which I learn much about places and objects. I recognize many flowers by their graceful shapes and fragrance, and it is amazing how many kinds of sweetness there are in leaves, fruits, and seeds! Even the same plant gives forth a different scent in sunshine and in rainy weather. In spring and autumn there are qualities which I can describe only approximately, as I have not found anything like a satisfactory vocabulary of smell terms -- or touch terms either. There are tender odors like the lilac. The honeysuckle seems to lavish its fragrance upon one with something like affection. The odor of the lily when once captured is a precious satisfaction, but how shy and elusive it can be even though one stands close to the flower! There are sunshine and calm for me in the smell of a new-mown hayfield, the woods and mountains are full of quiet, eternal odors that make me want to worship. There are many beautiful odors that seem to reach out to me like friendly greetings each time I pass, and this is a sweet compensation for the void I feel when I cannot see loved objects unless I stretch my hand and touch them. Smell is like a friend who gossips with me about little every day things as well as the Spirit of Beauty. It tells me when it rains, when the grass is cut, when automobiles pass in the street, what new houses are going up in this growing town -- and when it is mealtime. It is the thousand scents I perceive which differentiate one house or a street from another, and always I prefer to be as near the country as possible.
I should like the city pretty well if it were not for my exacting touch and odor perception. But the avalanche of noises and the turmoil of New York weary me, and the heavy smells of crowded shops and sultry streets and air congested with gasoline oppress me. Give me the noiseless little noises of growing things and the morning and evening odors of my tiny garden, and I am content in a world flooded with the harmony and the brilliancy of the spirit. Imagination gives eyes and ears to those who lack a sense or two, builds a satisfying whole out of the fragmentary and often unrelated details which drift into one's consciousness out of a dark silent chaos. I had an experience recently which I should like to relate because it brought out in a most happy manner the delightful sensations and the witchery of the soul which render my life as full and liveable as that of any one with all his powers intact.
I was sitting at my typewriter the other day, waiting rather impatiently for an idea which I desperately needed to finish a chapter in my autobiography, when I received an invitation from Mr. Doubleday to come and smell the roses in his garden. "Bless my soul," I said to myself, "this welcome interruption has saved my life! It has put to flight the recalcitrant thoughts that were destroying me utterly. What better thing could I do than go out there to smell roses!"
The drive to Garden City was beautiful. Long Island is always beautiful under the touch of June. The caressing air makes one realize the uselessness of toilsome effort when all out-of-doors breathes an irresistible invitation to come and be a child again, when even the most diligent finds work irksome, when every live boy dreams of playing "hookey." I thought, "Perish the task that would keep one indoors on such a day!" They are rare enough as one grows older. Running away like the boy with the circus is our only chance of being young again.
source:http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1&TopicID=193&SubTopicID=17&DocumentID=1190
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