Talking Half Out Loud

My telephone rang this morning and I heard my aunt’s voice. She was calling to say that one of my dad’s oldest friends had passed away. My aunt was terribly sad. And I was terribly sad. My father died ten years ago. Together we miss him. And his friend’s death feels akin to the old sorrow—though it is a new sorrow. My aunt is a religious woman; I play at religion but have my nautilus chambers of nihilism. Whatever you believe, mortal life is oh so painful and April seems to always be a steep month. My father died on April 21, 2000. His best friend died yesterday. Forget T.S. Eliot. April is no crueler than any other month. But it stirs the heart afresh in these cold regions and tragedies may feel more tragic in such places. I know this much: my garden spade is more useful than prayer, or so it would seem. I think I shall go and plant some flowers even though I have a brown thumb. The salt reserve of my heart is turning over. My heart is very busy.

What should we plant first?

 

S.K. 

The Lyric Body

 

Ralph Savarese at Hobart and William Smith Colleges Susanne Antonetta at Hobart and William Smith Colleges Stephen Kuusisto and Nira   no_access_symbol Seneca Review

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

 

Since I’m a visually impaired person the images above are arranged without art. In general terms I think this is okay. My life as a writer has been informed by multiple rough hewn inelegancies–a word that Microsoft doesn’t want me to type. I am not cowed. My rough hewn stuff is around my neck and I wear it jauntily since that’s the way to wear it.    

 

I am home in Iowa City after a trip that took me first to Meramec Community College in St. Louis  where I read poetry and nonfiction and taught a class of terrific students. Then I traveled to Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY for a festival on disabilities and the arts. HWS (as they like to call themselves) has long published Seneca Review a top tier literary journal that was founded some forty years ago by my dear friend Jim Crenner who is now an emeritus professor at the colleges. As the photo above suggests, Geneva, NY is a lovely place in spring. The campus at HWS is among the most beautiful in the nation. More lovely was the fact that we were there to honor April as disability awareness month and to talk about the latest issue of Seneca Review which is devoted to writing about disabilities and/or bodies of difference. I served as a guest editor for the magaizne along with Ralph Savarese (pictured above) and we’ve entitled the issue “The Lyric Body”. Also pictured above is the essayist, memoirist, and poet Susanne Antonetta who also goes by the name of Suzanne Paola. Susanne joined Ralph and yours truly on a panel discussing the power of disability and imagination to shape literary work that exemplifies rich and atypical inventiveness. We also taught a poetry writing class together.

 

This latest issue of Seneca Review contains extraordinary work from writers as diverse as Gregory Orr, Mark Doty, Adrienne Rich, Jim Ferris, Laurie Clements Lambeth, Rafael Campo, and many more. It’s also a feast for the eye as it contains brilliant artwork by artists with disabilities. Get yourself a copy!

 

We are off now to walk our beloved dog who has been in many airplanes and fair wondrously patient withal.

 

S.K.     

April is Child Abuse Awareness Month

By Laura Castle

 

Each April child abuse awareness activities are encouraged throughout the nation. The first child abuse awareness month was proclaimed in April 1983 by then President Ronald Reagan. Last year President Barack Obama continued this tradition stating that “Every American has a stake in the well-being of our nation’s children” as he proclaimed April 2009 as National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Our nation’s statistics are revealing: there were 905,000 cases of reported child abuse in 2006. Of these, 794,000 were confirmed by Child Protective Services as being abused or neglected. In the United States children under six years of age are more likely to die from violence and neglect than from accident or illness. Although anything can trigger an attack on a child, the most common triggers are crying during toileting and feeding.

In Florida, last year (2009), 198 children lost their lives to abuse, a shocking increase in the number of deaths in one year. Across the country, the incidence of child abuse was up 20% last year, possibly due to the economic recession. 
Child abuse takes a terrible toll not only on individual lives, but on society as a whole as survivors who have not learned better behaviors fill our prisons. One out of three abused or neglected children will grow up to be an abusive parent. (I love to turn statistics around – two out of three of us will break the cycle of abuse through either non-parenthood or by learning good parenting skills. Hooray- there’s cause for hope!)

Many of us wear a blue ribbon throughout the month of April in honor of those who did not survive child abuse, a tribute begun by a Virginia grandmother in 1983, who tied a blue ribbon to the antenna of her car in honor of her grandson who died from abuse. By wearing a blue ribbon, we bring attention to the prevalence of violence against children and the harm it causes.

Let us all strive to educate the public about child abuse and encourage individuals and communities to work toward providing safe and healthy homes for children. My heartfelt thanks to all of you who took the time to read this!

 

Laura Castle is a survivor of childhood abuse. She lives in Florida and serves as an advocate for human rights.

On Death and Celebrating

 

By Andrea Scarpino

 

Los Angeles

 

This week, Zac defended his dissertation in Ohio, which means he can now officially call himself a Doctor of Philosophy. The afternoon before he defended, I went with his parents to euthanize their dying cat. And the day after he defended, his mother retired after 19 years at Ohio State.

Zac’s been working toward his Ph.D. for as long as I’ve known him, first getting his Master’s Degree, taking coursework, passing gate-keeping exams, spending the last three years hunkered down with writing and revision. Tuesday, after a two-hour defense, his committee chair shook his hand, congratulated him, signed paperwork, and that was that. No words of praise, no fireworks. Other people on campus went about their lives.

We had dinner with his committee, of course, and lots of drinks, but for a moment as big as passing the last big hurdle on the way to his career, the marking seemed a little insufficient. And so, too, his parents’ cat’s death. Last weekend, her kidneys started to fail and she yowled whenever she was left alone for even a minute or two. But it was an easy, nondescript death. She lay on a warm blanket and the vet gave her one clear shot. Then her body let go. Other people in the vet’s waiting room took no notice of us.

And Karen’s retirement, too. She’s worked most of her life in some capacity, and now, she’s done. She doesn’t have to work again unless she wants to. Her office had a party with a cake and balloons, then we went out to dinner to eat. But how do you really celebrate such a significant thing?

It seems to me that big moments of passing, of celebration, are so important to us that no honoring really seems worthy, no celebration really captures all the work and life that has led to that point. Indeed, maybe if it were possible to capture a sufficient marking, that would indicate the moment wasn’t important enough. When my father died, I remember thinking the news should have taken notice, his funeral should have been packed with thousands of people, something huge and important should have marked his death. But even if the Earth had stopped rotating, I’m not sure that would have felt big or important enough for the loss I felt. This week’s colliding of two milestones and a death seemed apt, somehow, even so. Each event carried a loss of some sort, a change, a moving on to other things. I’m not sure we marked them well enough, sufficiently enough to do them justice, but I’m also not sure we could have, what we would have done differently. I am sure, though, that it was one helluva week.

 

 

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB. You can visit her at:

www.andreascarpino.com

Spring and All

What do you do with an elephant that has three balls?

You walk him and pitch to the giraffe.

 

(old barroom joke)

 

Well it is baseball season again and tomorrow night the Boston Red Sox will take on the New York Yankees at Fenway Park and all the spitting, scratching, secret signs, and improbable feats of gravitational defiance will begin anew. This is a moment for what the poet called the wilful suspension of belief as every fan can believe for a day or two that his or her team will be remarkable. This belief is superimposed against the abstraction that is still the summer to come. The combination of these two fancies is the meaning of hope. I don’t care at all for the talking heads on the sports channels or the radio; don’t believe what I read in the papers about my team’s prospects–I am allowed a great fancy and I take it. Like the elephant in the joke above “I take it” and for a moment I am allowed to go to first base, cheered by nothing more than optimism.

 

S.K. 

Can You Tell Me What It Means?

 

Half the people I meet believe the world is ending. The others believe that it has already ended. Now I know and you know that the economy is bad; that superstition reigns worldwide (as it always has, eh?); and that there’s plenty of dire ecological news. But when Americans, glutted, nostalgic, drunk, or sufficiently ill informed to buy a simple toaster are collectively swooning into the apocalypse then one must ask, why are we fighting the fanatics elsewhere who believe the same things? Your average Christian slave to Revelations and the people who blow themselves up in the name of a favored room in the afterlife do not appear substantially different. And yes, of course I’m gilding the Lilly, stuffing the owl, splitting revenant hairs–but I can’t see the end times what with all the bodies blocking the view.

Now I know why people without means, hope, or food would be susceptible to fanaticism. But Americans who have a great nation, a superior ethos, a nonpareil representative government, and plenty of Cheez Wiz (sp?) have little to no reason to throw themselves on the mattress of rapturing. Can the sheer ennui of wealth create this? Were we wrong all these years to say that Rome fell apart owing to lead poisoning? Is it inevitable that societies crash when they are too successful? Maybe. But the end of the world is a bad bet. Wishes and facts are remarkably and respectively incoherent for all who can’t find satisfactions in being alive. 

Being alive of course is a kind of mania. There’s a 19th century picture of Caruso as the murderous clown Canio and though it was taken in an era of studiously posed images it conveys an inspired, stagey madness. You can see a mercurial glow in the man’s eyes; his left hand is upraised and his thumb and ring finger make a strange “v”. He wears the famous Pagliacci costume and oddly enough he appears for all the world like a doctor who has become insane as opposed to a clown.

The photo is the real Caruso.

We know this in much the way we understand truth or deceit while playing cards in a neighborhood cafe. We are people of moods, conceits, tempers, and out-and-out lunacies. Most of us accept our roles devotedly. As Jimi Hendrix said: “You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.”

Of course I don’t mean to romanticize (or downplay) mental illness: far too much literary and academic damage has been done in that arena. And no, this is not a memoir of overcoming depression, nor is it a history of artistic or psychiatric alchemy rehashing again the triumphs of Antonin Artaud or John Clare. It’s possible for men and women with true mental illnesses to find their generous souls in art and just now, in our time we’re learning a great deal about neurodiversity and the magnificence of intellectual disabilities like autism. But this is not a blog post made of the attenuated histories of illness or the compensations of same.

This post is more in the spirit of the rapper Eminem when he says: “The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.”

Or, if you prefer, here’s the famous fast ball pitcher Nolan Ryan: “It helps if the hitter thinks you’re a little crazy.”

I remember my first inkling that an assumed and barmy spirit was a vehicle—really a “getaway car” like something the Chicago mob would have had.

I was on a playground in Durham, New Hampshire. The year was 1960 and I was five years old. I had thick glasses and I was smaller than my classmates. A big kid who I’ll call Rollie came up to me with a handful of dirt which he clearly meant for me to eat.

“You will eat this,” he said.

“It looks good,” I said. “Hey Rollie, have you ever eaten an acorn?”

Rollie held his dirt before him like a little pillow.

“An acorn?” he said.

“Yeah, they’re just like peanuts, really good, that’s why squirrels like them. You want one?”

“Sure,” he said. He held out his other hand and I dropped a neatly shelled acorn into his palm.

“Go on Rollie, its yummy!”

Rollie ate it. Then he turned red, and I mean red, not beet red or fire engine red—he was red as an unkind boy with his mouth swollen shut. Acorns are among the bitterest things on earth. And of course I only knew this because I’d tried one. I was a solitary kid. Spent a lot of time in the woods. Those were the days when a boy could still go to the woods.

Rollie was incapacitated. I don’t think he ever bothered me after that.

I still recall the thrill of my discovery. That a feeling, a simple reaction, a swing tricked out with language could render a nemesis harmless was rousing.

I didn’t do a little dance. Didn’t brag about the matter. But I was on the way.

A lyric life, I will imagine, is one wherein you can access feelings and then, by turn do something productive with them.

The simplest definition of a lyric poem is a poem that expresses the writer’s feelings.

Freud said: “Life as we find it is too hard for us; it entails too much pain, too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies.”

One of those palliative remedies is lyric itself. One may think of this as causative intuition, a feeling that trips a switch and makes you sing when you should properly be weeping or running for your life. Again Freud: “Man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get in accord with them; they are legitimately what directs his contact in the world.”

We are getting in accord. We are beside a country road picking edible flowers in the cool of the day. We do not pick edible flowers beside highways because there are pesticides in trafficked areas.

We remove the pistils and stamens before eating.

“Hey Rollie, wherever you are, have you ever eaten Milkweed?”

“Rollie, you can trust me this time. It tastes like green beans.”

 

Give up on the end times. Let your feelings produce something unforseeable.

 

S.K.

Making Sense of March 31

The birds hereabouts are birding, rutting, whatever it is the birdies do when they do it. And the ones who are done with mating are building nests in the still barren trees. This morning, early, a robin who looked to be the size of a Buick walked across my lawn as if he was surveying the property. Soon perhaps, my doorbell will ring and a bird will offer to buy my house. “I’m not selling,” I’d say. And the bird would say “Sell or be occupied, it’s up to you.” “What have you done with Tippi Hendren?” By the by, did you know that birds can snarl?

 

The wildlife is healthy here in the Iowa River Valley and on this last day of March you can hear it stirking and crunking and humping. Even the nascent grass chatters in a grassy patois. Why shouldn’t it? Lucky nature, I say. Nature takes care of itself. Nature has its freedom to talk without history. That’s why it sounds so good. The red tailed hawk flying just 50 yards from my roof doesn’t care about the Eiffel Tower. He can snarl when he’s hungry. He can see a mouse on a boulder from a thousand years ago.

 

Andrew Marvell was born on this day in 1621. This has been a good day for poets and writers. All of the following were sprung on this day:

 

Marge Piercy

John Fowles

Octavio Paz

Nikolai Gogol

 

Let me also point out that Cesar Chavez was born on March 31.

 

To hell with the Eiffel Tower. That it opened on this date in history is small beans.

Tippi Hendren was not born on this day. But I’ll bet that on this date in history she was fighting off the advances of Alfred HItchcock. Poor woman. It was bad enough to be stalked by birds…

 

S.K.  

How I Spent My Birthday

 

downtown Iowa City

 

Yesterday was my b-day and I discovered much to my horror that long ago, too long for accurate memory, I’d scheduled a 9 am physical for meself. So I trudged to the doc’s office and sat in the windowless waiting room amidst truly sick people some of whom smelled of cheap cigars and stale beer and many of whom were coughing like chimney sweeps and I hunkered into meself, mannerly, withdrawn, properly so. In the examining room where I waited an additional 30 minutes in solo woolgathering I read a five year old issue of Popular Mechanics which had an article on wind mills. I think I like wind mills. I mean, I think I’m for them. I saw there in the doctor’s office that I’m rooting for the windmills.

Later I went to Prairie Lights Bookstore which recently made the news because President Barack Obama paid them a surprise visit last week and yes, he even bought some books for his kids. My friends who work there are still fair amazed and I got to hear about the President’s musings while in the store. He told Jan (the owner) that formerly one of the greatest pleasures in his life was browsing alone in a bookstore. And there he was, surrounded by cameras and reporters and security, and gawkers, and trying to pick out some books for his children. He did it with grace. Hemingway was right: “Courage is grace under pressure” and sometimes it’s just a matter of preserving the small graces. The president charmed everyone.

I see now that I’m 55 that I’m for “small graces”–that it may be the only thing to strive for. I should add “anymore” to the end of that. That’s what they do in Iowa. They say: “It’s getting so your house costs less than a tank of gas, anymore.” Or: “I could use some more bacon on my bacon, anymore.” Anymore is one of the small graces.

I went outside and watched a man in a chicken suit–a large chicken suit, a large man, all feathers white in the noon sun, watched him parade up and down clutching a sign on a stick which said “We Deliver” and I wanted to add “anymore” but decided I didn’t want to talk to the chicken so I kept moving.

I had lunch with my pal Paul Casella who teaches writing to the university’s scientists and who is, like me, an easterner who thinks Iowa City is the best place to live if you love literature and smart talk. Paul was just back from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. He told me that he’d seen references to “disability studies” in Tanzania and we talked about the African movement toward disability rights and the UN’s international charter on disability. We ate exceptional burritos. Anymore. Paul is on his way to Spain to address an international conference of doctors on writing. He said the doctors are urologists. I wanted to make a joke out of this but couldn’t think of one. An international conference of urologists who want to write better is inherently funny. Of course it is, anymore.

In the evening I met my wife Connie at an Iowa City restaurant called Devotay. They serve organic and “slow food” and local cuisine and we had a lovely meal and some serious laughs and perhaps indeed every day should be our birthdays, anymore?

While we were eating Connie saw a man wearing a top hat and tails dancing out on the street. Iowa City is that kind of town.

 

S.K.

Sorry I Can’t Hear You, I Have a Cruet in My Ear

 

The story that’s breaking in The New York Times that the Vatican did not defrock the late Rev. Lawrence Murphy who molested deaf boys in a Wisconsin “special school” is the latest evidence that the Catholic Church needs to be prosecuted “country by country” for it’s only through prosecution that corrupt institutions develop civil rights policies and procedures to guarantee them.

 

The full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html?ref=todayspaper

 

It should go without saying that it’s difficult to have a disability. And it’s harder to report abuse when you can’t speak. Perhaps the church can mollify the world by bringing back “Limbo”?

 

I don’t know. I can only say that reading the Times this morning I felt, (as I often did when reading about the administration of George W. Bush) that there seems to be no bottom to the malfeasance.

 

Maybe Pope Benedict can resign and go on a speaking tour with Karl Rove. The Rove & Ratzinger Tour. Everyone do your own logo.

 

S.K. 

Scenes from the LA Marathon

By Andrea Scarpino

 

Start: Wheelchair racers are first across the starting line, then hand crank racers, elite women, elite men. Then the rest of us. Zac and I set our watches, begin a slow jog as the crowd pushes forward. As far as I can see, people run ahead of me, people run behind. The sound of tennis shoes on pavement, breath, spectators cheering on the sidelines.

Mile 2: Male runners pour into the bushes along the route, and a woman, too, stands next to a tree, moves aside her running shorts.

Mile 3: A long, steep uphill climb. I keep my head down, focus on breathing in and out to the count of three. Runners around us are stopping to walk. I’m slowing down. Then I hear taiko drums, look up. Long arms arc through the air with each drum beat, an echoing booming sound. I can’t tell my own heart from the beat of the drums. I run to the rhythm all around.

Mile 8: A group of onlookers hold a sign: “Let’s Create a Department of Peace.” When I raise my arms and cheer for them, they jump up and down, cheer back at me.

Mile 13: We’re minutes ahead of our goal pace. A woman behind us talks on the phone as she runs. Okay, I love you too. I’ve got to go. I love you. Yeah, I’ve got to go. Two barefoot runners, runners who look to be in their 70’s, runners who look to be 9 or 10. A group of Elvis impersonators pass us dressed in white jumpsuits, pushing a boom box playing Elvis songs. Thank you very much, one keeps saying as the crowd on the sidelines cheers.

Mile 15: I start to slow down, get a cramp in my side. We walk a few minutes but when we begin again, the cramp comes back. I get frustrated, tears well up in my eyes. We’re ahead of our goal pace, but I panic, begin to think I’m not going to finish after all. I’m trying to breathe into my cramp but it just keeps coming back.

Mile 16: A woman on the sideline hands out ice cubes in a square tray. I take two, eat one right away, hold the other in my hand.

Mile 17: Brentwood, a fancy French restaurant with patrons eating breakfast at outside tables, talking on their phones. I see women with designer handbags, men with Italian leather shoes. No one waves, no one even looks up to smile. This infuriates me. You could at least wave, I shout to the diners, We’re running over here. A few heads turn, someone screams a little bit. Then to Zac, Jesus Christ, rich people don’t know how to cheer. He looks at me and laughs, says, I’m glad to see you’re back.

Mile 18: I’m not having any fun, I say to Zac. What can we do to change that? Our yoga teacher always says in class, If you’re not having fun, change something. I’ve been so serious about failing, so upset the past couple of miles as my time slows, my side cramp returns. But this is only running, nothing to get so upset about. Zac starts to tell me knock knock jokes that don’t really have a punch line. I start to smile, to laugh.

Mile 20: Drag queens hula hoop on the sidelines, scream and wave and keep their hula hoops racing around their waists.

Mile 22: We’re finally at the last hill, finally entering our neighborhood, the section of the race Zac and I run every week. The cute clothing store, the coffee shop, the store with expensive yoga pants. Home turf at last.

Mile 24: The best sign of the race: “26.2 miles. Because 26.3 would be crazy.” Zac has us walk one minute for every four minutes we run. This is the only thing keeping me going. I count every breath until he says Thirty seconds left and then I start counting down from thirty.

Mile 25: Cheer alley. Team after team of high school cheerleaders line the sidelines, jump up and down with pom poms flying. Some stand on each other, others kick their legs high.

Mile 26: We only have two blocks left to run. The finish line up ahead, throngs of people on each side of the route. We can still finish strong if we kick it right now, Zac says. And we do. My legs speed up when I ask them to.

Finish: We cross the finish line and I grab for Zac’s hand. Someone gives me a bottle of water, a bag of bagels, someone wraps my shoulders in a heat blanket. I see an older woman with medals lined all the way up one arm. I walk straight to her. What a beautiful smile, she says as she puts the medal around my neck. Thank you, I say. I can’t stop saying Thank you.

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB. You can visit her at:

www.andreascarpino.com