Author: stevekuusisto

Yesterday, walking south on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan a man approached with what I can only call “brio” and asked if I could be an animal what kind would I like to be? He’d spotted my guide dog and had a shtick. I told him I’d like to be horse. He said that was beautiful. Then asked if I’d ever heard of the ASPCA. So yes, and yes, beauty and animal advocacy on the busy sidewalk. I told him I’m a donor to the aforementioned organization which is true. And then I hurried on my way.

The man from the ASPCA was really a kid. He must have been all of 18. He wanted to save the animals. I in turn wanted to save him. I want all earnest young people to have decent lives. The war in Ukraine is on my mind 24-7. I want to stop under lamp posts and weep. The window is closing on our likelihood of staving off environmental collapse. Putin is pretending its 1945.

How the dictator laughs as children die in the streets. His curdled blood quickens in his chest at the sight of human misery.

I’m going for a walk in just a few minutes. Me and my dog. It’s sunny in New York City. I’ll walk in Central Park.

I’m going to dedicate my small portion of living to those who are suffering. Do you see what Putin forces us to say? Life is not a singular gift. He’d know if he had one.

They’re not currently bombing my house but I’m in this war. They’re not killing my immediate neighbors but I’m grieving and shaking my puny fist. When I plumb the depths of myself I’ve only nursery rhymes and the golden rule. After fifty years of reading great books this is all I have. Baa Baa Blacksheep and Do Unto Others. War scrambles everything. I’m enraged and weeping. Putin long ago perfected warfare against civilians. How do you like your bromides now little man?

**

So I took a train to New York City just to walk around. I’m shocked and winnowed. Walking without a destination. Blind walking. Standing beside a food cart and smelling the chestnuts. I wonder how many others are doing this? Absorbing precious seconds against the backdrop of terror?

Keep believing in life. Keep believing in strangers.

First thing in New York and following in Auden’s footsteps I went into a dive bar. The bartender welcomed me and my guide dog. I drank an Irish lager. The dog had some water. Keep believing in strangers.

**

Putin puts strangers together who evince the larger goodness of humanity. It’s a shame they must meet while enraged and weeping.

When war broke out between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands the poet Jorge Luis Borges quipped it was like watching two bald men fighting over a comb. With the war in Ukraine there’s only one bald man and his comb has run off like the nose in Gogol’s story.

**

Putin’s comb talks to strangers and like the ghost of a horse it says I’m free of my former burdens. Do you know what it’s like to “pretend comb” a psychopath? Do you have any idea at all?

**

And the dish ran away with the spoon. Putin’s comb has run off with Stalin’s mustache cup.

Dialects of disgraced objects…

George Washington’s dentures, made from the teeth of slaves…

Putin’s comb, made from the blackened fingernails of Beria.

The comb protests, you can only push a joke so far.

Ukraine agrees.

Sometimes women and men
Feel seeds in their hearts
The clouds are low
But in last night’s dream
The dead—mine and yours—
Divided amongst themselves
To whisper like oak leaves
They had expressions
And words only Auden
Has ever truly heard

It’s a big place, probably doomed, but still limping along. There are four floors of shops and restaurants and I find myself wandering without encountering many people. What do I hear in this hollowed out monolith of vanilla capitalism? First the starlings trapped under the glass roof with wings like playing cards shuffled and their calls which speak of death’s errands. Then the pneumatic sighs of elevators rising and dropping without passengers, doors opening and closing. The very machinery trapped in dullness. I keep walking without direction like a lean shadow. Soon I hear two women murmuring, sharing a secret outside a shoe store. They talk as I approach. They have deep voices. They’re like trees gifted with the ability to speak. Each is trying to teach the other a lesson. They are missing their respective forests. And then what is that? Another noise at random. A vintage carousel starts up. Wooden gears from the 19th century. Every apparatus cries in its own language. I hear Pinocchio weeping and florins dropping in a cup.

I shy at something that comes crosswise in the early morning wind. This is blindness. This is not blindness. Maybe it’s the muffled claimant we call an angel. Dear Diderot how much conversation did you really have with the blind? I love you no matter the answer. Here, let me introduce you to my dented angel. She’s eating black cherries under the eaves of my house. She carries the fruit in her robes which are stained purple. They say purple originated from the mucus of snails but I know better. There have always been angels, cherries and blind people walking abroad in storms.

Something is wrong with the moon so the boy in the hospital draws it under his blanket, the sliced moon that hums. He thinks how soon enough the moon will make him transparent. He knows it will happen. This is disability in childhood. And the doctors keep pulling on the boy’s arms, trying to rub out the light.

Against all odds
Departing
Into limbo
I’m leaving this page—
What happened
Occurs here
My brother
Dying
Listens
Trees grow
In rain
Birds call
I leave them
Poems pass on
No end of trouble

Each morning I put on my utopia coat
Its pockets filled with zeros
That my loneliness and yours
Will be served, just as we feed
Lost dogs, just as we hope
For a sweet, apolitical surprise
Around every corner
I don’t ask if you know me—
Shadows and sand grains
Don’t ask—though I murmur
Funny to be in this body
And not that one
All our eyes expect
To be received

I see now how naive I’ve been throughout my professional life. It’s possible you also know this feeling—that sense, how to put it, that you were always Gomer Pyle in every meeting. I’ve always been the naive one. When there’s a committee and I’m on it I think getting things done in a collegial way is what it’s about. Sorry Gomer. The committee decided everything before you arrived.

In her excellent book “Surviving Autocracy” Masha Gessen writes: “The “freedom of our speaking with one another” depends on a shared language. ” I think of the dystopia of the work day. The meeting is about something good, maybe even unambiguously good like improving disability services at Widget College. But you’re not speaking the same language as the many who are largely without disabilities. You’re talking about access, accessibility, dignity for students and staff. They’re talking about checking off an administrative box. How is it you didn’t learn this lingo Gomer?

A big part of the reason I never learned the shared language of employment is that I’ve always believed when people are talking about the weather they’re really talking about the weather. But of course that’s silly! The average American knows weather-talk is just a front for back room chatter.

Am I naive because of my disability? Yes. My brand of optimism depends on believing there’s a shared language when, oh I don’t know, when diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility are on the table.

**

Back to Masha Gessen:

“The Russian poet Sergey Gandlevsky once said that in the depth of the Soviet era he was taken with the language of hardware stores. He mentioned “secateurs” (garden shears). It was a specific word; it had weight, dimensions, shape. When a person said “secateurs,” they could only possibly mean the distinct object the word indisputably described. The language of politics is less specific and more mutable than the language of hardware stores, even under the best of circumstances, but we can and should be more intentional when using it. The vocabulary of American political conversation is vague. ”

The disability version of “secateurs” is actually “access” but the non-disabled, hearing it, think about lunch, of what they’ll be having to eat when the meeting is over.

Gomer’s not thinking about sandwiches. He does tend to think talking about the weather is a real subject.