I remember one afternoon I was in the underground station. It’s a complex topology down there with signs, bins, people, arbitrary obstacles, turnstiles… and a lot of noise.

As I habitually scan for peripheral anomalies, my glance suddenly caught a figure moving in an unusual style compared to the others. It was a young woman in her mid-20’s. Tallish. Rather thin. Sandy brown, longish hair. She was clearly blind.

She wore an expression of ecstasy on her face as she navigated expertly through the crowd and anything else in her path. She passed, finally, through a turnstile close by me with a grace and sense of physical ease that a sighted person might not have managed.

I was absolutely certain of her blindness, yet, and this without a cane, she was moving just as easily and quickly as anyone else in the vicinity. But her face. It was like very few faces I have ever seen.

It was heroically joyful. So beautiful was her expression as she gracefully and continuously accomplished the impossible that, for a moment, my heart caught in my throat and I knew that somehow my seeing was a kind of blindness…

… and her blindness… a sight beyond my seeing.