To arrive in the fluid air armed with the gentle lunacy of dying, that is the art.
There is no other. Here on a Tuesday like all the others,
Here in the shadow season I whisper his name.
Vallejo, I think you are the moon
Caught in the branches of the lonely birch at dawn.
Here is a photo of my friend Gary Whittington with my guide dog Nira outside a NYC pub, after the Iowa Hawkeyes defeated the Michigan Wolverines yesterday. There are bars in NY devoted to just about any sporting culture. There's even a Boston Red Sox drinking establishment. You can pretty well bet that there's no New York Yankees pub in Boston. Here is "Herky the Hawk" on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 50 something. Nira seems unimpressed. It's hard to impress a globe trotting guide dog.
As for me, I'm endlessly impressed by Gary who is running today in the NY marathon–his 6th. He will likely finish the event with a time somewhere around 3 hours and 20 minutes. Not bad for a 56 year old dude who works by day as an attorney in Cedar Rapids, IA. Notice his fancy forward stride running shoes. Nowadays he's into barefoot running. He also runs stage races. Two years ago he ran across Costa Rica. Gary is one of my heroes because he has tremendous compassion and a superb intelligence and he thinks Rick Perry is a walking toxin.
I will meet Gary today after the race. And the amazing thing is that he will still want to walk around New York after running all the boroughs.
I have many friends in the New York metro area who I'd like to see. In particular I'd like to see my friend Bill who hosts the blog "Bad Cripple" but this trip is too quick. I have to come back here for a disability pals get together and now that I know that Syracuse University has its own center on E 61st St, I think this will be possible. I'm thinking about a disability studies related event in NY. No Herky the Hawkeye for that crowd. Disability studies needs its own mascot. Here's to the fighting crips!
SK
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Location:New York City
Driving in a Car
Did anyone notice the Troll in the high autumn field?
He was like a cricket, rubbing his legs in the last warm sun,
Really, that was all, the sun like tea in a glass, the old magic body staying warm.
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This is a recipe. Kick at your glass house while singing old Scandinavian folk song. Add an optical splinter, image of circus elephants lumbering down main street. Throw in a pearl. If you have a leftover memory of teenage glory, toss it in. I remember dancing with a mannequin after hours in a shop, just for the amusement of my friends. Stir the odd angles of existence with a thermometer. Invite your ancestors.
Notice if your sleeves seem longer or shorter.
My friend has dog ghosts in his house. He does not feel haunted he says. One can surmise that dog ghosts have no envy. In life dogs only wanted what was coming to them. In life a dog has appetite, wishes, tall grass, clotted fragments, serviceable memories, instincts, and fast dreams. But no vituperative ideas. The latter may belong to the cat ghosts. The dog spirits aren't saying. They are stretched out in the sunbeams in what we know is a very real house.
Outside the hotel with my guide dog. I had no choice bot to have her relieve herself in a stripped flower bed–no flowers there, just dirt unplanted. The door man screamed at me, then blew his whistle like the Keystone cops. I ignored him. Old civil rights move: stay unengaged.
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Location:Chicago
My guide dog woke me by licking my nose. Outside it was still night. I fed the dog and imagined all the souls waking up around me, what transitive happiness there could be without radios and tv. Try to picture all the high rise buildings, windows opening, televisions flying out. Silly to think of people restored to living with animals and books. I think we should go back to bed.
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SHOCK: Texas Judge Allegedly Caught Beating Disabled Teen
Police in Rockport, Texas, have started an investigation after the alarming circulation of a video depicting the brutal abuse of a teenager with disabilities that…
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"No one is empty or innocent"
–Marvin Bell
I was innocent this morning. I hadn't voted. I hadn't turned on the television. If I had a cultural memory it was of summer in Finland when I was four years old. Some kids were in a boat. A girl was singing. She was in the bow, she was at the dangerous edge of her childhood. She must have been twelve years old. She was singing a folk song. I remember she had a recorder, a wooden flute. For a brief time we followed the lessons of the sun. I was innocent then. I hadn't voted. If I was empty I didn't know what to do about it.
Nowadays songs are deep as prayer. We get away with singing. That's how we think of it. When we sing we feel that we're stealing something. And we are.
Look. I'm writing a song on this paper. I am a confessional poet. And there's the ghostly shape of the girl in the boat. She sings like Circe, even though I'm not heroic.
Tomorrow perhaps I won't be this innocent. I might vote. That's tomorrow. A frameless door.
There's a scary story over at CNN about a Texas judge who is seen in a video, beating his disabled daughter. You can read the full story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/02/justice/texas-video-beating/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
These stories are legion and what's astonishing is that there is a generalized failure to achieve more severe penalties for the abuse of people with disabilities. One could argue that civil rights abuses of all kinds fall into this sink hole of inaction, but I will argue that the provisional nature of the disabled body–a body still trapped in the tropes of Victorian isolation makes it fair game for abuse and for a secondary abuse which is of course cultural. The judge in question deserves a long prison sentence. He won't get this of course. Mark my words, this will be judged to be a private matter. I'll wager it.
SK
Planet of the Blind 