Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

On Rilke, Daumier, and Plain Talking

One day in a museum a companion described for me the exquisite, soulful, miniature drawings by Daumier. She told me of a little dog, a dog made of curlicues. He was jumping in the wholly invisible wind. And I loved him, though I’d never see him at all. This is what Rainer Rilke understood as creaturely love, a tenderness. And its the understanding that while human beings are burdened by consciousness there is “the animal” underneath us who lives in the present. Of course this is imagination and sentimentality in equal measure. If we could interview a fox she’d tell us that the present is often filled with terror. But let’s have some Romantic animal consciousness mixed up with joy. Not potential joy. The hear and now kind. And lets not forget that someone described Daumier to me. That was the present also. Can we turn our language toward the present? The best in poetry does so. We must change our lives. Say what you like, the best poets are open to tenderness and being alive right here and now. If you don’t think so you have plenty of other choices. Pharmaceutical factories abound.

“Not Today” is the core principle of Ableism and Trumpism…

One of the interesting things about ableism is that whatever form it takes it occupies the future perfect. There will be time enough to make things right for the disabled but not today. One may fair say “not today” is the motto of the thing. “Non hodie” in Latin. Picture a flag bearing the image of an indolent house cat. Not today will we question our assumptions about discrimination. BTW: ableists also avoid saying “maybe tomorrow.”

If you’re disabled and you require reasonable accommodations you likely know all about this. Where I work I’ve been agitating, pleading, begging for accessible documents and websites for over a decade. “Non hodie” is the prevailing reply. What’s so demoralizing is that those who ought to be in the fight for disability inclusion are not interested. How can this be? Well, actually, the matter is simple: “there will be time enough to make things right, but not today.” That this “non hodie” includes administrators charged with accessibility and inclusion and faculty who teach disability related subjects tells you how big a muscle ableism really is. But there’s another issue…

Fighting disability discrimination makes you unpopular. One may say that fighting for the full inclusion of all historically marginalized folks does so too. But with disability there’s one more turn of the wrench: very few people want to serve as serious allies. There’s almost no up side to being a real disability activist. If you want to be liked, stay away.

It’s not easy in “non hodie” land. One morning, tired, feeling low, I wrote the following draft of a poem:

This morning talking to Stephen’s head…

“You’ve endured so much,
Bullying, lifelong ableism…”

The architectures of wantonness…

Walking alone one sees Raskolnikov’s room…

Confession: having lived in some bitterness,
I fear the cruelties of human indifference
More than
Anything in this world…

**

“Non hodie” harms actual disabled human beings. It’s not merely that the thing puts accommodations and full inclusion into a murky future—the disabled who need these accommodations are left hanging, and in order to make this palatable, the ableists employ gaslighting. “You’re asking for accommodations in the wrong tone of voice.” “This isn’t the venue for this.” (As if there was a venue.) It’s the old, “you’re a malcontent, you cripple you” defense. Never do such people say, “wow, we’re violating the law and injuring real human beings.”

Another aspect of the gaslighting business is of course to have a gaslighting committee—usually it has a name like “Inclusion and Access for One and All” and it meets privately because its all about “non hodie” and private self-congratulation. These committees never propose to fix the problems. They have cookies. They talk about inclusion. There’s just one thing. The folks on the committee don’t suffer from a lack of accommodations. In general they feel pretty good.

If you’re like me and you need accessible digital materials to teach and participate in the community and no one wants to fix this in real time—so that you’re “non hodied” half to death—you’re not included in the inclusion and access for one and all club. But you betcha they’ll gaslight you. You’re not fun to be around. And that’s the kicker. In the Neo-liberal university feeling good is the game.

Reader’s note: I first published this on my blog a couple of years ago. I’m in mind of this today because of the viral meme photo of Donald Trump who turned his back on a man experiencing medical distress. If Trump knew Latin he’d say “Non Hodie” for illness, disability, medial emergencies disrupt the “now” and if there’s anything Trump hopes always to occupy its the static present tense. For Trump both the past and the future are anathema. This position is not unfamiliar to disability rights activists. From turning his back on AIDS relief for Africans to his wholesale plans for dismantling American healthcare DT is all of a piece. But don’t kid yourselves…in all cases his disdain is about inconvenient bodies.

Aunt History doesn’t sleep well…

Aunt History doesn’t sleep well
For one thing she hears things
Real things—last breaths for instance
She’s like God herself
A field mouse in Germany
Behind a haycock
Breathes its last
And spiders
With their book lungs
Have their last gasps
Deep in the night
The whole world
Is like the final act of Aida
Lovers sing gently
As their oxygen runs out

Vespers

Vespers

So it comes down to this
May my children be happy
While sleeping may they be
High in the branches—
Even with rain
Our dream rain
May they be happy
With long shadows
Of poor ancestors
May they be happy
What do I wish—
Smoke of nightfall
Why shouldn’t we pray?

Uncle History and Hunger

Before there was history
There was nature—all alone
A stage for appetite
Huge lizards eating everything
When it was time for “the past”
Well, appetites were refined
Eating no longer a sport
Cultivation and lingo
The new tooth and claw
Uncle History is made of such stuff
He’s equal parts hunger and necessity
Though there’s poetry mixed in
Solzhenitsyn said it best:
“The belly is an ungrateful wretch,
It never remembers past favors,
It always wants more tomorrow.”
About tomorrow, Uncle is bewildered…

What if you tell yourself you’re wiser than you are…

What if you tell yourself you’re wiser than you are?
The badger in her moist layer stays in her skin
Under your house forgotten wars go on
Two catbirds call in rain
So much pressure
On the written word
Like a child’s game—
You know
The one where walking
Your footfalls must be perfect
Or someone dies

A Circle of Gold Stars

He found it difficult to tell the story of grass and the aspen
And the names inside him.
His boyhood
Held still in the green unspoken

If the grass was democratic
It was owing to loneliness.
He lay low and still
The times were plain

He knew the names—
The White Throated Sparrow
Known as the Peabody Bird
Whose song could break your heart

This was in the final days before television
When children played dead
And listened to unseen birds

Uncle History and Determinism

Uncle History agrees that Marx
Was not deterministic
He agrees the first frost
Has little to do with God
He has an ache in his pleural cavity
Sometimes he has the urge
To count spoons
“Its a crazy world” he says
But corrects himself
For he’s known
Millions of mad people
“The world is ugly
And the people are sad”
He always loved Wallace Stevens
Of suffering he knows
It has no antecedent