Love is blind – blinding love and loving blindly

Note – this is a true story, a short one, verbatim as it happened. Yet the central character of this story, if she is still alive, will never read it. Do tell her of it and that I remember her, if you chance upon her someday. Therefore I retain her real description; I will never look for her but you may. Here is the story:

I was walking along the sunset kissed windswept boulevard of Punta Arenas balancing my camera trying to find a spot close to the sea where a magnificent sun in all its radiance was slowly inching towards the blue horizon of Magellan Strait. Finis Terra as it is often called, or end of the known world, Punta Arenas is the southernmost point of Chile after which only the ocean remains before striking the frozen Antarctica shores. I had been in this tiny picturesque town many times before and hence. On that day I was chasing the sun for a shot when I walked past a girl sitting on the grass, apparently gazing rapturously at the same sun that I wished to capture in my camera.

She was all alone upon the grass, languid and alluring like a siren, her brazen hair galloping into the breeze. The orange glow accentuated her rosy cheeks and her face, eyes covered with big sunglasses, sparkled with the joy of life. She was stunning and I couldn’t just pass her by. I stopped and walked up to her. I stood behind her and coughed, ‘do you mind if I join you and watch the setting sun?’ I asked hoping she would reply in English. She did, ‘sure.’

I sat beside her sinking into the soft grass and even from a non-intrusive distance smelled her fragrance. Rarely had I seen such a joyful countenance. She was beautiful because she was radiant. We sat in silence for a while; she never turned to look at me continuing to gaze at the sea and the sun. ‘What are you looking at?’ I broke the silence.

‘Possibilities...’

‘Of what?’ I asked

‘Life; what could be and what is, what should be, what isn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t...’ she replied pensively. Her lilting voice had a smooth cadence.

Her replies were mysterious and piqued my curiosity further. Mysticism attracts me.

‘Life is simple, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘What is, is, what isn’t, isn’t!’

‘You see the setting sun and the sea it sets into, don’t you?’ she asked.

‘Yes that’s what I see and that’s what it is.’

‘I don’t see the setting sun neither the sea it sets into,’ she said, ‘I feel its warmth during the day and now its coolness as it sets, I smell the sea and the breeze and hear the waves crashing on its shore, I can feel the restlessness of time, of the sun to set here but to rise at another place simultaneously. I see possibilities while you see events because you see while I don’t; I feel...’

Only then did I notice a white stick lying next to her lap on the grass.

At that instance I fell in love with the blind girl blindly. I loved her blindly since it was blinding love. There was no reason, no ifs or buts, no conditions, no forethought neither afterthought. I did not see, I felt, I shut my eyes and saw the possibilities.

I did not return to my lodge that evening and I did not leave the side of this girl for the next three days that I was in Punta Arenas. Every waking hour and sleeping minutes I stayed with her as she stayed with me. We talked endless, walked aimless, laughed without reason and loved as if it was our last moment of life. We made no promises, we offered no explanations, we didn’t see. We only felt and saw the endless possibilities of life. We lived as well as died every moment to be reborn in the next. When we parted as we knew we would, we kissed for one last time and said to each other, ‘we tried all possibilities that life has to offer.’

She came to see me off at the airport along with her mother. She hugged me so tight that I couldn’t breathe. She brought her lips upon my ears and whispered, ‘Love is blind, I always knew, thanks to you I now know that it is true. Go my darling where you must and now I don’t really need to see for I feel the possibilities. I will always be blind in love for you.’