Author: stevekuusisto

This is not evangelical light; it’s not Manichean. Let’s say its both waves and particles and leave it at that. We’re certain of the waves and particles. And we know diurnal life gets you out of bed. 
Oh but if you have a disability can you trust the light? Does it illuminate? Does it beckon or rob you of your last shred of dignity? 

When I was in college a professor who became my friend recommended I read Ralph Ellison’s magnificent novel “Invisible Man”and that incomparable book gave me language for something I already understood implicitly: light ain’t necessarily your pal. The narrator declares: 

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of those Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids–and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination–indeed, everything and anything except me.”

Light will not illuminate a man of color and worse, it makes him impossible to see. Like a member of the French underground, he’s retreated to a covert under the city where he strings lightbulbs in his solitude, illuminating his lonely, isolated guerilla existence. 

Like Ellison’s narrator the disabled are also invisible—people refuse to see them; they’re surrounded by mirrors of distorting glass so that when they are seen they appear even more ruined. But mostly, and this is the main point, they’re not seen for who they are and are therefore entirely missing from the light.

So walking about as a cripple you are forced to think about this. In what way, under what circumstances will light be transformed? This is one of the hardest questions of all.

One morning when I was a relatively new guide dog user, still learning I could trust my canine pal in traffic, I had an experience of light that I couldn’t have foreseen. I was walking with my yellow Labrador “Corky” in Manhattan. I saw how the world bent toward us, Corky and me—how a softening of what had been hard in my spirit corresponded exactly to something outside. It wasn’t just that I felt better with a dog. It wasn’t my new optimism about going places (though surely these were potent within me) it was a receptiveness in the very air. The day before us was not just open but welcoming. Sunlight loved us. 

We were walking up Fifth Avenue. Our walking was loose but also fast. Corky was having her usual fun locating the bodies of pedestrians, seeing how to work around them without breaking our stride. And daylight was so hospitable, well, a tumbling happened inside me. It felt like an old lock was opening, some knit up place was giving way. I was untroubled. That was it. And then I was joyous. We were better than just a man or just a dog. Better than a contraption or contrivance. The light outside us and the light inside had met. We stopped. On the steps of a church I said to Corky: “I think we’re the light, my dear.” 

After this when people asked the name of my dog I’d say “Meister Eckhart”. It was my little joke about joy and spirit. If we were, to borrow writer Caroline Knapp’s wonderful term, a “pack of two” we were a pack of two with “chi”—“And how,” I said to Corky,” do we explain this without sounding trippy?” The answer of course was just keep walking.

I am all for the porcupines. I know them. They are unfamiliar to some, but not to me. At night the porcupines used to climb onto the rocking chairs on the porch at my grandfather’s farm. I think you would too, if you were a barbed and largely misunderstood creature. Those rocking chairs felt good. After years I see those rockers were an accommodation. Freed from their customary fight or flee panic they could glide for a time. Did I mention it was night? Wouldn’t you want to rock at night if you were covered in quills? I say the rocking chair was really invented for the porcupines. And all should have them.

Now here’s the problem: we define accommodations rather narrowly. We say only certain cripples should have them. We wrangle, gnash our teeth, argue, tear the delicate damask curtains, take the matter to court. The porcupine teaches us a thing or two. She says: from each according to his ability to each according to his need. She says a rocking porcupine keeps away the raccoons. She says you should never underestimate the potential contributions of others.

Last night a porcupine said to me in a dream: “admit that you’re married.” “What if you’re single?” I said. “No one is single,” she said, “for you’re like the turtle, carrying your house on your back. You have a horse because you can’t walk fast. You have ink so you can persuade strangers. You have nose drops, eye glasses, shoes, deodorant—all sorts of improvements. And you “husband” these things. You take them for granted. You’re in a bad marriage with your hundred adaptations. You have forgotten you’re not perfect. You’re not even adequate.”

The porcupine teaches us that all humanity needs accommodations. Don’t pretend they’re just for disabled people. 

Rock on, my pointy friends, rock on. 
 

I am all for the porcupines. I know them. They are unfamiliar to some, but not to me. At night the porcupines used to climb onto the rocking chairs on the porch at my grandfather’s farm. I think you would too, if you were a barbed and largely misunderstood creature. Those rocking chairs felt good. After years I see those rockers were an accommodation. Freed from their customary fight or flee panic they could glide for a time. Did I mention it was night? Wouldn’t you want to rock at night if you were covered in quills? I say the rocking chair was really invented for the porcupines. And all should have them.

Now here’s the problem: we define accommodations rather narrowly. We say only certain cripples should have them. We wrangle, gnash our teeth, argue, tear the delicate damask curtains, take the matter to court. The porcupine teaches us a thing or two. She says: from each according to his ability to each according to his need. She says a rocking porcupine keeps away the raccoons. She says you should never underestimate the potential contributions of others.

Last night a porcupine said to me in a dream: “admit that you’re married.” “What if you’re single?” I said. “No one is single,” she said, “for you’re like the turtle, carrying your house on your back. You have a horse because you can’t walk fast. You have ink so you can persuade strangers. You have nose drops, eye glasses, shoes, deodorant—all sorts of improvements. And you “husband” these things. You take them for granted. You’re in a bad marriage with your hundred adaptations. You have forgotten you’re not perfect. You’re not even adequate.”

The porcupine teaches us that all humanity needs accommodations. Don’t pretend they’re just for disabled people. 

Rock on, my pointy friends, rock on. 
 

Dear ________,

I am taking the liberty of writing as it’s commonly supposed you stand for something, though what that thing may be is increasingly difficult to reckon. I won’t digress: you stood for human rights when your campaign was new. Moreover you said you and you alone represented change we could believe in. I admit I was slow to understand the wit (yours) as you did exactly what you promised: a representation of change isn’t change and so of course when nothing has changed you’re essentially off the hook. Remember how giddy we were? No? We were happy as kids on a stolen sugar high.

You sir have evolved an ugly human rights record. I voted for you twice sir. The first time was hope, the second, fear. Go to the UN and say we’ve made mistakes: drones; Guantanamo; spying on innocent people; stealing hope around the globe; ignoring a global refugee crisis the likes of which humankind has never seen before. Go on. You can’t run again. It will cost you nothing.  

How do you say “knuckles of the sky?” 
Old woman with equally old dog— 

the two of them 

hunched in a boxing wind. 

He was openly blind and therefore bothersome. He bothered all sorts: the taxi drivers who didn’t like his dog; the school administrators who never really “got him”.  He was openly blind and insisted in high school that he should be on the track team. They said no. He would be an insurance risk. He supposed that meant if he was on a team he’d make everyone else blind too. 

He bothered all sorts. Once he was followed by a store detective in Macy’s. Confronted, the shamus said: “well you might not be blind, we get all kinds in here.” As if the guide dog was a ruse. What a cunning plan! 

He was openly blind and there wasn’t much to be done about it. He spent inordinate time trying to make others feel comfy in his presence. A foolish pursuit, bootless, but he kept at it.
 
“You can’t control your fate among able bodied people,” he said, “but you can choose to be more beacon than target.” 

He did however take to saying things to sighted people that they’d said to him. 

“You might not really be sighted,” he said. 
“You might need help crossing this street,” he said.
“I think your vision makes you angry,” he said.
“Isn’t that nice! You’re out in the world!” he said.

He didn’t really say these things. He had too much dignity. But thinking them helped. 

Inside my shirt and under my skin you’ll find the crap the world put in:
“You’re blind you know—you don’t belong—you stay right here
Til mom comes along. Don’t mind the kids who taunt you so,
It’s just good sport, don’t you know?”
Worse: the teachers, feckless sorts
Dont want a kid who can’t play sports—
Can’t read chalkboards, do the math
Without some help to find his path—
How tireseome, the child who’s blind 
Taking space inside their minds. 
O but wait until he’s grown
And wants a job of his very own. 
“You’re a burden with your demands
for access to things like any man
or woman working at Normal Inc—
you’re very presence makes us sink.
You’re a downer, bub, 
Wanting the web,
Accessible notes and signs,
Or colleagues who are kind.
Go back to the the place where you belong,
Wherever that is, maybe Hong Kong—
Just don’t stay here and ask for stuff
We take for granted, enough’s enough.  

Thank you for submitting “Paradise Lost” to the Old Yorker. We regret we cannot publish your poem. We appreciate your sanguinary devotion to hoary sinners. You certainly have a way with snakes.
If you have anything short ending with an “ah” moment of lyric transport we’d love to see it. 

Yours, 

Cuthbert Quiller
Sub-sub-Cartesian Proof Reader and Mail Clerk
Who Knows the Most about Microsoft Exchange
and Cleans the Coffee Maker to the Standards of
His Nibbs.