Disability and the Toothache

The proper phrase is “toothace in the soul”–Emily Dickinson’s description of our human spirits in this high gravity world. We all face delimitations of our bodies, plus aging, disappointments, setbacks, social lonesomeness (different from “loneliness” for it is more imagined). If I knew a way without this consciousness I would tell you. 

Disability is that toothache raised to a power. Unfashionable to call it suffering but enough to say It’s without easy assimilation. One may think of disability, any disability as a kind of phosphorescent blindfold: at once brilliant and impenetrable. What it feels like on the inside is not the pathos of intellectual life but a steaming fuse of a million cultural negligences. We cannot celebrate the body that ages. We can’t imagine it’s languages in the West–instead cover it over or turn away. The toothache pours from the radios and steams on the internet. It hangs in the disorderly world, inflated by the winds of reactionary advertisements for normalcy. 

I long for the allure of disablement with all its ellipses. Spirit relieved of pejorative and alienating metaphor. The world was heavy with gravitas but we all could dance. 

SK

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto