The poet Gary Snyder is fond of a Zen Buddhist axiom: “When chopping wood for an axe handle, the model is not far off.” I’ve probably misquoted this slightly. I’m typing from a hotel room in Washington, DC and my connection is going to run out soon and I don’t have time to look this up. When we do anything that proposes the future the perfect model is there before us if we really look. As a person with a disability this is a hard principle to keep in mind. Where is the perfect model that I might see “before me” as I cut my wood for the still abstract axe handle?
Another way to strike this note is that cutting the raw wood is so much more complicated for people with disabilities. I have spent the past two and a half days at the Kennedy Center for the Arts at the invitation of the National Endowment for the Arts as part of a large working group of artists with disabilities from across the U.S. Our goal was to think about how to help promote careers in the arts for people with disabilities–how can we richly include pwds in our nation’s cultural life? What will the next ten years bring? What are the obstacles to disability inclusion? What are the creative solutions? How can government agencies help?
I felt graced to be among so many talented artists with disabilities. And yes, I felt graced to be among so many folks from federal agencies who might or might not have disabilities but who clearly understand the cultural importance and the economic goals that are behind this creative wood chopping.
We listened and talked and held working groups. We worked hard. We talked about young people and older people.
And then I went outside.
“Outside” is still a complex and ominous affair.
A cab driver pulled up in front of the Kennedy Center and he didn’t want my guide dog in his taxi.
Outside my hotel there’s a patch of grass. I was relieving my dog there when a security guard told me to get lost–that this was federal grass and I couldn’t have my dog there.
Of course I told him to identify himself; told him to get his supervisor; etc. And ultimately the supervisor apologized.
The point is that my woodpile is harder to chop than the non-disabled person’s pile. And as I chop like hell, sweat beading on my forehead, my veins standing out, muttering an old Finnish folk song to myself (as I often do) its easy to forget or lose sight of the perfect thing you are trying to make. Arguing with a security guard about the federal grass I could be distracted from the perfect things we are trying to make. Prior to the grass man’s appearance I was having a thought about young people and poetry.
The Finnish poet Jarkko Laine once wrote:
How sad! Everything!
And how cheap to say it out loud!
I like those lines for their wit. I carry Gary Snyder’s lines for their evident long range wisdom.
Meantime I’m dedicating this little blog post to the federal grass man because I think he might have an invisible disability. I can’t prove it. But I’ll bet he hasn’t been encouraged much. Encouragement is the big D issue in Democracy.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Stephen,
Although I did not meet you at the Summit, I feel that I know you pretty well. Thanks for some bust-up laughter during Q & A periods!
I imagine we all encountered examples of discrimination & ignorance in DC. In the weekend following the 3 day Summit, I stayed in Washington and played “tourist.” Rolling my power scooter up & down the subway and across town, [so much fun,] from monument to museum you can bet I came across innumerable examples of inaccessibility. I did find, however, that most people in the area are genuine & open. I was pleased to find a welcoming attitude was offered from them, from museum guards to bartenders. The fast mobility provided is just the proverbial “icing on the cake,” to a productive productive 3 day gimpadelic event.
I tried to find your interview on The Exchange, on Iowa Public Radio, but couldn’t find it through your link, above. Have any more directions there?
I have at least 10 photographs of Corky & you in the Terrace Gallery, so it feels very silly that I had not met you both.
So, please somehow notify us all of your work and new additions to your blog!
Hope to hear from ya’!
cripPaul
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hi steve,
it was great meeting and sharing a glass – or 2 – of wine with you and Nira of course…i love getting big wet doggie kisses!
being curious about words and names, since you weren’t sure i thought i would look her name up. turns out “Nira” has it’s origins in Hebrew meaning to “plow a field”.
from that source, when it morphs into the next reference – which susan miller will be pleased to hear is hawaiian – it translates into ‘of the loom’
both of those seem to be a great metaphor for the paths we travel and the work we – and our doggies – accomplish. sorry Nira – and, by extension of leash, you – got crap from dc idiots.
just as in grammer school english class where i struggled with the ‘future perfect tense’ – talking about the past in the future – so were my/our days at the kennedy center. but getting together to have new conversations with you, and carrie who posted above, was great. so ultimately even when we get distracted or “lose sight of the perfect thing you are trying to make” i find the creative process and humor (even – or especially -if it’s gallows) is time well spent and appreciated….
thanks for your note and this post.-jeannine
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The conference and our working group made me wonder, too, how we can recreate that space more often. It is not something that is part of my daily life. I’m told that the promised land is in Berkeley, but I have to question whether it is a physical space that makes a difference. The intellectual and aesthetic spaces in DC were what affected me. Most of us toil away in Oklahoma or Iowa or on the grass outside the Kennedy Center, and feel like we’re having these thoughts alone and disconnected from one another. Thanks for the connection and if you do start that program at Iowa and would like an ex-law-prof as a student, I am ready to retire from my day job. Rayna told me that I should have asked you about Emily Dickinson . . .
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Aloha Stephen,
it was great listening to you
appreciate your wit and how you enjoyed
yourself as expressed in your laughter.
I like political poetry myself:
in such journeys as the ones we sometimes
share in person:
“we’d better hang together,
or in the end we will hang alone.”
something like that. More of a quote
by a founding father. Feels like to me
that we share that founding father fierce and firey energy at times.
Warm aloha,
Susan Miller
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