I remember those Scandinavian houses with the tall white tile ovens—they stood in the corners of rooms like spies. Adults of course think these things give a home character. This is the difference. Old people give away thoughts that are neither hunger or thirst. Some days the horror of adult life is enough to drive one under the bed. My little boy, the one who became me, knew those stoves stood in the crack between wakefulness and dream. And years later, when I was in college and reading Edgar Poe, I felt the hypnogogia as he called it, and saw that disability was in fact the tell tale heart—the life that goes on under the floor; the life that’s been operated on; the one on the tip of your tongue but never uttered.
Here’s the thing: there are days when you don’t want to go outside. The adult world is filled with stove makers. You stay home and drink tea. You think about all the creepy doctors. The spies.
You think about all kinds of things. You promise to get strong presently. By the afternoon you’re ready to go outside. You take your indignant, nail studded wheelchair, guide dog, hobby horse and go to the grocery. And though all the customers and employees stare at you, stare as if you’re the skeleton in a morality play, you roll or walk a most strange course straight for the olives with pimentos. Lord knows, sometimes happiness slowly crawls into you.
Planet of the Blind 