Moving Right Along

Not quite the tulip I was expecting, but I'll take it!

While I was awaiting brain surgery recently and contemplating the odds that I might get to meet Ceiling Cat soon, esteemed correspondent Ron Sullivan was kind enough to send me a lovely flower picture, one of the glorius calochortus she shot on one of her many fascinating and beautiful walks.  Ron told me there's a Flickr pool devoted just to calochortus, which she also informed me are native flowers also known as Mariposa tulips.

Spectacular.

I told Ron that I had planted a bunch of glorious pink tulips in my yard, that the squirrels seemed not to have removed all of them last summer, and promised that I would photograph them when they bloomed and post the photos here.

Well, I don't think that's going to happen.  Many of last year's bulbs (but not the daffodils!) were eaten, but also the promising little red, priapic spears of this years incarnation of those tulips never had a chance to develop before being romped upon by big dogs and then smothered in bark mulch by a well-meaning landlord.

However, the squirrels have definitely been busy in the garden planting as well as removing.

These "volunteer" sunflower sprouts are everywhere -- in the aforementioned mulch, in the lawn, in between plants in pots, really absolutely everywhere.  And I know exactly where they came from.

Also, I think this next item, which is growing in front of the drainspout in the front yard, came from next door.  (Click to enlarge. Consider putingt on sunglasses first.)

It isn't pink, and it's all alone, but it will do.

The Ideal War

I always want to tell people who feel that there is such a thing as an acceptable wartime loss, an acceptable amount of "collateral damage," just one thing:

You first.

Sometimes I imagine the ideal war.  In my ideal war, two knee-jerk dogmatist, megalomaniac politicians and/or religious leaders of wealth, power, and privilege either earned, stolen or inherited face each other.  One of them insults the other's banking practices, family connections, and golf game.  The other retorts in kind and adds something about the superiority of his own religion.  It is clear a fight is brewing, and that the outcome will determine who gets to Rule the World!

One megalomaniac then turns the conflict into a full-blown war -- by blowing up his own house.

The second megalomaniac retorts, "Oh, yeah?" and then blows up HIS own house -- and chops off one of his own arms.

The first megalomaniac screams "Die you filthy blot on the face of humanity!" or some such equally fine rhetoric, chops off his own arm -- and then drives a bayonet into his own belly.

Not to be outdone, the second megalomaniac makes remarks about the innate inferiority of the first megalomaniac's sexual practices, culture, and mother.  Then he drives a bayonet into his own belly and chops off his own leg.

And so it goes, until one of them dies or begs the other to stop.

Whoever "wins," whoever is left alive, gets to Rule the World!

And in that event, I'll bet a lot of things would be different than they are today, things like health care coverage and the number of wheelchair-accessible buildings and public facilities.  But I'm probably just fantasizing.

...b-b-b-b-b-b-BADD, BADD to the bone...

I will answer comments on my Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008 post that was also a Love Thursday post in a minute, honest, I swear.  But first, I have an announcement to make:

I finally finished reading every single one of the other BADD '08 posts!  Yes, every single one (except the one in Turkish, sorry, couldn't get a translation).  It took me five days, partly because like you I have a life which includes many other activities and responsibilities besides, alas, reading the internet, then partly because even though I have largely recovered from my amazing brain tumor experience, I still read a bit more slowly than I used to, and finally also partly because I am still apparently chock full o' cancer elsewhere, both the thought and fact of which are making me quite tired just at the moment.

Also, this year people really had quite a lot to say!  So many people contributed this year, and so many entries are long, detailed, erudite and/or impassioned, and all in all represent a heck of a lot of thought and work.  They deserved not to be skimmed or skipped.

I knew if I was going to make it through this reading marathon, I was going to need fuel.  Fortunately, besides the gummy bear I almost choked to death on reading an entry by Lady Bracknell's Editor, thanks to my friend S. with whom I worked at Whole Foods and who now works at Debra's Natural Gourmet, the local Mom 'n' Pop natural foods store, I was able to score these:

Yes, these are five pounds of organically grown English peas, in season.  After I expressed how much I enjoy them every year, how hard it is for me sometimes to find them grown without persistent pesticides or chemical fertilizers, and how short is their season around here anyway, S. kindly set aside this amount for my pick-up and delectation.

This is me delectating:

Yes, I eat them raw.  They are sooooooooo good, better than candy and better for you to boot.  I ate so many yesterday that I created a friction sore in the righthand corner of my mouth just from running the split open pods across my teeth and tongue to slurp out all the green goodness within.

I will not show you a picture of my friction sore.  However, this is how many peas I have left:

Oh, wait, never mind.

(Not really sure how that happened.  Maybe it was the missing rabbit.)

So while I was making a pig of myself, and then again when my anxieties or our poor anxiety sausage of a cat woke me up untimely and I couldn't get back to sleep, I read and read and read.  As I said, everything I read was worth reading, but here's a short list of my absolute favorites for people who have less time than I had because they sleep all night or who have less sustaining fuel readily to hand.

Gigantic suffocating hugs go out to both The Gimp Parade and Planet of the Blind for pointing out that while war may or may not be precisely disablism, maybe not exactly, it is a tangible product of the same evil, the convenient ability to see people, even little children, not as individual human beings of unlimited potential but as so much expendable material.

Special honors for best use of LOLcats go to OOK!.

And in no particular order, these revealed things that were new to me, catalyzed personal epiphanies within me that I still remember days later, or are just really effective presentations:

From An Unreliable Witness:  Apparently, there are worse things than being disabled, including being forced to act as a professional inspiration to the masses, but at the same time being denied access to public transportation and public restrooms, and also having an anachronistic hairstyle.

From This Is My Blog:  You try living with a gorrilla in your house.

From Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star:  Very, very thoughtful and thought-provoking post about mainstreaming vs. segregating disabled children in educational settings.  The writer draws from her own experience both as a disabled child in public schools and as an academic working to develop mainstreaming programs, a choice she is not entirely sure is always the right choice.  Most revelatory line for me:   "What is unique about most [kids with disabilities] is that they are born a minority into their own family."

From Smite Me!:  The closer we live our lives along the lines of relevant gender stereotypes, the more likely we are to be diagnosed with a personality disorder.  Favorite part:  "Schizoid personality disorder mainly comprises emotional and interpersonal distance – a main component of the male gender role. Narcissistic personality disorder seems to complement schizoid, in that it entails extreme ambition, arrogance, and a sense of entitlement. Along with antisocial personality disorder, the three disorders seem to embody the Western definition of masculinity."

From A Garden of Nna Mmoy:  The concept of "stereotype threat," about which I'd never heard before but which is apparently a hot topic.

From it's THRILLING HEROIC:30, y'all!:  A good example of a post detailing personal experience of debilitating chronic illness, just for people who didn't know what it's really like, plus my first exposure to Spoon Theory.

From Willendorf:  Oppressors take note:  the "Ladies' Auxiliary of the Gimp Militia" has been formed and is not amused by your sh*t.

From Lovely and Amazing:  A nightmare turned into a pledge.

I could go on and on, but at a certain point, as others have noted, a post like this just becomes a recreation of the directory.  These are just the ones sticking in my mind right now, and I love them, but there were many others to love.  If these don't look interesting to you, or if you run through them and find yourself hungry for more, you know where you can find more.

See, it's really all about the possibilities.

Today is both Love Thursday and Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008.  I find myself with an embarrassment of riches, topic-wise.  So many things, oddly, relate to both!  It may not be clear how this can be true.  But "disablism" is prejudice against people with disabilities, while love, of course, has little to do with any such thing and must combat disablism or any other unkind prejudice by its very nature.

There are so many topics I could have discussed just for BADD '08.  I thought about blogging about my own personal winter of disability, how often, unlike in years previous, I actually thought of myself as a person with a disability and what I did about it.  Sometimes the disability was in me.  Sometimes, on the other hand, it was more the "social model of disability" I was battling.  Perhaps, I thought, I would show you what it looks like when a town properly and dutifully installs ramped curb cuts at every crosswalk but then doesn't maintain them as vigilantly as the streets when it snows, not even at the height of the holiday shopping season, not even three blocks away from the main library.  (Click to enlarge for full sense of daunting.)

Then I thought I would amuse you with my experiences this winter using local parking reserved for the disabled.  For example, if you are as big a fan of Ms. AmpuT as I am, perhaps you remember this lovely sign, which is in fact posted here on the west side of my undeniably delightful town.  It and its identical twin grace two spaces in the parking lot for my favorite local bakery and café.

However, the other day I noticed something funny.  Across the parking lot, in front of the clever design house Swing, are two more spaces (three when it snows and the yellow lane demarcations are obscured) reserved for people with disabilities, and they look from a distance as though they bear the exact same signage.

On closer inspection, though, it is clear that though they once might have been identical, they are no longer.

That's a lot of reserved parking, and it is wonderful to see.  But yes, on this side of the parking lot only, someone has gone to the trouble to paint over the words "Don't cry if towed and fined."  My true love and I laugh about this and wonder why it is so.  Ironically, while I often see vehicles bearing no special permit parking in these spaces ("for just a minute while I [fill in the blank]," no doubt),  including one very nice Mercedes I'm still looking to photograph in the act, I never ever see anyone who shouldn't park in spaces marked by the signs with the original wording intact.  Go figure.

But here's the thing.  While all of this makes funny fodder for the purpose of opening conversations about disablism, it is hard to say what it has to do with love.   True, as we have discussed previously,  a genuinely loving culture cares for and protects everyone in it, or at least tries.  However, I strongly feel that a personal practice of love and compassion is most constructive when it not only allows us to see injustice or unfairness or simple absurdity and argue for better, but also when it allows us to see something that is already right and share it with others, or at least to share a vision of something that can be right, all on its own, even if it's just a terribly small thing.

And that's how I hit on what I want to talk about today, Love Thursday and also Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008:  just a small possibility.

Awhile back, esteemed correspondent Elizabeth McClung raved a bit about the perfection of badminton as a wheelchair sport and encouraged others to pick it up.  Continuing a theme, her readers began a discussion of other sports a wide spectrum of able-bodied and disabled people could enjoy together.  Inevitably, even though it is not the kind of team sport Elizabeth meant to discuss but more an individual practice, ever adaptable yoga was mentioned.  And then I mentioned tai chi.

I suggested to Elizabeth's esteemed correspondent LilWatcherGirl, who had described herself in comments as an "EDS-er" (person with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) with proprioception issues and dyslexia, that she might want to look into it.  And later, I wondered if this had been presumptuous.  What the hell do I know about either tai chi or EDS?  That's right!  Absolutely nothing!

Among his many other fine attributes, however, my true love just happens to be a tai chi student and teacher.  He teaches privately, and also through a continuing program at the Emerson Umbrella for the Arts, in the dance studio there almost every Saturday morning from September into May.

We have had many discussions about yoga and tai chi, comparing and contrasting them.  I don't really view yoga as a sport, precisely, but contrary to the belief of many, tai chi is a real, live martial art, not just a woo-woo New Age movement practice.  One of the things yoga and tai chi have in common is that they are about energy, about channeling it and maximizing it through the body and the mind.  Another thing they have in common is the diversity of practitioners, and the diversity of teaching styles.

I think I have mentioned in comments here before that, although it is eminently adaptable, and although you can even see on page 77 of the January/February 2006 issue of Yoga Journal a photograph of the much respected yogi Sri B.K.S. Iyengar assisting a female transfemoral amputee such as myself with a Warrior Pose at a conference in Colorado, it is nevertheless very difficult to find yoga instructors who are willing to take on people with discernible physical disabilities.  Some of this is fear of liability if we are injured while in class, because another big part of this is that most teachers really don't know what to do with us.  I've also read and heard of yogis explaining that you can't really get real yoga unless you have all your limbs in good working order.

As the English say, bollocks.

Now, look.  I am not a Yogi.  I am an adaptive yoga practitioner.  I am also not Hindu and don't speak Sanskrit.  I am not trying to get to Nirvana from this incarnation; I don't even believe in god(s).  So I am not going to argue with anyone whether or not it is possible for me to be missing a leg and also become a "real" Yogi, because I think it's a stupid, pointless argument.  Yoga or yoga-derived practices of mind and body are things I have pursued to make myself stronger and freer.

In our extensive discussions, I have told my true love all about all of this.  And guess what?  These reasons I study Yoga?  These are also some major reasons (besides also, for example, being able to take down an attacker in a dark alley) that people pursue study of various martial arts, including tai chi.  And this is why my true love is always, always, always trying to recruit people to tai chi specifically, especially people with various physical infirmities.

My true love is convinced that tai chi is the antidote to a wide range of complaints!  Flat feet?  Take tai chi!  Aching back?  Again, tai chi is the answer!  Chronic headaches?  Fibromyalgia?  Arthritis? Cancer?  Tai chi, tai chi, tai chi, tai chi!  Okay, not the answer.  My true love is not stupid or insensitive.  He just thinks tai chi can do you a lot of good, no matter who you are, and I must concede that medical studies increasingly bear out his point.

(Well, they're starting to.  My true love wishes to point out that he is as yet unaware of any studies linking tai chi to health benefits for cancer patients or people with flat feet.)

He's serious in his belief, and he spends a lot of time thinking about this.  Last time we were in my prosthetist's waiting room, we were even talking about how he could teach tai chi to amputees.  I had to stand up to demonstrate the different ways that lower-limb amputees use knees both organic and mechanical and balance between them, different from whole-bodied people, I mean.  "Ah, I see," he said, and then the wheels began whirring in his head, visibly, almost audibly, and I went back to reading my book and absentmindedly dripping iced coffee all over my T-shirt.

Bear in mind that my true love does not have any amputated students, nor have any amputees yet contacted him about lessons.  He was just thinking about the possibilities.

So that day when I actually made so bold as to suggest tai chi as a possible physical outlet even for an "EDS-er," and then immediately had doubts about whether or not I should have done that, what could be more natural than to ask my true love directly?

I told him what I'd done, and of my doubts.  "So, what do you think?  Was I telling the truth?  Could a wheelchair user get something out of tai chi?  How 'bout someone with dystonia, cerebral palsy, paralysis?  I mean, I know they aren't going to become martial arts masters, like, Jackie Chan level or whatever, but do you think it would actually do them some good?"

"Sure!"  He said this without hesitation.  "You know, most of my students aren't going to get to that level.  For that matter, neither am I," he added with a little laugh.  "It's practically impossible for a person starting as an adult to really become a true master.  You have to start when you're really little, like they do in Chen Village [where tai chi originated] and practice all day, every day, for years.  But what difference does it make?  You can still get something out of it."

"So how 'bout you personally?  Would you teach a person with disabilities?"

"Sure!  I'll teach anyone who shows up!"

"Anyone?"

"Yeah!  Why not?"

"Well, what if they can't do much?"

"I'll teach 'em whatever they can learn.  'Cause that's what it's about, you know, doing what you can do, not worrying about whatever levels you're never going to reach."

"So what exactly would be the point of someone who was maybe barely mobile studying tai chi?  What could this person expect to get out of it?"

He replied -- and I asked him to write it down for me today, because this other conversation took place a whole brain surgery ago and I just couldn't remember exactly what he said -- "That's a good point.  Taiji is a whole body movement.  You use everything, the arms, the rib cage, the abdomen, the hips and the legs.  If you couldn't move [anything at all], it's not the right thing for you.  However, if you can breathe, and move even just your shoulders, it can help strengthen what you have.  Everything else is bonus."

So.  You "heard" him, right here.  My true love said he will teach tai chi to anyone who shows up, no matter what their physical condition might be, though he does feel that you should be able to at least breathe and move your shoulders in order to feel the benefit.  (To sign up for classes, which are ending for the season very soon but will start up again in the fall, contact Emerson Umbrella for the Arts or e-mail me privately and I will forward your information.)

This, obviously, is the opposite of disablism.  This is also another of the many faces of love.  This one is actually two faces in one:  passionate love for a particular sport or practice and also that generous love for other people that causes us to wish everyone maximum opportunities, to believe in the existence of possibilities and to desire to help make them realities, even if we don't know what they are yet, and to act on that desire in our everyday lives just as a matter of course.

I just wanted to point that out.  Sure, I also have complaints and lectures and all kinds of snarky ridicule to deliver on all kinds of related topics at some other point in the future, but look:  here is one tiny thing that's good, one teacher who gets it -- and I'll bet there are others.  (There must be others.  Please feel free to talk about any you know in comments, and to provide links where available.)

And that, my friends, is my contribution for today.  I know it's a steaming pile of disorganized rambling, and I apologize for that, but my weak excuses are that I am very tired and also that I started out with way too many ideas.  If you've gotten this far, thank you, and happy Love Thursday, but also happy BADD '08.  Now I'm off to read what others have written to celebrate the day on both counts.

Studio Cat Teaches Basic Napping, and also Advanced Napping Techniques for Exotic Locations

Basic (click to enlarge):

Advanced (again, click to enlarge):

For more detailed instruction, you will have to attend the seminars.

(Yes, we are a little tired around here just now.  Barring catastrophe, I will be back to the internet on May 1, though, if not before.)