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Description
I.

Omar always wore black sunglasses.  They contrasted and complemented the rest of his outfit with a casual elegance; dark obsidian tone blending with skin and hair, his tattered white shirt and pants, unwashed and worn for God knows how long, matched the glare reflecting off the clean, opaque lenses.  I made the mistake of inquiring about his glasses one gloomy, cloudy day on which I foolishly thought the curious spectacles were unnecessary.  He replied raptly and promptly to my query: Don't fuck around with the glasses.

I never would forget the serious, matter-of-fact nature with which he delivered the blunt order, the sense that I should have found the answer stupidly obvious.  But the glasses unnerved me.  I never, not even once, had the opportunity to look into his eyes, to try and gain some shrewd understanding of his undying complexities though a penetrating gaze.  Cast always in perfect, unbroken shadow, his sight must have been starved for every glimmer that they could capture.  It seemed that Omar was never one to put much importance into the realm of vision--leaving the rest of us foolish mortals, slaves to optics, seeking to make sense of our lives through the futile interpretation of fickle beams of light refracted by organic lenses.

II.

Every day, I understand more of Omar's mystic wisdom.  Those begging bums that you see on street corners, pitifully peddling for worthless pennies of passers-by--fools, the whole lot.  They want to live, to make a living, and yet they incessantly insist on throwing away their lives, their dignity, their fully deserved pride... all to make their lives impact others'.  It's not about making ends meet, Omar had told me.  No, that's just the surface, the appearance of a much more subtle and sinister addiction.  What they want, what all people secretly crave, is legacy.  They try to leave their legacies of sadness, to impress the misery of their pitiful existences onto others, as if by sharing their pain it becomes diluted, less potent, less harmful to them.  Misery is like a contagion, or so they hope: expose others to your miserable life, and your life becomes a permanent and inextricable part of the unwitting observer.  And people just love spreading the disease, can't get enough of it.  Look around for yourself!  Where are the news stories about happiness, good in the world?  Conspicuously absent.  Maybe it's not that the good in the world is erased by the horror, I thought.  Maybe it just lays dormant, waiting underneath the poison for a time to blossom.

III.

I live on the streets, in the noble fashion that Omar has always apparently followed.  My home was sacred once--a heavenly run-down shack of an apartment.  I felt secure when trapped inside the corporeal cage of its walls and ceiling.  Nothing could harm me though the flimsy drywall; nobody could face me without my consent through the door with its lock broken for years before I moved there.  I relied on others with an unstable stance of my own--my girlfriend came often to comfort me with the sinful bonds of hugs and unforgivable lust; my mother called every weekend to make sure I hadn't gotten too drunk the night before, as if the ring of the telephone could sober me up in the worst of times; my landlady extracted the rent with a disgusting friendliness that I know could have been nothing but the blatant desire to extract it instead from within my pants.  People disgust me- they make me sick.  Only Omar can see; my sensei, the man who has gradually but surely erased my foolish misconceptions and taught me how to truly live with myself, by myself, independent of anyone's harsh, manipulating grasp.

IV.

I can't see a goddamn thing, I told him.
He laughed at me, with that condescending chuckle that I have known for what seems like my entire life means that he understood some fundamental concept that I had just proven my ignorance of.  The one that plainly said to me, You are a goddamn idiot--and indeed, he followed up with some words to that effect.  The things you can't see must not be very important, provided you aren't trying to see nothing.  If it cannot make itself known to you by other means, then it hardly exists.
But my hands!  My hands!  I can't see even a finger!
Do you have fingers?
I-- about to respond with the obvious affirmative, I thought for a moment about his question and remembered that he only spoke the necessary truth.  Not a syllable wasted.  I said, more slowly than I had previously intended to:  Yes.  I do.
How do you know?
Considering once more for a moment.  I--I can feel them.  I rub them together; I touch one tip to another and feel the warm sensation of contact.  They make noise when I snap, an unmistakable popping sound that could scarcely be otherwise synthesized.  Putting them to my tongue, they taste grimy with the dirt of weeks living unwashed in the streets.  I did not see him smile.  He let out a small breath of content, which rapidly blossomed into a sharp cough of disdain at my additional words: When I touch others, they can feel it.
And what the Devil can you conjecture about others?  He spat as he shouted, cold droplets splattering across my face and arms, as unpleasant as the contortions of his own face that I could not see.  I didn't need to see.  I hastily made my apology for the outright rejection of every truth he had meticulously taught me.
This world, he told me as he calmed down, is what you feel.  I mouthed along with his words; although forgotten for the brief moments prior, I knew them by heart and guessed that he could not tell I was doing so--therefore, by his wisdom, meaning that I had not done so by the laws I was, to him, apparently not reciting:
The world is what you feel.  There is nothing outside of what you can perceive.  If something does not affect you, then it is not a part of you.  All that exists is perception and cause; effect is left to you alone.
So--wrapping up the mantra, he brought the topic back to me--what do you see?
Suddenly, I grinned.  Starting to gain a feeble understanding: I can't see a goddamn thing.  And that's okay.  The ground remains underneath my feet, the air enveloping me, the world in disjoined pieces that float to me in sound and smell and taste and sensation.  My perceptions are unlimited with respect to the turn of my head.  I see in places I would never see without these obsidian shades.  I felt Omar share my grin.  Good, he mouthed, and I saw, and it was.

V.

tripping down light fantastic gymnastic elastic spring in my step spring in the air I can smell the freedom taste the rainbow feel the passion fashion statement of intent content with what I have and what I don't is unnecessary I have the whole world in my mind find that place face I've seen it before can't see felt it before soaring towards a brighter light lighter night fighter in the street it's mine he raises a fist to the other it's mine too sound of bone crunching stench of blood spilling tastes salty from over here on the next street over there's a woman with a broom zoom tomb womb life cycling like the bike with the bell in the avenue here's a new sight blue I've never heard what blue sounded like it's a peaceful tone a chord of beauty cord of life cut with a knife that's orange or red the color of dead is black and I can feel that too the heavy air and tolling of a dies irae on the church bells knell selling wares over here in the marketplace there's a face I know quite well it's master he's off wandering as usual stumbling perceptions dull and another face I know this one too it's mine it's the face of an old acquaintance I used to sleep with in the secure comfort of a shack with paper walls and no door I wonder if she recognizes me I taste the curiosity the doubt the unusual pangs of regret and hear the tremulous voice rising above the background noise shouting a name I used to know I think it was mine I don't use it anymore though it is now mine like hers I don't need a name I am all existence I create by perceiving nothing can exist outside of my own head everything you see is all my dream my imagination my fantasy my reality my beauty my work of perfectionist art feel of paint dripping between my fingers it is cool and slippery like an eel or maybe an amoeba if I was very small or rather if my fingers were very small for I cannot be such for I am all and all is big very big indeed while nothing can exist without me I must be able to perceive big things if the world is to be big and I am to be big and I am to be unable to feel amoebas like the beautiful portrait that I paint with my ears I am the greatest artist that was is and can ever be I am the peak of pure perfection---

VII.

I walk over to me, crying out for me to stop what I'm doing, to repent.  I don't turn, ask why I should stop.  I'm only eliminating the parts of myself that I do not need, the parts that bring me down.
You fool, I say.  There is a difference between self-reliance and... and... self-mutilation!  I taught you to rely on other things than sight, not destroy it outright.  I taught you possibility.
I hold the knife steady, already sounding red with pain and salt.  I feel nothing, I say.  I am becoming more perfect.
I sense myself standing still with shock for a moment, saying: You... you fool.  What beholder's eye are you becoming perfect in?  Certainly- not your own... you cannot behold yourself... not now...
I tell me what I have told myself since I first met me:  Life is what I feel.  There is nothing outside of what I can perceive.  If it does not affect me, then it is not.  All that exists is perception and cause; effect is left to me alone.
What perversion is this!  I can scarcely believe my ears.
My ears, I correct me.  You are what I perceive.  You are an element of my world, an element of myself.
But--but--what does that have to do with...
The knife?  I laugh.  I am becoming more perfect.
The knife sounds redder, the tip slightly dulling with contact.  The obsidian glasses fall off, and blissful nothingness rushes into the place of the artificial crutch.
There.
I am all; everything I had struggled to sense connects the moment that the knife severs the final connection between me and my tether to vision.  I am the streets--I own the streets.  Stepping over Omar, fainted from sheer horror at my perfection, I stroll lazily as paths create themselves in my presence and fold in my wake.

Description
I.

Omar always wore black sunglasses.  They contrasted and complemented the rest of his outfit with a casual elegance; dark obsidian tone blending with skin and hair, his tattered white shirt and pants, unwashed and worn for God knows how long, matched the glare reflecting off the clean, opaque lenses.  I made the mistake of inquiring about his glasses one gloomy, cloudy day on which I foolishly thought the curious spectacles were unnecessary.  He replied raptly and promptly to my query: Don't fuck around with the glasses.

I never would forget the serious, matter-of-fact nature with which he delivered the blunt order, the sense that I should have found the answer stupidly obvious.  But the glasses unnerved me.  I never, not even once, had the opportunity to look into his eyes, to try and gain some shrewd understanding of his undying complexities though a penetrating gaze.  Cast always in perfect, unbroken shadow, his sight must have been starved for every glimmer that they could capture.  It seemed that Omar was never one to put much importance into the realm of vision--leaving the rest of us foolish mortals, slaves to optics, seeking to make sense of our lives through the futile interpretation of fickle beams of light refracted by organic lenses.

II.

Every day, I understand more of Omar's mystic wisdom.  Those begging bums that you see on street corners, pitifully peddling for worthless pennies of passers-by--fools, the whole lot.  They want to live, to make a living, and yet they incessantly insist on throwing away their lives, their dignity, their fully deserved pride... all to make their lives impact others'.  It's not about making ends meet, Omar had told me.  No, that's just the surface, the appearance of a much more subtle and sinister addiction.  What they want, what all people secretly crave, is legacy.  They try to leave their legacies of sadness, to impress the misery of their pitiful existences onto others, as if by sharing their pain it becomes diluted, less potent, less harmful to them.  Misery is like a contagion, or so they hope: expose others to your miserable life, and your life becomes a permanent and inextricable part of the unwitting observer.  And people just love spreading the disease, can't get enough of it.  Look around for yourself!  Where are the news stories about happiness, good in the world?  Conspicuously absent.  Maybe it's not that the good in the world is erased by the horror, I thought.  Maybe it just lays dormant, waiting underneath the poison for a time to blossom.

III.

I live on the streets, in the noble fashion that Omar has always apparently followed.  My home was sacred once--a heavenly run-down shack of an apartment.  I felt secure when trapped inside the corporeal cage of its walls and ceiling.  Nothing could harm me though the flimsy drywall; nobody could face me without my consent through the door with its lock broken for years before I moved there.  I relied on others with an unstable stance of my own--my girlfriend came often to comfort me with the sinful bonds of hugs and unforgivable lust; my mother called every weekend to make sure I hadn't gotten too drunk the night before, as if the ring of the telephone could sober me up in the worst of times; my landlady extracted the rent with a disgusting friendliness that I know could have been nothing but the blatant desire to extract it instead from within my pants.  People disgust me- they make me sick.  Only Omar can see; my sensei, the man who has gradually but surely erased my foolish misconceptions and taught me how to truly live with myself, by myself, independent of anyone's harsh, manipulating grasp.

IV.

I can't see a goddamn thing, I told him.
He laughed at me, with that condescending chuckle that I have known for what seems like my entire life means that he understood some fundamental concept that I had just proven my ignorance of.  The one that plainly said to me, You are a goddamn idiot--and indeed, he followed up with some words to that effect.  The things you can't see must not be very important, provided you aren't trying to see nothing.  If it cannot make itself known to you by other means, then it hardly exists.
But my hands!  My hands!  I can't see even a finger!
Do you have fingers?
I-- about to respond with the obvious affirmative, I thought for a moment about his question and remembered that he only spoke the necessary truth.  Not a syllable wasted.  I said, more slowly than I had previously intended to:  Yes.  I do.
How do you know?
Considering once more for a moment.  I--I can feel them.  I rub them together; I touch one tip to another and feel the warm sensation of contact.  They make noise when I snap, an unmistakable popping sound that could scarcely be otherwise synthesized.  Putting them to my tongue, they taste grimy with the dirt of weeks living unwashed in the streets.  I did not see him smile.  He let out a small breath of content, which rapidly blossomed into a sharp cough of disdain at my additional words: When I touch others, they can feel it.
And what the Devil can you conjecture about others?  He spat as he shouted, cold droplets splattering across my face and arms, as unpleasant as the contortions of his own face that I could not see.  I didn't need to see.  I hastily made my apology for the outright rejection of every truth he had meticulously taught me.
This world, he told me as he calmed down, is what you feel.  I mouthed along with his words; although forgotten for the brief moments prior, I knew them by heart and guessed that he could not tell I was doing so--therefore, by his wisdom, meaning that I had not done so by the laws I was, to him, apparently not reciting:
The world is what you feel.  There is nothing outside of what you can perceive.  If something does not affect you, then it is not a part of you.  All that exists is perception and cause; effect is left to you alone.
So--wrapping up the mantra, he brought the topic back to me--what do you see?
Suddenly, I grinned.  Starting to gain a feeble understanding: I can't see a goddamn thing.  And that's okay.  The ground remains underneath my feet, the air enveloping me, the world in disjoined pieces that float to me in sound and smell and taste and sensation.  My perceptions are unlimited with respect to the turn of my head.  I see in places I would never see without these obsidian shades.  I felt Omar share my grin.  Good, he mouthed, and I saw, and it was.

V.

tripping down light fantastic gymnastic elastic spring in my step spring in the air I can smell the freedom taste the rainbow feel the passion fashion statement of intent content with what I have and what I don't is unnecessary I have the whole world in my mind find that place face I've seen it before can't see felt it before soaring towards a brighter light lighter night fighter in the street it's mine he raises a fist to the other it's mine too sound of bone crunching stench of blood spilling tastes salty from over here on the next street over there's a woman with a broom zoom tomb womb life cycling like the bike with the bell in the avenue here's a new sight blue I've never heard what blue sounded like it's a peaceful tone a chord of beauty cord of life cut with a knife that's orange or red the color of dead is black and I can feel that too the heavy air and tolling of a dies irae on the church bells knell selling wares over here in the marketplace there's a face I know quite well it's master he's off wandering as usual stumbling perceptions dull and another face I know this one too it's mine it's the face of an old acquaintance I used to sleep with in the secure comfort of a shack with paper walls and no door I wonder if she recognizes me I taste the curiosity the doubt the unusual pangs of regret and hear the tremulous voice rising above the background noise shouting a name I used to know I think it was mine I don't use it anymore though it is now mine like hers I don't need a name I am all existence I create by perceiving nothing can exist outside of my own head everything you see is all my dream my imagination my fantasy my reality my beauty my work of perfectionist art feel of paint dripping between my fingers it is cool and slippery like an eel or maybe an amoeba if I was very small or rather if my fingers were very small for I cannot be such for I am all and all is big very big indeed while nothing can exist without me I must be able to perceive big things if the world is to be big and I am to be big and I am to be unable to feel amoebas like the beautiful portrait that I paint with my ears I am the greatest artist that was is and can ever be I am the peak of pure perfection---

VII.

I walk over to me, crying out for me to stop what I'm doing, to repent.  I don't turn, ask why I should stop.  I'm only eliminating the parts of myself that I do not need, the parts that bring me down.
You fool, I say.  There is a difference between self-reliance and... and... self-mutilation!  I taught you to rely on other things than sight, not destroy it outright.  I taught you possibility.
I hold the knife steady, already sounding red with pain and salt.  I feel nothing, I say.  I am becoming more perfect.
I sense myself standing still with shock for a moment, saying: You... you fool.  What beholder's eye are you becoming perfect in?  Certainly- not your own... you cannot behold yourself... not now...
I tell me what I have told myself since I first met me:  Life is what I feel.  There is nothing outside of what I can perceive.  If it does not affect me, then it is not.  All that exists is perception and cause; effect is left to me alone.
What perversion is this!  I can scarcely believe my ears.
My ears, I correct me.  You are what I perceive.  You are an element of my world, an element of myself.
But--but--what does that have to do with...
The knife?  I laugh.  I am becoming more perfect.
The knife sounds redder, the tip slightly dulling with contact.  The obsidian glasses fall off, and blissful nothingness rushes into the place of the artificial crutch.
There.
I am all; everything I had struggled to sense connects the moment that the knife severs the final connection between me and my tether to vision.  I am the streets--I own the streets.  Stepping over Omar, fainted from sheer horror at my perfection, I stroll lazily as paths create themselves in my presence and fold in my wake.