Planet of the Blind

By Andrea Scarpino

I don’t think of myself as an optimistic person. I smile more than I should (a counselor friend in college used to tell me I have “inappropriate affect”), but I don’t believe the world is an inherently good place or that situations generally turn out for the best. I have far too many counterexamples to prove otherwise. 

 

But since my visit to the Mayo Clinic and completing my mindfulness course, I’ve been working hard on how I see the world around me, on how I react to stressful situations, on how I respond to people who seem hell-bent on being jerks. Buddhists will tell you that you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to what happens to you. Meditation instructor Sally Kempton puts it this way: “You always have a choice about how you think or behave.” 

 

In taking on that philosophy, though, I’ve found that I also take on an incredible amount of responsibility for every thought, for every word I speak. If I always have a choice, then I have to assign myself some blame when I choose poorly, when I assume the worst in a colleague, for example, when I lash out at my mother on the phone, when I’m less-than-polite with a customer service representative. 

 

Which leads me to this challenge: every day for the month of September, I am going to try to choose happiness. Not choose to be happy—I’m not optimistic enough to go that far. But choose to see happiness around me, to see my life as filled with happiness in many small and large ways. And I’m going to tweet every day the happiness I choose. And because I am new at this, I’m inviting everyone I know to do the same (#choosinghappiness). Why not spend a month trying to choose happiness and see where that takes us? Why not find support in the happiness of those around us? 

 

Maybe this is just positive psychology mumbo jumbo, maybe just spiritual hooey magic—I’m certainly open to both possibilities. But research in neuroscience, biology, psychology tells us that the brain can be rewired, that stress can be reduced through mindfulness practice, that we can create much of our experience of the world. So why not try to create an experience filled with happiness? 

 

Beyond optimism or pessimism, beyond any religious or academic doctrine, I am a follower of the poet Nazim Hikmet. Because of his work, I live with an understanding that “This earth will grow cold,/a star among stars/and one of the smallest.” Because of his work, I “grieve for this right now.” But also because of his work, I live “without looking for something beyond and/above living.” Because of his work, I want to “take living so seriously/that even at seventy, for example, you will plant olives.” Every day this month, then, I dedicate myself to seeing the olive trees. To planting olives.

 

Dear Allies,

 

This Guide,   The Thoughtful Voter’s Guide to Same-Sex Marriage: A Tool for the Decided, the Undecided and the Genuinely Perplexed,  was written by David Morris to provide all of us with a tool to distribute to those who are (a) advocates for, (b) confused about, (c) organizing to secure universal marriage rights.  Some people are having the booklet printed and are distributing it as paper text.  Some are using it electronically.  Many are doing both.  We hope you will take the initiative to get it into the hands (or before the eyes) of everyone you know, but especially those in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington, all of which have constitutional amendments on the issue on this November’s ballot.

 

Thank you for doing all that you can to ensure that marriage becomes a true commons, available to all equally.

 

Toward equality and with love,

 

Harriet Barlow

 

–after Lars Gustafson

 

I often walk about saying I’m in equilibrium, saying that everything balances,

and I have a little song on my lips, and though its imperfect

it is mine–a forest ditty with words from the age of home made harps.

Of my singing I can say very little, it’s a quiet means of standing

and in this I am not joking. I whisper and murmur 

hold and guess, pause at windows

trying a song of penitence before glass.

If there was more to my life I would say so. 

I wake in the morning, sleep at night, my song unvarying.

When neighbors come they do not hear my singing,

but I’m working toward peace, softest words on my tongue, 

in equilibrium, letting the sadnesses drift

and only I and the dogs can hear them.  

 

Dear Id: I have just now stepped off the train. I have raised the flag of metaphor beside the painful river of waking. I am standing in tall weeds. 

 

At the outer limits of phenomenology there’s a terrible freedom. I am wearing my soulful little eyeglass frames. 

I am speechless upon learning that two undergraduate students who are friends of mine are respectively having problems with their academic institutions because they need accommodations for their disabilities. Owing to the sensitive nature of their stories, and the unresolved problems each is having I will not say more. But their stories prove once again just how far Higher Ed still needs to go even some twenty plus years after the Americans with Disabilities Act. In each case there are sub-altern administrators involved, and in each case they’ve been permitted to occupy bureaucratic positions without any cognizance of the law. Amazing. And trust me, each of these young men is attending a name brand institution. I’m aghast. Flabbergasted I assure you.

 

"Partisan politics, so wrapped up in creating an antagonism between capitalism and government, misses the point. If we are to maintain ourselves as a republic, certain foundational principles of a republic must be upheld regardless of our economic structures.
They are: popular sovereignty (power to the people, not Wall Street or Washington); resistance to corruption (placing special interests ahead of the common good); a sense of the common good (all those things that we own and hold in common); and most of all
civic duty, citizen responsibility, and citizen participation."

Welcome to the American Republic, Mr. Eastwood

Partisan politics, so wrapped up in creating an antagonism between
capitalism and government, misses the point. If we are to maintain ourselves as a republic, certain foundational principles of a republic must be upheld regardless of our economic structures. They are: popular sovereignty (power to the people, not Wall Street
or Washington); resistance to corruption (placing special interests ahead of the common good); a sense of the common good (all those things that we own and hold in common); and most of all civic duty, citizen responsibility, and citizen participation. Mr.
Eastwood, being a dramatist, could have made quite a discussion with that chair concerning these qualities and whether we all, not just the president, live up to them. The convention arena would have been even more dumbfounded, doubtless to the point of silence.

 

I want to be the kind of poet who can change seasons at will,

for whom the houses and trees keep affection.

End of day, swallows darting before the owl,

love revealing its true ambitions, 

I want to give celestial kisses to the animals,

to the horse especially

because he too is a philosopher. 

 

 

I try to think, where is my uninhibited side?  Is it attracted to coloratura snippets and therefore has to do with birds? Is it like a Russian chorale, a hundred fragments singing before a mirror? Damned if I know. My louche, unbuttoned, acerbic, free wheeling side pops up all the time. Says what it wants. Says what it wants. Said once: the enemy stars are the same as ours–said it to a military recruiter and why not? And said once to a government agent who was photographing a protest against Ronald Reagan’s involvement with the suppression of freedom in El Salvador: you know there are honest jobs, ones where you can make humble and lasting discoveries. And he of course photographed me.

 

The whole night world was making sense, the way it does 

When Sirius and Venus are low

And September’s wheat sighed in the wind.

I thought of the solo clarinet that Bartok stole 

From Sibelius who stole it from 

The summer weeds—one quick cry.

 

 

Issue Three of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is now online.

 

http://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/issue/current

 

Check it out and share it widely!

 

Featuring:

 

The Construction of the Disabled Speaker: Locating Stuttering in Disability Studies  

Joshua St. Pierre       

 

Paging Dr. Economicus: The Economics of ‘Obesity’ in the Canadian Medical Association Journal    

Angela Eileen Wisniewski

 

Creating a (More) Reflexive Canadian Disability Studies: Our Team’s Account           

Valorie Crooks, Sharon-Dale Stone, Michelle Owen

 

Climate Change, Water, Sanitation and Energy Insecurity: Invisibility Of People With Disabilities   

Gregor Wolbring, Verlyn Leopatra 

 

The “Slow Learner” as a Mediated Construct       

John Williamson, Jim Paul

 

Creation of a Canadian Disability Studies Program: A Convergence of Multiple Pathways    

Irene Carter, Donald R. Leslie, G. Brent Angell, Shelagh Towson, Debra Hernandez Jozefowicz         

 

what is said is: a poetic and oblique re/presentation of disabled women in a Canadian shelter

Nancy Viva Davis Halifax

 

Review: Titchkosky, Tanya and Rod Michalko, Eds. Rethinking Normalcy          .

Morgan Holmes        

 

Review: Murray, Stuart. Autism.     

Sarah Gibbons          

 

Review: Rioux, Marcia H., Lee Ann Basser and Melinda Jones, Eds. Critical Perspectives on Human Rights and Disability Law.    

Morgan Rowe