Helen Keller begins her memoirs, It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil. each letter to you, a similar fear. every word inked to you gives our separation a reality it otherwise could never have had, as if whatever I write, regardless of the actual events, will become real. fear of lifting the veil but each disclosure is also a veiling. recovering covers it up again. remembering cuts it into pieces again. love letters between cleave and cleaver Nearly every impression she receives comes first through the medium of language. describing, inscribing that unwrites itself. in her letters she 'describes': The hills in Virginia were very lovely. The view was most charmingly picturesque. what became of her lived and remembered sensations, if that was her language for describing them? she called herself sightless but she could have made the sighted blindless To see is to behold Two months after the operation to restore his sight, they led him to a glass case that had a lathe inside. Though he had used a lathe many times when he was blind, he was unable to identify it. They opened the case and he ran his hands eagerly over it with his eyes tightly shut. Then he stood back, opened his eyes and said: Its a lathe. Now that I've felt it I can see it. next