Even by our never-endingly eventful Travelife standards , it would be hard to beat this very interesting day in Israel that began with a warm swim in the salty water of the Dead Sea , and continued on to Tel Aviv for a look at an award-winning installation by an Indian artist at the Venice Biennale. You would think that would be enough for a Travelife sort of day. Travel should give you opportunities to push your own boundaries, and also opportunities to reflect and contemplate.
Tonight I had all these. Adina is a theater professional. Several years ago, she had the opportunity to conduct a workshop for the deaf and blind. This was her first contact with people with these kinds of disabilities. And from then on, she never looked back. She helped train them to perform in a show that has received rave reviews and is traveling the world over. In January , the group is headed for New York for a series of performances. Many of them started out as deaf β either they were born deaf or they became deaf early on β and then their illness caused them to eventually become blind.
I tried to imagine β and, I must admit, not without horror β the terrifying and terrible experience of being both deaf and blind, or of gradually becoming both deaf and blind. In such a situation, your mind is alive and you have so much to express, but you have almost no facility for communication. Your world is slowly and literally closing in. Many of the people who come to our center admitted to thoughts of suicide. You must remember that they are performing as regular actors but they cannot actually see or hear anything.
There are several restaurants like this around the world, but this one is special because the waiters and waitresses are all legally blind. In other hip cities like Paris or New York , there are also restaurants resembling Black Out β but the servers wear night-vision goggles or use some special technology to get their way around the dark. Here in Tel Aviv , the servers are truly in the dark whether they are in the restaurant or not.
I decided to do this, although as it was a last-minute decision and there were no other seats available, I had to go alone. As I actually have claustrophobia , this was a very big deal for me to spend over an hour in pitch darkness with complete strangers.
