This blog turns one this week...

Happy birthday!
Still kind of feel like BC has not reached its best potential, but there aren't a lot of anniversaries in my life.  I am sticking to it better than in my last attempt, though.
Thanks for staying on this ride with me...no matter what your mobility level, nobody has to come in through the secret door in the back.

Weltschmertz...

a lot of the pain in my life that doesn't come from ableism comes from people not being who I thought they were.(it's happened before and will happen again, both because my corner of the world is pretty small, and because I think it's awfully late in the game to pretend I'm a rugged individualist)
This also means the typical advice of either a. physical exercise or2. focus on things you know you control...is not very useful. Unfortunately.

 Even if I were still more the questing type, self-help and spirituality books, despite their other flights of vision, such as thousands-year-old spirit guides and the like, tend to treat disability as the stitch in the rug that is dropped to show it's made by human hands...a sign of human frailty...a message from the universe that just says "Oops!" Which probably feels deep as hell if you haven't just spent twelve dollars (again) for a little perspective only to read that God, still, doesn't make junk or what-have-you.(if I fall for this again, it would be my fault, not theirs.)  Would love to see a crip get her life together enough to write a self-help book.  It is painfully clear that I will never be that person, however much I entertain myself with the thought of a Wire companion book and advice manual called, say "This Ain't Aruba, Bitch."

Anatomy of a Stereotype...

Even if I somehow wanted to live the disability stereotype(why would I? No real reason, except not having to be confounding every day…there might be a certain ease in being what people expect.) I couldn’t do it. 

Because I’d have to be weak yet determined, mature enough to work, yet childish enough to never want a tongue in my mouth.  Assertive(with everyone else but you) but also willing to dispense highly personal information with the sleek volubility of one of those recorded buttons at the museum. Not vain or immodest, but intensely comforted by having strangers examine me as one of life’s urban curiosities. The stereotype is friendly and secure, but still always looking for direction, excited by life, but willing to place its nose against the window glass and watch the real people, the able people, have the real fun and chances in life.Pity is a relationship, right? The stereotype tries to believe.

It is smart enough to maybe go to class with you, but pliant enough not to want to be the best at anything. It often aches, but doesn’t say anything so that you don’t offer it “special treatment” and it gets really psyched by the thought that if you take its picture from the shoulders up that “you can barely tell.”It is perfectly fine with its secret grotesque ugliness that both other people and it smile and dance around a lot. The stereotype has funny complaints, but it never really gets bothered. Maybe sometime one of the other stereotypes, Soccer Moms, or Security Dads, will take it to the polls, but the stereotype focuses on the tiny dot of its home and family and the moment When Everything Changed

Five Things That Aren't Right

1.       It’s not right that, despite not living in a warzone(either foreign or domestic) I have known so many people that have died.On a related note, though, it’s not right that, with all the therapy, I found out about “survivor’s guilt” from early episodes of Rescue Me.

2.       It’s not right to wonder if survivor’s guilt applies because your traumatic birth came with slightly less of a timebomb attached than some of your school friends’.But I do feel badly that I haven’t been able to use my stamina to make things more awesome.

3.       It’s not right that I know six people with life-sustaining GoFundMe fundraisers. It’s not right that one of my friends died without his attendant-services goal coming to fruition.

4.       It’s not right that people write in the comments of successful fundraisers that “this proves we don’t need the government”(No, the opposite is true.)Sometimes I wonder if we are patching something that shouldn’t be, but I don’t want to leave people hanging, if I can help it.Sometimes I do, but I don’t have a lot of money either so I do have to choose.

5.       Not being able to be psyched about women running for president because I feel so divorced from capital A-Accomplishment that it feels like it has nothing to do with me.

Never really thought of writing as a thing for the rich...

exactly, perhaps too much Carver worship in college(also being, like, the living proletariat in some of the women's groups I used to hang with) but I can't help noticing the cottage-industry aspects here. I just found out there are people who charge for racial-sensitivity beta-reads and such.(Shame on the people complaining most vociferously about this on FB today...maybe you are the reasons we don't have nice things.) Being racially sensitive is the right thing to do, and I hope it gets beyond a trend to real understanding and reflection of a variety of perspectives in art.

However, I am beginning to hate the sense every newsgroup and publication and whatever  has that caring about your creative work means that you have both art-student friends and "a few hundred dollars" to throw at your cover(I spent birthday money on a beta read and line-edits once...would never skimp on line-edits...too many e-books, in particular, go out looking like shit and I don't want to join the brigade. I also provided a friend with a side job when she needed it, but I think she's doing something else now.) But, then it's like "Boring cover letter? For just *two hundred American dollars*, I, a stranger with a blurb in all the writing advice mags, can help you stop being a windbag(or, if you're too shy, sell yourself like you're on Van Buren after midnight) I thought about paying too because maybe her advice was good, right?

 But maybe she's ableist and we spend the whole of my paid-for correspondence talking about my being "wedded to the whole wheelchair thing" or something, in which case it would have been like being swindled by an artistic sweetheart scam(this may not be true...I never even talked to this woman, but I have occasionally run into that kind of mindset outside of the class strata where people might expect it, so just paypalling money into(let's say) Connecticut wouldn't completely ease my fears. Then, there are conferences, which I can't get to, but would get me some sweet agent eye contact for 5, 6, 7, hundred.(yeah, dream on.)
I wonder if that's why some people get so intense about rejections...well, between that and the epic lack of personal contact, or indeed, any sense that anyone ever looks at the piles of formatted homework required by both magazines and agents alike these days, but add money in, and it seems way too serious. No wonder reading how many times someone passed on "The Help" is no longer the cure for what ails in the same way that that whole fable about "Confederacy of Dunces" cheered us as undergrads. Which is really kind of a sick extension of every twenty-year-olds yearning to tell the disbelieving guidance counselor to suck it, but worse, because Toole's mother got all the love after he was dead by his own hand, so I'm not sure that's a vindication myth we're looking for, even those of us with our own unstoppable mothers.
Maybe I could trade a crip-read with somebody? It's a thought...

Going back to the drawing board...

is never fun, especially after the last article you wrote  someplace landed right in a wheelhouse that you built somewhat accidentally. But it's really unfun for a disability topic as the same searches always come up: benefits lawyers, devices, and the like.

Researching a new article.., but got distracted...

trying to answer the other million little questions that come to mind in the course of day's living.Good to know that no lesser org than the BBC found that "Disabled people face barriers using common household gadgets,"although this one found another one when her Yank self couldn't watch the video.  D'oh! Still somewhat affirming though, that I'm not just writing about me.(Also, I am a pain in the butt and attempted to start a twitter dialogue with the disability beat reporter there...will let you know when and if he responds. Would we like having a for-real disability beat in this country, or would it just compound media mistakes? Can't decide for myself...what do you think?)

Man, there are a lot of sodastream flavors...who says I can't make plans for the future anymore? Curremt favorite is lime and lemon together.
Looked up Spanish-language conversation groups for my goal to get phonebank ready in 2020... there are a lot, but they are not exactly close.  which would be a pain if I could drive--pretty limiting since I can't. Found myself wondering what it would be like to hear about a new place without worrying that  I couldn't get in or out or get seated in the sunken dining room...see what inspiring stuff abled people miss? I also thought this place was more centrally located, but what I really need is something like Springfield(either soap opera or Simpsons) with a little bit of everything not far away.