Page 28 of The Sign for Home

“No. Bigger. More spiritual.”

“Like Jesus or Jehovah God?”

“Maybe—no—different, I think. Let’s keep reading.”

I interpreted more about the sublime from the website, clarifying words and concepts for the both of us. It turned out that the Romantic poets of the nineteenth century believed that when one was awe-inspiredby beauty in nature, one was transported beyond oneself and could obtain enlightenment—but only briefly.

“A-W-E?” Arlo asked. “Meaning?”

I sighed, frustrated with myself. Explaining the sublime to Arlo was like peeling an ontological onion. I told him thatawewas like seeing something so huge and beautiful that you were both inspired and fearful. I then read him the part of a Wiki where Wordsworth explained the sublime by saying that the “mind [tries] to grasp at something towards which it can make approaches but which it is incapable of attaining.”

“Like when we look out the window here and see all those big, beautiful Taconic Mountains!”

As soon as the signs came out of my fingers I felt like an ass. Was I referring to things he had never seen? Was I being patronizing and making assumptions? My fingers did the Tactile equivalent of stammering.

“Long time ago, I see very big mountains,” Arlo finally signed, clearly reading my awkwardness. “I remember. I very young. We drive to Catskills for JW conference…”

He aimed his eyes up and gestured a shape he saw in his mind.

“Like giant piles of green laundry. So big. Scary. Beautiful. I love mountains!”

“Well, there,” I signed. “Maybe you experienced the sublime then.”

“I don’t think so,” he signed. “I wish I could see mountains again clear. See S-U-B-L-I-M-E. But my eyes getting worse. Mountains only inside my brain. Anyway… good memory.”

Before I could divine some pablum to ease my own uncomfortable hearing-sighted conscience, Arlo started talking more about his childhood trip to the Catskills. He told me about seeing rocky cliffs with waterfalls, a real log cabin, and how his mother bought him rock candy that looked like ice on a stick. When he spoke about his mother, his eyes grew misty. He explained that she didn’t know ASL, but instead communicated via home sign—limited gestures they developed between them.

“If can’t see mountains… means can’t see S-U-B-L-I-M-E?” Arlo asked.

“No, no. Lots of things can cause the sublime,” I declared, then listed things he might have experienced. “Sunsets, the ocean…”

“Ocean… never see. Too far away. Hudson River, I saw. Big lakes, swimming pool—I saw. See S-U-B-L-I-M-E? Never.”

He waited. The smile vanished from his face. I was losing him again.

“You don’tseesublime,” I signed. “The sublime is more like a feeling. The sublime is those big questions you want to ask about the world, but you can’t put them into words. The sublime is bigger than words. Have you felt that? You wanted to tell someone about some very important experience, but the event was just too big, amazing, and beautiful to talk about? And maybe it made you feel very, very happy but also—at the same time—a little sad and scared. The sublime feels like being overwhelmed by the hugeness of something that makes you feel both joy and fear simultaneously. That’s why the Romantic poets would use the word when describing things of great beauty in nature, you know, like a mountain or the ocean or… Sometimes the sublime can even make a person cry because it shows us what’s possible in our hearts, but it’s so huge we can’t really explain it, like… um… It’s like… like…”

I ran out of metaphors, bankrupt of analogies. Arlo just stared ahead, his hands atop mine, waiting, wanting something more. I could think of nothing that might cause a sense of the sublime that was still (or ever) accessible to him. I pulled my hands from his, and my mind became saturated in a sense of pity. And pity was such a cowardly and useless response to offer Arlo. What if someone had pitied me for my red hair, or the psoriasis scars I sometimes got on my elbows, or the fact that I was a middle-aged, single gay man living in a one-bedroom apartment in Poughkeepsie? Did I want pity because the only person I had ever really loved dumped me and then died without ever wanting to see me again? No. We are who we are, and we understand the world based on our experiences, circumstances, andsenses. Pity was just an emotional excuse. It wasn’t whatArlodidn’t know; it was whatIdidn’t know. It was nothislimits as a DeafBlind man; it wasmylimits as both an unimaginative human and a less-than-brilliant interpreter.

I suddenly felt so angry.

How did I find myself in this position?It was not my job to make Arlo understand the concept of the sublime. I was not his teacher! Certainly an educated Deaf person could explain it far better than I could. So what if I couldn’t make a concept clear? There was no reason every DeafBlind man on the planet needed to understand the full meaning of every word. Arlo could just continue, like the rest of humanity, to use words willy-nilly simply because others used them, or because he loved their shape. After all, the vast majority of humanity only has the most casual of relationships with the meanings of words. Linguistic one-night stands.Fuck it, I thought.Arlo has the right to do the same!

Then I saw Arlo had been trying to get my attention, smiling and excitedly waving at me.

“Cyril! S-U-B-L-I-M-E means what? I think I understand!”

“Okay… go on.”

“S-U-B-L-I-M-E… like when you love something, cherish something. When you feel like inside your chest… wow! Will explode! Happy, but same time sad. Long time ago… I remember, when little kid. I can see perfect. See almost everything. I lie next to Mama on grass. She not sick yet. Big blue sky. Clouds. Smell flowers. Beautiful day. Not too hot. Not cold. Mama hug me and kiss me and I stare in the sky and very, very happy. Mama starts to cry. I ask:What’s wrong?But Mama says nothing. At first… confused, because she likes pretty sky, she likes smell of flowers, she loves me. Sad—what for?”Snaps fingers. “Then I understand! Mama cries… why? Because the world so beautiful, and we so happy, but all will disappear at Judgment Day. Both happy and sad? Right?”

Before I could respond, Arlo turned his head to the right, almost like he was trying to feel if anyone else was around.

“Cyril… shh… just between you and me, okay? Long time ago, high school, I love someone so much. For many years. Shh. Can’t tell you who. Forbidden. But with this person I feel very happy. First time in my life. But then, because I want that person with me forever… inside my chest it feels… huge but confusing. I also both very, very happy and very, very sad same time. That means S-U-B-L-I-M-E, right?”

His hands reached for my response, but I was speechless. Who was this person he was talking about? Why wasn’t he allowed to tell me? There was so much he and I didn’t know about each other and would never know.Very, very happy and very, very sad at the same time.

Suddenly my mind connected to something in my own past: that autumn day Bruno and I drove up to Niagara Falls for the kitsch of it. It was chilly out and we had gone to the end of that tunnel that opens up underneath the falls. My mouth ached from all the kissing we had just done. That hard kind of kissing where it seemed the mouth was truly trying to devour the soul of the other person. He had only told me about his illness two weeks prior and had left it up to me whether to stay or go. He was so vulnerable, standing there, leaving it all up to me. Arlo’s words had made me remember it so clearly: that full-body melancholy I felt as I held the man I wanted to spend my entire life with, but at the same time knowing that a lifetime might be incredibly short.Very, very happy and very, very sad at the same time.

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