Blindness creates a world of obscurity only to be overcome with guidance from someone willing to become intimate with the blind. Equally true, the perceptions of blindness can only be overcome when the blind allow intimacy with the sighted. Raymond Carver, with his short story Cathedral, illustrates this point through the eyes of a man who will be spending an evening with a blind man, Robert, for the first time. Not only does this man not know Robert, but his being blind, "bothered" (Carver 98) him. His, "idea of blindness came from the movies", where, "...the blind move slowly and never laughed" (Carver 98). These misconceptions of blindness form barriers between the blind and the sighted. Carver breaks down these barriers as he brings the vastly different lives of these two men together. Those of us with sight find it difficult to identify with the blind. This man, like most of us, can only try to imagine what life is like for Robert. As a result of his inability to relate with Robert, he thinks his behaviors are odd, and is unable to understand the relationship he has with his wife. His wife worked for this blind man many years ago, reading him reports and case studies, and organizing his "...little office" (Carver 98) in the county's social-service department. He remem bers a story his wife told about the last day she worked for him. The blind man asked her if he could touch her face, and she agreed. She told him that Robert had touched every part of her face with his fingers, "...her nose-even her neck!" (Carver 98). His wife wrote poetry whenever something important happened in her life, and she "...tried" (Carver 98) to write a poem about this unforgettable experience. He said he didn't think much of the poem, (although he didn't tell her that), reasoning it was because he didn't understand poetry. In reality though, the act of the blind man touching her face is what he didn't understand. To him this seemed a bizarre encounter....