Dreaming in Color

I am going blind. The darkness is moving in on me. I move into the darkness. I am lost in it. I can only see the looming mountains that frame my home and the feathered white clouds above me. I reach for the sky to touch it; I grab sunlight with my fingers. I can do this because I am blind. Silky sun rays shoot out of my shoulder, and I count them growing, flowing. I count all of them: seven bright white, full-of-heat sun rays.

I am going blind. My world is dimmer now. Dark shadows reside at every turn. Figures glide in front of my eyes, crossing the street in front of my house. Silhouettes fade to black in the shade of a desert willow. Rings of golden light drift before me, each one holding a crimson eye swimming at its center, spinning like planets and swarming me as I walk. My mind’s eye is crowded with apparitions glowing forest green and blooming red. Rapid eye movement and dreams alike are lost in space and time. 

I am going blind. 

Someone once asked if these visions drove me crazy. “How can you stand to see this way?” they said.

“Well,” I answered, “I paint them. I guess the gods have a warped sense of humor.”

It would take me years to understand my visions were not just symptoms of blindness—they were the beginning of another way of seeing.

I started going blind at fifteen years old. Before my diagnosis, I was a star student and athlete, excelling in academics, basketball, and track. I grew up next to the beach on Stony Brook, Long Island, a paradise of sorts for a young kid who spent his days running towards whatever came next. 

After my vision began changing in ways we couldn’t explain, my mother took me in for a checkup. The answer was a rare, incurable, degenerative eye disease called fundus flavimaculatus. I left the hospital and climbed a quiet green hill, searching for a place between earth and sky, where I could be heard. I fell to my knees, begging God to restore my sight, promising I would do anything to see the world again. My prayers echoed into the depths of the night and lasted as the sun rose in the eastern sky. The sunlight shattered into my brain, and I saw my first inner visions.

Rings of Saturn floating around a million stars, and the bloodshot, fiery eyes of a dragon. My newfound blindness pulled me from this dimension and threw me, heavy-handed, into a void of chaos, of dreams and nightmares, leaving me adrift and alone.

During the day, I stumbled my way through a rolling fog of mist men, whispered women, and children with spectral eyes. When night fell, I danced with phantoms who carried infernos at their core. This was my new world, and they welcomed me. At first, I thought God left my prayer on top of that hill, reverberating into the ethers, unanswered for eternity. I’ve come to understand that the answer was the visions, which opened a doorway to a world unknown.

After losing my sight, I moved from bustling New York to the open air of New Mexico to attend a school for the blind. I found myself settling into the rhythms of what it meant to move through a sighted world without relying on my eyes.

I needed an outlet, so I began fingerpainting with gel medium and sand. Instead of using a brush, I preferred to connect directly with the canvas, allowing my body to become the bridge between my inner visions and my art.

Creating artwork became completely shaped by touch, memory, imagination, and emotion. I dream in dazzling colors when I’m asleep and awake, and these visions find their way onto my canvas, becoming tangible. Black birds soar through my mind’s eye, flying through swirls of chrome, ruby, and jade as faces and flowers emerge from the colors around them. What I see in my mind’s eye, nobody else in the world can see.

Just as I am an artist who paints what I see, I am a blind poet who writes stories about other dimensions beyond this one that we see with our physical eyesight. Beyond this dimension, there is magic. My blindness gives me magic eyes, and I can walk through gates to other worlds.

You have eyes that look but do not truly see. Your mind’s eye is shut tight and blind. So, a blind man has to teach you how to see. Now that is ironic as hell.

Writing, just like art, became another way to escape into other dimensions—to exist in a world far away from the harsh reality of this one, where I was blind. My stories are meant to take readers with me into these other dimensions. I ask them to follow me into the darkness, and then into the color. Through words on paper, I am able to inspire others to live a life full of adventure despite all the hardship.

While writing and painting were two main outlets for me, I also developed a new relationship with athletics after going blind. Before my diagnosis, running defined me; after, running saved me. Running gave me a pathway back into this reality. I made a space for myself in athletics during college, becoming a record-breaking blind athlete. After graduation, the Paralympics took me all over the globe, but running in every corner of the world never made me feel as connected to the earth as I did while running through the vast New Mexico desert. Each footstep here carried me deeper into the landscape, the silence, and myself. My successes in running not only challenged assumptions and stereotypes about blindness, but also transformed the way I approached my art. I began incorporating movement into my paintings, allowing the rhythm and intensity of my runs to shape my creative process. That same passion carried into my writing, inspiring me to create more books. When I eventually stepped away from running, I redirected that drive into my artwork, and through my creative handprints, I found a deeper connection to my spirituality. The hardest thing I’ve ever faced was going blind at fifteen. I was forced to dig deep into my soul, standing at the edge between survival and surrender. That prayer on the hilltop echoed into the universe, and maybe it is still traveling somewhere out there, moving from one plane to the next. When my prayer was not answered in the way I expected, I had to find another way forward. I had to run as fast as I could. 

From that moment on, I felt guided by something greater than myself. Whether it was God, angels, or something I still cannot explain, I felt a presence running beside me on this journey.

Years later, I find myself climbing another hill—not so different from the one where I first prayed—a brown desert hill in Winston, New Mexico. I walk upward, unsure if I am in real time or inside a dream. At the top, I kneel once again.

“Please God, help me see again.”

I hear the wind. I hear the birds. No answer comes. But as the sun rises over the distant mountains, my inner visions return. My world fills with silver and orange, with those bloodshot eyes staring back at me from within their storm of color. The visions speak: “Paint me, Spiritman. Get to work.” 

I walk down the hill with a paintbrush in my hand. I begin painting the colors of the wind, and I never stop.

We are all blind to tomorrow. Look at you now—you ran like the wind. You are a champion. Wherever there is life, there will always be hope. Don’t give up. There is magic everywhere. Seek it. Find it. Touch it. Be brave.

I dare you to run with me into my dream world. Let’s go, blind fools.

Written by George Mendoza.

Art by George Mendoza.

Cover photo by Maria G. Mendoza.