Deli(ght)

Taken at Carson St. Deli.

cocktail / clementines

Taken at home.

liminality / compassion

So this blog is going to turn into The White Cane Diaries for awhile. You know you wanna read it.

Being partially blind, but having been mainstreamed as a child to rely on my residual vision exclusively for way-finding, has always made me feel liminal. When I was in grad school at OSU, a place of much disability pride, I used the white cane for three years. Not that I didn't have angst, loneliness, etc. But I felt held up by comrades in arms, so to speak, even when they weren't literally with me, so I could do it more easily.

When I moved back to Pittsburgh, I stopped using the cane. Initially, I told myself it was because I knew Pittsburgh well --even though I was moving into a neighborhood which I had never lived in, and it totally flipped my internal map of the city around. A strong underlying reason, which I realized later, was because I didn't have my comrades any more. I spent a long time really mourning them, I think, without realizing that's what I was sad about. I still miss them.

But now that I'm white-caning full time, I might say I have never felt so liminal as I do now. Whip the cane out, I am one person. Put it away, I'm another. Not to myself, but to everyone else who sees me but doesn't know me. And even, I have to say, to some people who do know me.

The transition between non-use and full-time use, while it has happened physically, is still happening in my brain. It's still happening, as A. would say, energetically. I am of two worlds. No, I am my own unique world. But that makes me feel alone, to think that. Which is it? I was never comfortable with grey area.

Sometimes I walk outside and feel so sad and incredibly flawed that I can't look at other people and can't bear them looking at me. This was even when not using the cane.

This sad-flawed feeling would sometimes cause me to respond with anger, either internally or externally, to strangers who tried to talk to me. Often I thought / think : this isn't Peoria. Why do you feel you have to talk to me? Go talk to someone you know. OR. Many times the "talking" was actually guys hassling me. You know what I'm talking about.

[SIDE NOTE: The rest of this blog post concerns strangers who are male. I don't discuss strangers who are female here because our interactions are different. I have extreme social anxiety with strangers of both genders, but this thread here than I'm pursuing is male.]

Pre-cane : The guys who I might actually want to talk to have enough of a functioning superego to refrain from making comments as I pass by, or engage in conversations overtly designed to pick me up and for no other reason.

But now, post-cane : I have actually not been hassled by the guys with the non-functioning superegos yet. I think either it's only been a week; give it time or at last! with an obvious disability I'm too ugly for you to be a jerk to. 

Instead I have had several interactions, instead, with guys who do NOT seem completely deranged, unhinged, strung out, or unaware of the basic rules of hygiene. Not that I didn't have these interactions before, but there's a lot of them crowded into a short period of time.

[SIDE NOTE: It occurs to me that people who drive their cars everywhere might not experience this phenomenon. Most of these interactions, bad and good, happen when I am in transit. Sometimes, during one of my sad-flawed days, I am seethingly jealous of people who can drive. The blissful isolation. The power to be alone.]

Anyway, these guys. The things they say. The way they say them.

[At coffee] : Pardon me, if you don't mind my saying, I really love that tattoo. Can I ask where you got it? I wanted one similarly done (exposes his own beautiful tattoo on forearm) but you can see they didn't do the lines like yours... 

[On a super-crowded bus, a pale, gaunt, chipped black nail polish hand extends to me out of a crowd] : ma'am, we have arranged a seat for you.

[At my usual bus stop, at the edge of departing my neighborhood. I'm on the sidewalk, guy in car, who does not overtly display the signifiers of crazy or creepy asks] : do you want a ride down? 

I have now encountered the challenge of being kind. To male strangers who are being kind to me. Not grabby, pushy, or throwing their weight around.

Guy 1: I'd never previously encountered a guy who asked about my ink in such a kind way, period. I was disarmed enough to have a complete three minute conversation with him.

Guy 2: Internal: WTF, "ma'am?" how old am I now? do you think I'm feeble? External: [Eye contact. Big smile.] That is so sweet; thank you.

Guy 3: Internal: Do you think I'm insane enough to get in the car with you when you might be an axe-murderer or something? Does this cane make you think you have an extra-strong chance at axe-murdering me?! External: [Smile. Wave.] No thanks, I'm good. 

I hear N.'s voice in my head : compassion for others starts with compassion for the self. I'm trying.

chocolate / acts of negotiation

Goals for today: go to the ghetto market (I'm not including the name; I apologize to anyone if it offends you that I repeat this phrase) to pick up chocolate that I have a coupon for sometimes I go to the schmancy chocolatier and sometimes I go to the ghetto market to get the chocolate I have a coupon for, send out more poems to journals, buy a nicer french press than the tiny travel one I have now I need to brew more than 16 oz. at a time dammit, and read / annotate the Joanne Kyger poems for tomorrow's class.

So far accomplished. Ghetto market. It was the first stop down the hill, so to speak. As I've mentioned, I've been using the white cane full time now. Yesterday, while discussing the integration of this piece of my identity into the whole with A., I had a full-on freak out. She let me go into the studio a sacred space and do yoga for an hour until I calmed myself down.

One of the first lessons I learned after beginning my sessions with A. --she does massage therapy / energy work -- some years ago now, was how to make my aura big, so to speak.

To paraphrase A.'s words as I remember then from that time: there used to be this practice in energy work, where practitioners would encourage their clients to create a sort of force field around themselves to protect themselves from fear and harm. But that is now seen as old school. The best way to protect yourself no that is not the right words,  perhaps "allow oneself to fully be present in the world is to be radically open. So open that others cannot deny you your space.

I stumbled yesterday, mentally, emotionally, when I realized I would have to re-learn this lesson SO HARD TO LEARN... but with the cane now. Every time someone comes toward me on the street, I am negotiating a way-of-being with them.

I decided this morning that I would give myself permission to, once I was on the perimeter of the street surrounding the ghetto market, that I would fold up the cane and blend in. The ghetto market it being a) ghetto and b) a market is one place that causes me to want to blend in, not draw attention to myself.

However when I approached the ghetto market, using the cane felt so natural and seamless that I did not put it away until I was pretty close to the entrance. Which is where I would put the cane away naturally, when entering just about any building except the airport / train / bus station.

And then when I exited, I took extra time in the lobby to pack up my crap just so and I immediately starting using my cane as I exited the building. Just as I would any other building.

So, that happened. And I wanted to make a note of it.

Might as well call it neurotica

[just ocd thoughtfragments, not poem]

I am freaking out about bugs
specific bugs
glossy black
three lobes
legs
feelers
mandibles
wood eaters
the shower
wherein this morning
Mike found
a silverfish
he stoically dealt with
the silverfish

SILVERFISH

my coffee is rich and frothy
my skin vibrates right off my body
I tune into
tv shows
about disasters
bridge collapse
train
folds into itself
kills a small village
subway tunnel
on fire : to a living corpse
dancing in a puddle
of flaming diesel
a silverfish
would not seem like much

Spotted Crow

Cane Coming-Out Day

So I've been trying to integrate the long white cane back into my life. When I lived in Columbus, it was easier to do so. There was so much disability awareness around campus, and well, campus and its adjacent neighborhoods made up most of the parts of the city I hung around in. In Pittsburgh it is not as easy, especially in my neighborhood. People are free with their comments. Sometimes (most of the time) I don't want to be noticed for my cane, or to be a one-woman disability education-service (e.g. "Not all people who use a cane are completely blind...")

But the cane needs to come back. I'm just safer when using it, not only at night, but in the rain, in bright sunlight... lots of lighting and terrain conditions are made easier for me when I use it. Also, cars and people tend to stay out of my way. It's taxing to my identity though. I can't "pass" any more. So yesterday there was supposed to be this really cool reading / talk at Pitt about / from the Beauty is a Verb anthology. I was so stoked to perhaps meet Jennifer Bartlett (if I was lucky) and to maybe have her sign my book (double lucky) and to maybe even have a five-minute conversation with her (triple-extra lucky). With this emotional energy bolstering me, I vowed that yesterday would be Cane Coming Out day. Kind of like the opposite of cold turkey. I was going to give a big push to my psyche and just start using it. Every day. All the time when outside. Like I did when I lived in Columbus. I wasn't going to share my little goal with anyone, but my reward for the first day would be to go to this awesome reading.

And then Pitt canceled both their events. I heard they postponed them until September. The University has been plagued with bomb threats (if you didn't hear) and I had this shivery-up-and-down-my-spine feeling that they were canceling the event on the potential of a threat because of the idea of evacuating so many people with disabilities. And I didn't like to dwell on that thought, or what it implied, because it put me in a very-much-NOT Cane Coming Out Day headspace. I talked to a friend on the phone about it fifteen minutes later and she also brought up this thought (that they canceled it because of the idea of evacuating, etc. etc.). I do wonder if the reading had been some "ordinary" poets, and not had a draw specifically for people with disabilities, if it would have been canceled. To repeat: there was not an actual bomb threat made.

But I kept to my goal and used the cane for the whole day. It was a reallllllly emotionally taxing day though. I talked about anger so much in my therapy session that I felt like beating things and whipping rocks at houses I passed when I got out. But then the anger dissipated. And, double-yay, no one gave me any shit about the cane.

I did run into a gaggle of neighborhood girls on last bit of the way home, walking up my hill. Long child-legs in shorts. Hair braided with springtime colors of beads like bright greens and pinks. They were the cutest. I would guess they were somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. I'm bad at guessing the ages of children.

Our sidewalks are really narrow, plus cars park on the sidewalks because the street is narrow, occluding half the narrow sidewalk. There's lots of awkward walking situations on my side of the sidewalk up to my house because of the cars. They came toward me in an oblivious (?) wall. We all sort of stopped in a heap, because no one could go into the street on account of an SUV or 3 was parked, blocking us.

I said, "excuse me" in a tiny voice. I'm rather shy. I know they're just children but there were so many of them. This one girl looked up at me incredulously and said, "are you blind?" like she was observing a solar eclipse or something. It was so cute; it touched my heart because she was small. I said, "a little bit." Then, "mostly." They parted and let me pass and they were on their way and I was on mine. I hope I didn't sound mean. I felt very tense. But little kids get a free pass, especially girls. Yes, a blind person can look like me, I will be happy (genuinely) to let you know.
*******
This morning everything is making me cry. I'm crying about submitting another MS to a contest because of the money. $20 here, $20 there. Since January I've felt really tense about money. I'm crying because I'm thinking about going outside again and who will be out there. In Oakland people didn't seem to notice, which is fine with me. But the South Side is where I get hassled in general, mostly by guys who like to say things to petite young women walking alone.

Just a note: If one person comments and says "just let it roll off you," I'm going to work out my anger management issues on you, or your blog, or your Facebook wall. If I could "let it roll off me," I wouldn't be blogging about it. I'm thinking about one specific person here. My brain lasers are trained on you.

But.... but I am going to try to breathe through it. And make my aura big.