One long held view in disability studies is that the industrial revolution and factory labor created disability. Bodies had to fit the factories. Broken bodies were useless. Enter asylums for warehousing the cripples.

The biggest problem with this is its essentialism. Bodies drift in and out of public space, or to put it another way, whatever we mean by private space was always disabled. Maternity space, death bed space, sick room space, blind space, deaf space, lame space, autistic spaces—all were nearly permanent, atavistic, dating back to the origins of humankind. Reading the ancient genome we see astonishing numbers of disabled. They were our forebears. Our brothers and sisters. They lived together. Personal space, tribal space, was always disability space.

This means that industrial space, capitalist space is a perversion of human geography in which the disabled are stigmatized. If there could be a slogan for this it would be: “Don’t stay home with your crippled brother/mother/father/sister….come on down to the factory and throw away your heart for money.” Another way to say it is: “Novelty beats traditional suffering.”

You can get away with a view like this if you believe in the accumulation of capital.
You can get away with a view like this if you believe in Marx.

You cannot get away with “novelty beats traditional suffering” if you acknowledge suffering.

The man from Porlock is here. My doorbell is ringing.

Either you’re grieving or joyful
Accepted or in sufferance

If there’s a third way
It must be in the eyes
Of a seahorse—
Living windows
Clear as zen vinegar

I’ve had it with these amateur sufferers, these sons of bitches who think their D League oppressions are anything more than a hangnail. Karl Ove Knausgaard for example. He’s what my grandmother would call a shallow piss pot of a man and he should thank his lucky stars he’s writing and publishing his pissant Little Bo Peep books in an age of literary decline. Invented struggle is beneath contempt. Why do I bother? Maybe because there are genuine writers, especially those with disabilities who are ten thousand times more powerful than Knausgaard or Anthony Doerr or Jose Saramago—just to name three writers I cannot stand though for different reasons and I won’t bore you. At least not right now.

What else? I’ve had it with men. All of them. And many women—the Trump girls and the boys club girls—the latter you find in higher ed administration rather frequently. I’ve had it with junior high mean girls who’ve grown up only in physical stature.

I’ve had it with corporation tee shirts, sports radio, Ted Cruz, the Great Cheeto in Chief, the oil and gas lobby, Ax deodorant, Big Pharma television advertising, other peoples fuchsia hair, bad tattoos, New York Yankees hats, BMW convertibles, slick supersonic info wars.

I’ve had it with congress which I won’t capitalize. It rhymes with emptiness.

I’ve had it with the pope the army the endomorphic police state, Vladimir Putin, Teresa May, all the little diapered Nazis who salute the Great Cheeto; I’ve had it with misogynistic rap, Diet Coke, school boards, free hotel breakfasts, cable news, the National Football League, the NCAA, single issue politics, flag worshipers, Monsanto, border walls, nuclear power, and dollar shave clubs. If it costs you, don’t shave.

I love Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison, rain at night, baseball, the Bill of Rights, and sailboats.

Thank you for listening.

ABOUT: Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a University Professorship in Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey is now available for pre-order:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound.org

(Photo picturing the cover of Stephen Kuusisto’s new memoir “Have Dog, Will Travel” along with his former guide dogs Nira (top) and Corky, bottom.) Bottom photo by Marion Ettlinger 

Of course I found a spoon in the snow

While missing you, gulls above the harbor

Baltic yellow mid day mid winter light

A policeman talked softly to his horse

I was proud of my new wristwatch 

Cheap but Swiss made

Being of the scholar class

It was a totem thrill on my wrist

You my brother my twin 

Gone in infancy who followed 

And follow—listen

I’m sewing together 

A seahorse like the one

We rode in the womb

Coffee steaming 

Metempsychosis of thought

Life after life

North window

Deer nibble apples

By God it all makes sense