Planet of the Blind

Of or Pertaining to Neruda

In the garden of earthly delights

Where sumac and cinnamon ferns

Exhaled like birds or animals

Where odors of humus and granite

Seemed things one could live on

I saw myself

Walking for the long, mineral

Chain gang of the dead,

As if there among the trees

They had elected me to live

On their behalf, upright, lonely,

Oddly bruised,

But walking swiftly

The live one who carries inside him

The carved Russian dolls

Of all the dead.

I went alone in the late October night

Toward a copse where the last sun

Streamed through branches,

A caprice of twilight,

Walked with my head up,

Shoulders squared

Like any living person

without a proper country

& who in turn

Hears the live one

And the dead ones

In the poor drums of his shoes.

S.K.

What Double Standard Are Yu For?

What Double Standard Are You For?

One can find over at Lance Mannion http://lancemannion.typepad.com/ some of the most trenchant writing about the decadent anti-feminist and racist symbolism that’s being employed by McCain-Palin as this presidential campaign enters the home stretch.

Decadence as a literary term means the adoption of old ideas and manners—the trotting out of tired material. Writers who do this hope to God that their readers will be sufficiently uninformed about literary history that they’ll fail to notice the mediocrity of the enterprise.

Lance Mannion, being a literary writer, sees how the McCain-Palin crew is working the engines of decadence for all their worth. I particularly like Lance’s observation that by associating Obama with the Weathermen—a radical group that most Americans probably can’t remember, the McCain campaign hopes to implant the idea that Obama is a direct descendant of one of those other “hard to remember” groups from the 60’s—the Black Panthers. You see the drift. If you’re using decadence and your audience likes it well you can just employ as much phoney symbolism as you like. There’s no bottom to that ditch.

Lance’s most recent posts are the best things I’ve seen on this nauseating and dangerous enterprise.

In the meantime I find myself growing more alarmed and humorless by the day. Last night I watched with horror as Minnesota Republican RepresentativeMichelle Bachmann asserted on the Chris Matthews Show that liberals in Congress should all be investigated to determine whether they are supporters of

America

. See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/

Fascism relies on decadence both in art and in its symbolism. In turn I’d like to suggest the re-application of the dunking stool for Rep. Bachmann.

S.K.

Graffiti

Sometimes when I sit in a dull meeting

I think of my deathbed

But strangely enough

I do so without sentiment—

I was always sub-rosa

Like tea in a glass;

Whispered, savored alone;

That’s what it is, I think

To be graphein of body

A jigger’s worth of mind …

S.K.

The TruthAbout Sarah Palin and Special Needs

AlaskaDuring last night’s presidential debate John McCain repeated one of the oft-pronounced assertions of his campaign: namely that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be a great supporter of special needs children should their ticket be elected. IN point of fact Gov. Palin has a woeful record of budget slashing for educational programs for kids with disabilities in Alasaka

For more information on this matter check out this post on MOMocrats.

I am perhaps too sentimental when it comes to old fashioned images of horse drawn sleighs and farmhouses decorated for Christmas but my sensibilities as a disability rights advocate are sorely abused by the kinds of falsehoods that John McCain and Sarah Palin are employing by suggesting that the Alaska governor is a genuine disability rights advocate. Nothing is so false as this canard and I point it out because this claim by the McCain team uses disability as a “feel good” opportunity—and alas the good feelings are entirely unwarranted.

S.K.

Don't Hold Your Breath for Human Rights

What does it mean to witness if you’re an artist? IN the 1980’s the poet Carolyn Forche associated the craft of poetry with the political act of becoming a moral witness. Forche’s work in the arts of poetry and political witnessing lead her to edit an important anthology of political poetry which remains the standard volume on the matter.

I remain troubled by the absence of moral conversation in our current presidential campaign. IN fact it’s possible I think to view the antics of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a kind of anti-witnessing. She has recently been attacking Senator Barack Obama for having raised the issue of our military’s frequent involvement in incidents that have led to civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Obama was citing the U.S. military’s own findings that suggest that a lack of troops on the ground in Afghanistan has caused the U.S. to rely on air strikes against suspected Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds. In turn more civilians are killed than might otherwise be the case.

Senator Obama’s assertion was not unpatriotic or "anti-military" as Sarah Palin has loudly claimed, but rather an assessment drawn from our own top military leaders. It is fair I think to remind ourselves that in general terms the U.S. military does not like to kill innocent people. If you are on the left you may well laugh at my assertion; if you’re on the right you will quite possibly sneer at anything the military has to say—after all, that’s what the past 8 years have been about eh bien?

And so in this instance I am a witness to a mealy mouthed and unethical attack by Sarah Palin on the decency of our own military. And as seems to be the case so often, she is willing to confuse the messenger and the message for political gain while ignoring the real human rights issues.

And that’s my point of course: there have been no human rights issues in this campaign. I’m not holding my breath that we’ll hear about human dignity and freedom tonight.

S.K.

How Many Stories Am I Holding Up?

The film "Blindness" which is now in theaters offers the latest instance of what scholars David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have called "narrative prosthesis" where in effect, disability is used as an artificial device to help what is otherwise a weak story line.

Blindness remains a frightening disability in no small measure because the literal condition, the disruption of the physical eye is invested with outworn symbolism that still resides in what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called the cultural subconscious. People may know next to nothing about eye diseases but they know deep in their bones that there’s something suggestive and darkly portentious about the blind.

In literature and film the blind have often functioned as a form of narrative prosthesis: their presence in the story is designed to deflect the reader’s attention from the fact that the narrative is essentially uninteresting. Stevenson’s "Blind Pew" is a classic example of the technique. Aside from evil blind figures there are hundreds of stories in which a blind man or woman is victimized. Never mind that blind people are no more likely to be victimized than anyone else–the imagined scenario is all that matters. Fear sells a bad story every time a strong imagination isn’t doing the typing.

For more information about how the blind community is responding to the film visit this excellent link at the American Council of the Blind:

http://www.acb.org/press-releases/press-release_Blindness_the-movie.html

There are of course real lives in the balance. As I have said many times previously on this blog the unemployment rate for the blind remains unacceptably high in the United States and around the world. The film "Blindness" or the execrable novel that birthed it are guilty of false disability figuration–aesthetic choices that can only further harm real people.

S.K.

Note It in the Log

Just moments after the R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg Captain Edward Smith told first officer Murdoch to "note it in the log"—a command that presumably linked the idea of posterity alongside the written word. & of course the Titanic’s log went down with the ship.

"Note it in the log" is such a serious tip of the hat to faith. Write a sonnet. Someone will be around ages hence to read it.

Where do sonnets reside? In books. & books live in the libraries. & libraries depend on funding. & funding depends on the global economy.

Note it in the log

& I saw no difference between the right wing of the GOP as its membership sought to derail the bailout of Wall Street & their disdain for books. They’re all so busy imagining the rapture they don’t have time for sonnets or your child’s education or anything that might look like the future. Of course they’ll say they don’t think the government should save private capital. But that’s not their real objection to the emergency legislation being debated now in Washington. The ultra ultra right wingers of the Republican party believe this world is mostly toast. They also think they can take their money with them to heaven which of course looks like Dubai.

Note it in the log, Mr. Murdoch.

S.K. .

Essay: Summer Solstice

In the old days at the edge of the Finnish woods my father’s father and in turn, his father

Raked the dry weeds and lit a bonfire but they went about their work so cautiously

One might think they were burdened by superstitions.

& yes they kept a spare coffin in the house, eating off of it, using it for a table.

“In these dark times,” they would say. “In these final days…”

& though my father’s father’s father was a Christian

Though he believed in the life everlasting

Hhe was afraid of willful nature.

& while praying they burned that unused coffin.

& the sun dipped to the dark horizon …

S.K.

The Confession

I wasn’t myself today and without forethought of any kind I walked into the tall grass and lay down. Add gold and acid & I’d have an engraving: Hermes Trismegistus dreaming; Carl Jung on holiday—who knows what to call it…"This isn’t me," I thought. "What kind of person lies in the uncut grass in America? Isn’t lying down a confessionof sorts?"

& I lay there sloped in the odors of vegetation unable to imagine my confession. What had I to confess? My foolishness perhaps but even the god inside me was tired of that story. Autumn & the crickets singing during the day. Autumn; crickets; the god inside me; tall grass; foolishness without conceit; a simple half hour while my country wages war & about that time I sensed that I have said all the prayers I have ever known.

S.K.