What The...Furious Jumping?

 

I don’t want to be cured to watch a movie, indeed if the unimaginable happens, I might waste the first few days taking showers and changing clothes just because I might do it unimpeded, and, speaking of doing things unimpeded, I might spend a few months after that waiting out the incubation period of something or other.

I don’t want to be cured to watch a movie, but there are definitely times when I think my disability messes with my interpretation of the viewing experience.  Like when I thought for the longest time that Betty Draper had multiple sclerosis instead of January Jones being kind of a bad actress that “Mad Men” didn’t want to write for, okay, so that is a bad example, but there are times I wish I didn’t have to bring the kind of baggage that makes “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” into a sort of horror movie. 

Sometimes I wish I could have sat there with my Coke and have been like “Interesting challenge, creating a character who is, like, pure id,” or whatever the true goal was at the beginning of “Poor Things” was supposed to be that I didn’t see the same way at all because I, too, have a giant file on me that causes more pain than it ever relieves.(Though I’m not sure how many women, disabled or not, who read about crime as much as I could see in prostitution a path to solvency, adventure, and self-discovery—we could wish that for them, I suppose. Maybe “sex work” is, though.)

Even if I hadn’t ended up liking the movie in the end, it was nice to see something that cared about the script and wasn’t all wrapped up in franchise potential and selling happy meals   .(Would almost like to see those—might end movie merchandising  for a generation for little Timmy to try to collect all the pig-goats, hee  hee!)  I really did like the joy it took in human appetites, too. Nice for a change. I’m glad I hung in with this one, even if mutilation metaphors kind of cloud my spirits. Not as much as being the  true focus of attention at the “Marijuana can mess up your baybeez!1” movie freshman year of high school, though—I try to be over that, and I am really, truly not, especially that my contemporary reaction was “My god, I’m nowhere near that ugly…am I?”

 

Didn't Quite Finish "Turn: Washington's Spies"

 before it left Netflix, but the Revolutionary-War drama provided as close to a binge-watch as your Bohemian Crip is most likely to attempt.  Generally, it's about the journey, people, though maybe I wish I'd started on this one a bit faster.

Relevant to our interests here, however is the revelation that some of Benedict Arnold's bitterness was related to a battlefield disability sustained while taking big risks.  He was very intrepid, and in his way, an early self-advocate, saving his own leg from the then-customary field amputation, at the cost of a painful and lengthy recovery. Not sure if this counts as *good* representation as between the treachery and the bitterness, General  Arnold...essentially laid down an historical basis/template for every comic-book villain, ever, but I think it's important to remember that, although what we might face is new, disability has been present throughout time.(and maybe we haven't had the full story about him, it's true.)

Nobody Should Ask Me Process Questions...

 I got a big inspiration yesterday while being sick.(Really tired of putting the "retch" in "Inkstained Wretch") But maybe it helped me simplify my vision.

"Maybe They Just Boned, Adrian."

 

My continued search for meaning through exploring my diagnosis has slowed a bit. Probably a modern-day Thoreau would have some thoughts about quests undertaken via Facebook, but I'll spare you. What did I expect? Cheat codes?(Not exactly, but kind of, I think. Sigh...) Feels weird that I don’t have a faction in a Persistent Internet Argument but I don’t feel such overweening pride in my disabled identity that I wouldn’t switch it, but I don’t have loads of abled dreams, anymore. Only a few times since high school. It’s lonely not to have a side, in addition to not answering any deep-seated questions, even when I wasn't sure what I was really looking for, anyway.  Such a habit to be disappointed I don't have it, though.  When in doubt, play the hits! And, no, no rotation of new, instant internet besties, much less(heh, heh) a...lid...for my...um, pot.)

I suppose it’s not unusual that thinking about my life would make me remember a documentary, but instead of “Crip Camp” or something like that,I’m reminded of a moment in the Adrian Grenier documentary A Shot In The Dark. If you haven’t seen it, the actor/director drives across country, from maybe Brooklyn to New Mexico, to see the father that he never met. His friends are patient with his cosmic side, all of his musings about the confluence of factors that brought his parents together(Maybe more likely as an actor who won the appearance lottery) but it’s a long trip so his female  friend ends up rolling her eyes and saying “Maybe they just boned. Adrian.”

Maybe CP is just an accident,too.. I can't decide if that would make me sad or free me up.

I wish I didn't want to take the next decade or so and put it in a box labelled "Free To A Good Home"  .

Help Out A Friend of a Friend...

 Help Kay Fight Cancer

I get a lot of mutual-aid requests, but I consider my friend to be an unimpeachable source, so it's important to help with this one. Apparently, Kay was a hero to someone when they were desperate.(Isn't that an energy we need to feed now?) Someone like that deserves someone like that.(And a better health system, too, but I don't have that much Crip Magic.) 

Why do People Even WANT Pity?

 a question I know I've returned to frequently, especially as regarding the illness- fabulist topic.  I watched Scamanda this week, which I thought I'd already seen, because I confused her with the faker on-staff with "Grey's Anatomy"(Which I'm not exactly a fan of, but I watched the reruns over lunch one summer and enjoyed them enough to be a bit jealous of both that chance, but even more than the writer's room dream, which hasn't quite faded as much as  my childhood fantasy of coming back as a macaw.) But also, I'd love to have my life experience respected, instead of feeling like I'd better invent a seated version of stuff other girls get.(For me, it's mostly not been like that, but neither does the traffic part when I roll by, either.)

Maybe I'm kind of a bad person, I think, if not the same kind of bad person that gets vaguely aroused during "Killer Couples" because, though I do know that, for every one of these scammy gals, there are probably a thousand families struggling and white-knuckling and  losing out. Volunteer coordinators tearing their hair out(those that aren't waiting for it to grow back for other reasons-- because nobody thinks cancer patients are real anymore.(And I do care about that, I promise you, but part of me watches wondering why I don't "pull" as a charity case beyond an occasional spot in line. Are big *blue* eyes less emotional than brown? I would never, ever, do that, but I do wonder what I would do with a tenth of their chutzpah. Maybe I'd be truly happy right now. I was an audacious child, and spent class time fighting to be right as if I was on some game show "Who Wants To Be In The Middle Class?" perhaps, but I didn't exactly win, and at some point, people kind of took me aside and told me it was unbecoming.  which it probably was, but finding that out did a number on my confidence that I'm still trying to make up for.

What I think is that pity feels more like being spit on than a warm bath to luxuriate in.I wonder, "Am I bad at this?" Even though I'm not dying and my mother would slap the color out of my cheeks if I leaned in for the handouts the way these people seem to do. Sometimes I don't feel as connected and committed *to my real disabled life* as these women are to these scams.  Sometimes I think they won't get true justice until they get injured or truly sick...does that mean I think this is a punishment?  Sometimes.

Sometimes, when I sign my own paperwork for my permanent condition, I have the tiniest urge to look over my shoulder as if this isn't real.  (It may not be fatal, but it's WAY real. )

Crossposted from Dreamwidth...

Urban Dandelion 

I am slightly worried it is too passive, but the more strident attempt was also too unfocused. Also, you know, I feel for Norma Rae, but I can't BE her, right? And, you know, being Gen X means never being far from a voice in my head that says "Fucking poser," and doesn't mean it as a compliment  to my social-media savvy or brand ID.

Can't say I always love my brain, even if it weren't obviously damaged in shipping, but I am kind of loving that I can take a thought and a picture I didn't know I had yesterday and make it into something I'm even halfway proud to share.

And my own Afeni might even like that there's a plant in it.