Planet of the Blind

Guide dog schools tell a story—its a good one—that blind people become complete when they’re paired with guide dogs. This is a charity narrative, one that appeals to the public and is an incitement to donors. The trouble is its only conditionally true. A dog enriches a blind person’s life in many ways but it doesn’t guarantee independence, freedom, or opportunity. Only the blind man can do that. Only the blind woman. I like to think of a guide dog as a kind of concert master—she tunes the orchestra and to extend the metaphor, the orchestra is the world. When the world is tuned, spiritual disorders are diminished; curiosities are enhanced.

 

One day in the Finnish city of Tampere I walked around with guide dog Vidal having no plan. The real republic rests in having no plan. One may argue this is why there are so few philosophers. But we were plunging headlong into vers la boue—the dirty poetry of life. We stopped at a flower seller’s stall. I bought a rose and put it on Vidal’s harness. We sat on a bench and listened to traffic and laughing children on their ways to school and we felt just fine. Was it always in me to feel just fine? It was always in me. Vidal was my concert master. My optimist. The world is going to sound just fine. 

 

I think this is what a guide dog is. And you, the blind person were always complete. Now you have the symphony to work with. 

 

 

I’m not alone. But my dog tells me I was never alone. That’s the story. Even as a child when I spent whole days by myself there was someone with me. A dog comes in your door. The dog knows there was always a soul inside you. And maybe you are weary of your life; your garments are tattered; the dog sees you for who you are.

 

On a trip to Dallas, Texas where I spoke to a group of physicians about disability, I sat for a long time in my hotel room. Vidal was on the bed snoring. I didn’t know anyone in Dallas and while I’d given a lively talk no one invited me anywhere after the thing was over. I called the concierge, said I wanted a taxi. “Come on, Vidal,” I said, “Let’s go take a dump on the Grassy Knoll!” 

 

The cab drove us to Dealey Plaza. I asked the driver to wait. We walked up the gentle slope, the hill from which every conspiracy theorist believes Lee Harvey Oswald’s fictional accomplice fired a gun. Vidal took a shit. I bagged it and left it near where Zapruder shot his 8 mm home movie. We got back in the cab and returned to the hotel. We caught an earlier flight out of town. 

 

Vidal told me it was the best grass he’d ever had. We weren’t lonely. We weren’t lonely at all. 

 

 

 

 

In Japan blind people can get a guide dog but there are no solid access laws. The blind may or may not be able to go places. Think about that. In America you can go to college if you have a disability but you may or may not get accessible course materials or accessible facilities. Think about that. The will of the unjust has never lacked an engine. (Auden) I know about this. You do too. You wouldn’t read my blog if you didn’t. 

 

The low unflattering voice of resistance has been committed to memory. From kindergarten to graduate school I’ve been told I don’t belong. And you have too. You weren’t fast enough; cute enough; tall enough; white enough; its a long list. Its a long list because division is the agenda of modernity. This is, by the way, why they stopped teaching civics back in the 60’s. “We don’t need no stinking civics!” But back to Japan. There are approximately 4 million people with disabilities in Japan but as Tomoko Otake writes:

 

But where are they? Granted, we see more station elevators, wheelchair-accessible toilets and buses with passenger lifts nowadays. Such facilities are visible, but many people hardly ever encounter those who use them — let alone anyone with non-physical disabilities. In fact, apart from people with disabled family members or friends, most Japanese quite likely live their whole lives without ever interacting with their disabled fellow citizens.

 

Without universal guarantees of access there’s nowhere to go. In Japan you can get a guide dog and stay home. 

 

Although Japan passed a law concerning service animals and access in 2003 it does not extend broad protections. What this means is that going places with a guide dog is “hit or miss”:

 

 

…the law does not yet obligate privately owned housing and places of work, i.e. private company offices, to accept service dogs. This means that people with disabilities are at times forced to choose between getting a service dog and staying with a job, or getting a service dog and staying in a private housing complex. Complaints have been made by service dog users about not being able to apply for certain jobs where company owners refuse to accept the dogs into their offices.

There have also been cases where users have been unable to rent private apartments because of their dogs. The Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Labor has stated that social education, to enhance public awareness of the issue should come before attempts to revise the law.

Full link here

 

In a few short months the International Guide Dog Federation (a worldwide consortium of guide dog schools) will hold its biennial conference in Tokyo from May 10-12. 

 

My question for the IGDF is simple: who will be brave enough to channel the spirit of Morris Frank, the first guide dog user in the United States—who will say what needs to be said regarding freedom to travel? 

 

I’m guessing the IGDF will simply be polite. Who after all wants to embarrass the host?

 

But I went to Japan and saw no blind people. I saw no guide dogs though I did go to a guide dog school and saw a few in cages. 

 

The low, unflattering voice of resistance is one the blind know all about but unfortunately even organized charities—even guide dog schools can further the climate of discrimination. Its in what you say or don’t say.  

At the Miami Book Festival Vidal and I walked around with a poet who had recently returned to the US from Viet Nam. We sat in a Cuban coffee shop and I mentioned causally that I’d love to visit Viet Nam some day. “If you do,” said my friend, “you better leave your dog at home.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because they will eat him,” he said. 

 

As I walked downtown Miami I thought about my circumscribed freedom. Its true: there are lots of places you can’t go with a guide dog. Without civil rights you can’t navigate. Once on a trip to Italy I met all kinds of obstacles—social obstacles. The Italians were not disability “hip” and I encountered restaurant waiters, tour guides, hotel employees, and store owners who were all opposed to my dog. I felt conditional and fragile everywhere I went. My version of Italy is not an able bodied person’s Italy—its a paranoid tippy toe through hostilities. Just try to enjoy the art. 

 

At La Scala, perhaps the world’s most famous opera house, Connie and I and guide dog Corky sat in a luxury box with three patrician women, all strangers. They were disapproving of the dog’s presence. Disapproving of us as foreigners. While we listened to “La Forza del Destino” we were getting “the stink eye” from those bibulous, over-dressed, powdered women. Though I love opera; though it was the dream of a lifetime to go to La Scala, I turned to Connie and said “let’s get out of here.” We scarcely made it through the first act. 

 

You can feel disdain even when you don’t see it with precision.

 

 

 

A lot of writing about service dogs asserts the dogs heal wounded people. That’s a misrepresentation. A man or woman heals herself and additionally, real disabilities don’t go away. What a dog can do is entice you into the world again. You begin to feel better about who you are while walking in sunlight or in rain.

 

Maybe that story isn’t romantic enough. You know, a person returning to daily weather. But that’s what the dogs are thinking. 

 

W. H. Auden wrote: “Evil is unspectacular and always human.” But all dog walks are spectacular and always doggy. When people understand this, they’re animals again. 

 

Today I’m an animal again. 

 

I am happy walking beside a fence where sunlight and shade make a kaleidoscope. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreamt last night I was in a field of talking sun flowers. Really. Woke up thinking that in dreamscapes flowers are seldom detestable. And of course I don’t remember what the dream flowers were saying, only that they were amused—though not as poets are amused—not with the self-congratulatory pleasure of attainment. They were simply flowers that liked growing. It was obviously an anima dream. They stood in peace and there were mountains.

I feel like a child whose Bat Man suit has caught on fire:

its a life without wishing or forgiving. 

So much for boyhood. 

 

Today is a winged affair, with flames. 

“Do you fear others?”

“Yes, but with strict beauty.” 

 

If I make it through this day

I’ll build a shrine to friendship,

assuming I still have hands. 

 

 

 

 

 

Corky and I once met a blind chess master from Russia. We were in Milan being photographed for an advertising campaign. The chess master was also being photographed. There were three blind people altogether—blind writer, blind chess master, blind concert pianist. The gimmick was that we’d appear in magazine spreads extolling the graceful design of Artemide lighting. Even the blind love art. 

 

None of the other blind guys were friendly. 

 

Hell, even the photographer wasn’t friendly. And he was famous for his dog photos. 

 

I wondered if it was possible to photograph dogs without really liking them. I’d never thought about this before but being in the presence of Eliot Erwitt made me think about it. Yes I think you can photograph dogs without liking them at all. Erwitt’s dog photos are oddly lifeless while William Wegman’s photos are full of joy. Even the blind love photos. 

I dreamt I was in Russia. Something had happened—a foreign exchange program “gone bad” as I was not permitted to leave. Worse, they took my guide dog. In dreams when you cry the floodgates open. I wept and wept. 

 

They put me in a building, gave me a little apartment. There was a piano in the lobby. There were a dozen blind people all playing chess. 

 

Dear Lord Byron, may I stay home in my imagination—

I’m not as stoic as you, if they took away your dog 

you’d swim the Bosporus, endure conflagrations

all to get him back. I sat before a tuneless piano

and blindly played “Stormy Weather”

with tears running down my face.

The blind chess masters moved their pieces and said nothing. 

 

   

I try to be good. My dog deserves my attention to respectability, or at least the pursuit of it. I imagine I should be Siddhartha of the guide dog world. I tell myself I must be as good as my dog. But I fail. I feed Corky a strawberry while sitting in a Manhattan hotel lobby. I say ungentlemanly things to people I don’t like, much in the manner of Groucho Marx. “I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse,” I say to a pompous academic at a conference. I’m certain Corky would not approve. This is a problem. I mustn’t let her canine decency represent my own sad, Lutheran conscience. Nor should she be an impossible “master” in a Buddhist temple. “No projections, please,” she says, looking me over as we ride the subway to Grand Central Station. “You be you,” she says, “and I’ll be me.” “In this way we’re perfect.” 

 

But I’m a rascal—I’ve always been a rascal. Perhaps not in a hysterical way, but with a steady irreverence. As a boy I used to feed caramels to the squirrels just to see them chew with developing terror. That was the extent of my animal cruelty. But I should be clear, I’ve had trouble holding things sacred. I once stole a bishop’s mitre from a church and wore it to a party.

  

Oh yes my dog is good. She’s probably too good for me. But the great thing is she doesn’t think so. She doesn’t think so at all. 

 

At the MacDowell Colony for the Arts in New Hampshire, Corky climbs on my bed and licks my ear just when I’m feeling like a failure. Most writers will tell you they feel like failures at least once a day. There you are, in the unlighted alley of your depressive imagination, and voila, a canine tongue enters your ear. “To hell with Siddhartha,” she says.