An admirer wrote Helen Keller to ask what she had "seen" while being photographed on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. The blind-deaf author responded beautifully and at length. It's an amazing letter, and stunning how her descriptions are so deeply, richly metaphorical—stunning, but not surprising. "Perhaps," she wrote, "I beheld a brighter prospect than my companions with two good eyes."

re: horizons of the possible, new york, seeing, vision

Nate:

But what of the Empire Building? It was a thrilling experience to be whizzed in a “lift” a quarter of a mile heavenward, and to see New York spread out like a marvellous tapestry beneath us.

There was the Hudson – more like the flash of a sword-blade than a noble river. The little island of Manhattan, set like a jewel in its nest of rainbow waters, stared up into my face, and the solar system circled about my head! Why, I thought, the sun and the stars are suburbs of New York, and I never knew it! I had a sort of wild desire to invest in a bit of real estate on one of the planets. All sense of depression and hard times vanished, I felt like being frivolous with the stars.