From The Beauty Myth
By Stephen Kuusisto

Because I am blind and cannot see faces , I must imagine them. I am helped in this daily round by the fact that I can see colors. Many blind people can see something of the world; my own small portion is essentially a kind of abstract expressionism: I live inside a Jackson Pollock painting, and I live there while walking the ordinary streets. This brand of walking and seeing is both maddening and lovely. I see faces like the shining leaves of jade trees -- wind-tossed and set against black boughs -- and I wonder what you look like. "You" are all friends and strangers alike. Occasionally, I allow myself to imagine that I see the inestimable and charged faces that we all suspect lie just below the surface. But in any event, I know you differently than do your hand mirrors or photographs. One thing I won't know is whether you are, in the ocular sense of the word, beautiful.