Disability Understood as a House

Today I am thinking of my body or yours: lengthening or softening; blind or opaque; aching at the tendons or sighing.

I am thinking and thinking for the body is less understood than the sea’s foam. This body that sags from season after season of snows and droughts.

This body like a poor man’s teeth. This body that breathes all the air and does not know its own name. Body of walls, staircases, narrow windows, of measures, of secret hearts.

I sat up late last night under stars and read the words of old men. They remain in agreement that the soul opens.

The soul opens like a valve and the pearl radiances of your private electricity rush to meet the maternal hands of angels or the magnetic marl of stars. The old men believe that the body is just a sack, a granary, only clotted weeds, sulphur, nothing more… 

I know this cannot be true. The body ticks like oak beams. Bones and sinews, muscles and blood possess their own mastery. We move from silence to silence in this dress. If you don’t think that’s intelligence, get out.

This body with its disability is protruding from the hard land. It is a house on hard land.

The disabled body has its own savage fertility. It is a house that builds its own secret and necessary rooms.

It doesn’t always sleep at night.

It builds a solarium where there’s no sun.

It inaugurates springtime with a long porch.

It supports the sky in winter.

Like all things having to do with magic not everyone can see it.

How sharp this body is! How much it knows!

Both its surfaces and its interiors are always moving.

The disabled body is immemorial.

It will trace and retrace your life with its vatic architectures.

It has its own bright grace.

It doesn’t give a damn about corruption. Knows more about the minutes than Duns Scotus. Doesn’t need to be in a rush to live. Doesn’t believe in unvarying principles. Knows all about wandering tribes…

The disabled body is a thinking woman’s house; a thinking man’s; the home of a smart child; stands on a hill; a book of lessons like any broken door…

 

S.K.