Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

In my last post on this subject, I stated my discomfort with the current cultural discussions of "Bullying, and What to Do About It," because, in my experience, it's the adults who form the largest segment of the bullying population, and that children, on the whole, are more tolerant, and no one seems to be talking about that part of the equation. This entry started out as what I thought would be one brief sentence in a reply to a reply to that post... and then it kept getting bigger, and I realized it should be its own thing:

... I know: I've seen the reports, and the candid filming of behavior on playgrounds and in lunch rooms, so I know that childhood bullying exists. But it's still my deep is my deep gut feeling that adults are far worse sinners as far as bullying goes. I don't think I will ever shake it completely. And I think this is a direct result of growing up, from birth, with Disability Disprivilege.

You see, what I've seen, from the time of my earliest memories, is that a very great (if not a vast majority) number of people who work in the "Disability Services" sector -- from young adults taking summer jobs at "special" camps, to Special Ed teachers, physical therapists, and social workers, all the way up to administrators of disability services at city and county levels -- are drawn to the field because they are bullies.

First off, they know that the job title on their business card is enough to earn them adulation from their community (for making such a noble and charitable sacrifice on behalf of those poor unfortunates). So they get near global reinforcement that their view of the world is the one true view (and this is precisely what bullies have been trying to prove to the rest of the world since they uttered their first insult in preschool).

And second, and perhaps more important, it puts them in position of control over other people's lives, and gives them an air of expertise, and the power to make up the rules of the game. So, for example, when they tell parents of a disabled child: "Johnny will never be able to read at grade level, anyway, so we'll just pull him out of class during English, so we can at least train him to walk normally as possible," most parents just take their word for it (and any quick survey of "rehabilitation and treatment" literature will reveal that the appearance of normalcy is the number one measure of "quality of life").

If Johnny, himself, tries to complain or protest, he gets stuck with the label "Resistant to Treatment," and "Disobedient," and gets punished and put in isolation.

And because of how the Rehabilitation Complex is organized, my parents, who were incredibly supportive of me, and did everything they could to reinforce my sense of self-worth, were outnumbered by these "Experts and Professionals" by about four to one.

........

Meanwhile, in grade school, I couldn't run and play hopscotch or jump rope with the rest of my class. And so I spent recess on the sidelines, sitting in the shade of the big oak tree.

And before you start listening for the sentimental strains of the violin, underscoring the "loneliness and isolation of the crippled child's life," consider this:

The children who were bullies -- who were afraid of and disgusted by any whiff of difference -- knew that no amount of insults or punches could shame me out of my wheelchair, so they stayed the hell away, rather than catch my cooties. And the kids who were interested in who I was as a person, who liked wordplay and imagination games (and perhaps, sensed that I came armed with my own Bully-repellent force field) came over to play with me of their own accord. And together, we made up our own games, where everyone was an equal participant.

So, in my life, my interactions with the Adult Population were always skewed toward the bullies-and-thugs end of the spectrum, and those with the Child Population were always skewed toward the Incredibly Nice and Ridiculously Creative end of the spectrum.

So -- yeah. In the ongoing "What to do About Bullies" discussions, my instinct is going to be to side with the kids, as "my tribe."

I'm pleased with this... though I think if I start talking about why, I will be here for all the hours, using all the words, about all the feels... And my tummy is rumbling, and I haven't had dinner...so maybe I'll come back after I've eaten.

---
A different sort of self portrait (a usual one will likely be forthcoming, too, but in the meantime):

Following spiralsheep's lead, because some people don't like looking at feet, here's a link to the Flick'r page, instead of a thumbnail (ha, idiom is funny, in context): My left foot

Now I know why I was on that shading kick spree this week...

Freshly minted -- as of seven minutes ago -- the mold's barely been cracked.

I'll come back later and revise.

THE MONSTER CHALLENGE: OUT OF THE LABYRINTH

In looking down upon my naked self:
My lap, my scars, my hands, and crooked feet,
My posture's slant, my elbow's inner bend,
I sometimes wonder what it means to see.
This looking at myself from the where I am
Is not at all like looking at a rock.

Remembered words -- they echo in my thoughts --
In all the languages I've heard (or seen).
Like forest leaves, they sway in every breeze,
And cast their dappled shadows through my mind.
It's through this tangled forest I must go,
To find my truth, and know just what I am.
And then: one word amid ten thousand words
It catches, like a thorn, with sharp intent.
Although it stings, I trace the tendrils back,
And find a path, and there, the root:
That "monster," once, meant "warning from the gods."
The fear's unveiled. And like a ghost, it fades.
And here's the fruit: it's heavy -- rich with seeds.
I'll plant one for myself, and start anew.

Between the crevices of daily tasks
My thoughts slip, far too easily, away
As silver fish that dart 'tween blades of grass
From sunlit streams to rivers deep in caves.

They gather there, to ask Aunt Jenny Wren
About the Suffragettes. And Pete? That book.
In patient tones, they carefully explain
To Shakespeare how a modern camera works.

And with my thoughts, the minutes slip away,
I do not finish all the things I ought,
And suddenly, I've reached the End of Day,
Returning home from being lost in thought.

It's quite a realization-- once again:
Surrounded by Imaginary Friends.

Last evening, I wrote (under a locked post):

(Quote)
And this is why even good rom-coms are like psychological Chinese Restaurant food: make me feel all happy and rosy while I'm watching them, but leave me depressed and lonely an hour later... Especially when the hero is a creative/artistic outcast, such as Danny Kaye so often played [Did he play a performer / actor in every one of his movies?],* because that's the character type I most often identify with, myself...
(Unquote)

And, almost as soon as I wrote that, I realized that all those years in my late teens and early twenties (when I was venturing out of my parents' world, and still in contact with other people on a daily basis), I'd been mistaken. Back in the day, when I was watching those sentimental love stories, I was taking it at face value that I was being entranced by the idea of such an artist type falling in love with me -- and it wasn't until I wrote it out, in a half-sleep state, that instead of wishing for the hero, I was identifying with the hero.

Oh, Subconscious, you tricksy rascal! Twenty years later than I could have actually used that knowledge... Why I oughta ...!

---

*Checks -- maybe not Every, but close:

Buzzy Bellow / Edwin Dingle (1945) -- Nightclub entertainer / "bookworm" (geek); Walter Mitty (1947) -- a writer of pulp fiction; Hobart Frisbee (1948)-- A music professor[ Georgi (1949) -- a song/dance man for a medicine show; Jack Martin (1951) -- a caberet entertainer; Hans Christian Andersen (1952) -- writer, again; Jerry Morgan (1954) -- vaudville vantriloquist; Hubert Hawkins (1955) -- ex-carnival dancer turned minstrel, turned jester. ...And so forth. His full filmography is here (I'm hungry, and tired of typing)

Back on September 5, 2008, I was moved to write this, to (maybe) counteract some misconceptions my friends and acquaintances may have about what it's like being me:

( Just for the record, I have cerebral palsy (excerpt: I've linked to the entire post in my profile) )

Cerebral Palsy, because it starts in childhood, and has an effect on how the kids who have it grow up, is broadly classified as "a developmental disorder," and is lumped together (broadly) with Down Syndrome and Autism, which just makes me want to "GRAH!" at the "experts."

My aide's other regular client is a four-year old boy who is also diagnosed with CP. His CP makes his muscles floppy, including the muscles involved in speach, so he's just now learning to talk, and it takes a lot of concentration to get a sound out. Lucky for him, Audrey met me first, and knows that CP does not equal 'retardation." Also lucky for him, she's spent most of her adult life working with and training horses, so she's comfortable "reading" nonverbal communication. But this kid's nursery school teacher is convinced that CP does mean he's retarded, so she's dumbing everything down for him, and feeding him the answers. One time, the teacher was trying to get him to play a game with two options to choose from, when Audrey had been playing the same game at home with four. She tells the teacher: "You know, he's not paying attention because he's bored." The teacher responds with: "Oh, no! He's not bored, he's just confused. Let's make this game simpler."

Head, meet Desk. I have a feeling you will soon be well acquainted.

(Back when I wrote my original post, WebMD.com's entry on CP just said that it causes a significantly higher percentage of mental retardation, but with no hard numbers. I went back to the site recently, and now it says that "some level of" retardation occurs in between a third and a half of all kids with CP. That means a half to two-thirds of folks with CP have no retardation at all, of course. But I'm still skeptical it's that high, especially if the people coming up with these stats are misreading boredom as confusion)

Anyway, I say all this as a preamble to explain why, most of my life, I've argued that CP has no effect on my thinking or perception of the world at all -- that it's a purely physical thing. But, this argument is getting harder to maintain, especially since I do not believe that there is a Mind/Body dichotomy, or in discrete "God-Given" soul. And if I can freely admit that growing up in a specific time and place, and with the parents that were mine, influenced my concept of who I am, and my place in the world, then, surely, I can admit that growing up in this specific body also influenced this understanding. How can it not?

---
Back when I was growing up and first getting diagnosed and going through physical therapy ('60s and '70s), they didn't have the brain scan technology they do now. Now, 'they' think that "my kind of CP" is probably caused by faulty myelin sheathing in the ol' cerebellum, like a house with faulty insulation in its electrical system, and from what I can figure out from reading about what myelin does, I can see how that could be, based on what it feels like, inside my body:

I have intention to do one thing (such as balance, or stand, or take a step), but as my intended thought to move this leg in this direction is also accompanied by unintended signals to contradictory muscles in other parts of the body things get complicated, and I often have to slow down, and break down one intention into several parts, and consciously stop one movement before starting the next. So here's my one analogy I came up with, to get a handle on what my CP subjectively, psychologically, feels like:

Imagine trying to open your door, and go inside your house. Simple, right? Now, imagine that your arms are full of a dozen loose oranges, and you have no place to set them down for a moment ('cause you can't detach part of your body and put it aside until you're done). And you can't drop any ('cause that would be akin to your body just ceasing to function, and falling into chaos).

So reaching out to turn the doorknob is interrupted several times in order to catch a threatening orange avelanche with your chin, and then you have to pause, and rearrange your load.

Opening the door and going inside is going to take a lot longer for you than it is for your neighbor, who's carrying his oranges in a conveniently handled basket, and you're going to be a lot more tired when you finally do get inside... And the thought of making dinner will probably leave you with a desire to order a pizza, instead.

But you're not "fatiqued" in the senses we usually think of it. It's not that your arms are too weak to carry the oranges. And it's not that you don't have as much stamina as your neighbor (you may even have more, all things considered -- he might get tired and give up at attempt #60, and you can go all the way to #100, and not think it's anything unusual). It's just that you have a lot more to do to accomplish the same task.

Which is why I was so annoyed back in college, when I happened to look up "cerebral palsy" in a medical encylopedia, just out of curiosity. The fact that I was in the library was the only thing that kept me from shouting "Oh, FUCK YOU!" when I read the official medical description (used by doctors to determine diagnoses, and advise patients on treatment). It said that Cerebral Palsy is "severe and debilitating." 'Debilitating' struck me as particularly insulting (as I said before -- no two people's CP are ever the same, so it may be debilitating for some. But I think it's unfair and inaccurate to use that term as a broad, general starting point).

So -- yes. How this all effects my "Idea of I." I don't know what the Self or Ego really feels like to those with normative body-brain connections, but I've read plenty of literature and mythology where the mind and/or soul is described as a discrete and immutable "pearl," (that maybe resides in the pituitary, or maybe the heart, or right next to the adrenal gland, on top of one of the kidneys), or a tiny, bright, single spark of energy. I read those poetic metaphors and think: "Yeah. That's nice, and all, but doesn't feel right..."

You see, for me, the psychological space between imagining an action and carrying it out (that "rearranging of oranges") often feels like a negotiation, or (on bad days) a knock-down, drag-out fight. It's not that I feel like I have "mulitple personality," per se (even though I've caught myself addressing different body parts by pet names) -- my sense of "Ann-ness" is fairly coherent, and consistant. But at the same time, when I'm negoiating, I'm negotiating with some-(entities).

*sigh.*

It's hard to talk about when there isn't a shared language... It's just -- there is the "Executive function" that I've heard neurologists on science shows talk about. But "making the call" is more like a "call and response" song: in someone with a normal body-brain connection, the call out to the right hand to pick up the hairbrush is answered only by the right hand picking up the hairbrush. In me, however, it's also answered by my feet curling, and my back "hyper-extending." Then, I have to put down the hairbrush, consciously relax my leg and back muscles, push myself back into my seat, and start over.

So while there *is* a "Self" it feels more like it's an identity reached through lifelong consensus, rather than a single monarch giving orders from on high. Or maybe it's like a sports team -- a particular team may have a recognizable "personality" or "Culture," and a particular team psychology may be consisitant and coherent over a long period of time, even as different team members leave and join. But that single identity arises out of multiple points, rather than coming from a single "boss."

You know?

No?

*sigh* What I said before about lack of a shared language.

Oh, well, I just felt like I needed to "talk" it out...

So, yesterday, on the LiveJournal Side, I got into a thread discussion in my Daylight Savings Time pet-peeve post. And, even though I never intended to, going in, I got defensive, and argumentative, and ...just icky.

And the level of my reaction surprised me. And then it upset me, because I shouldn't have gotten as upset as I had. And then I descended into that downward spiral of depressive thinking, and that made me even more upset. So I had to back off, and post a Saint Paddy's Day Spoof vid, and a meme, and then trawl YouTube for Animaniacs clips.*

And then, as is my wont, I had to do some self-examination, find that pesky button, so I could put some sort of fail-safe on that sucka, or at least slap a Big Red Warning Sticker next to it.


This is what I've figured out, so far (links in this list go to Wikipedia articles):

• I have no problem with time zones, per se, nor the related system of longitude, since longitude was developed through a long history of scientific inquiry, of people studying the Heavens, the Earth, and our place on it. Yes, there are arbitrary bulges, and corners, and dips and zags to accommodate artificial boundaries between states and countries. But at least each time zone is based on the actual circumference of the Earth (1/24th).

But:

• I inherited much of my distrust of DST from my father, who grew up in the age when it was reserved for wartime, and not a regular marker of the changing seasons. So, in recent years, when it's rolled around, I'm reminded that Dad's gone, now, and I have no one to with whom I can blow raspberries at the whole Idea of DST. And I get a booster shot of sadness and loneliness.
  
  
• DST is a man-made thing. Its start time and end-time is decided by politicians and corporate lobbyists who want to sell more sporting goods, french fries, and charcoal briquettes. Selling more sporting goods and briquettes may be a perfectly fine goal, nothing wrong with that, per se, necessarily. But it does mean that DST as become the synecdochic file in my head into which I slip All Things of Human Cultural Hubris, and having to go around changing all my clocks just reminds me how much I "Do Not Fit" with American Culture as a whole, and how far I am "out of sync" with the world around me. It's a bit like getting poked in the cheek with a sharp stick.

And finally:

• I remember how Bush sold this most recent extension of DST -- as his contribution to Combating Global Warming, by saving energy without having to make any really hard choices. Which... Just No.

*A Buttons and Mindy sketch called Mindy in Wonderland; I've seen Buttons and Mindy criticized for being repetitive, but these bits were less formulaic than the Road Runner cartoons they were spoofing (the chase and wallop trope). And in this one, it's a remarkably good mash-up with Alice in Wonderland, and Buttons finally gets praise and a hug for his trouble.

There's a post I wrote four months ago for quietconversation (access-only locked comm) that the radio interview yesterday brought back to mind, with more thinky-thoughts and wonderments layered on top, so I am currently reworking it for a more public audience. That's gonna take a while.

The post is mainly about the intersection of modern medicine and ancient religion (Paleo-Pagan, rather than Neo-Pagan), and I mention that I'm atheist.

I've since realized something: It's not that I think God(s) is(are) a fiction. God(s) may or may not exist. I might even take the existance of some form of Deity as fact without too much fuss or argument.

But I've discovered I don't need to believe in God(s) in order to have a warm and loving relationship with the Universe of which I'm a part. And it's the insistance of the many of the loudest theists that I must be incapable of love without God (and their particular God, to boot) that gets my nostril hairs in a knot.

Ya know?

And I'll try to keep this brief.

(Icon description: An abstract falling leaf pattern in dark green; the overlyaing caption reads: "A tree will fall in the forest and the forest will hear.")

So: Late in May, I made a mid-year resolution to return to a daily writing practice.

After six weeks and a bit of this, I've discovered something:

I can not write a scene (no matter how small) with "no one" in it.

Even in a scene as brief as:

"The sun shone brightly on the ocean waves."

There's someone there to see that. That someone is unnamed, and undescribed. But someone is there. The moment I go into any further detail is the moment that someone's character begins to be revealed. If I describe the color of the water as: "the color of tarnished copper" (for example), then the scene is being witnessed by someone who knows the color of tarnished copper. Or, as the scene unfolds from my imagination, I might start to realize that I'm writing it from the p.o.v. of a personified rock on the shore, or maybe a fish being dropped on the deck of the fishing boat, or maybe the boat itself.

But every scene has a witness.

That is what has always bothered me about that old philolosophical riddle: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it -- Does it make a sound?"

If the tree is in a forest,
Then
Someone is there to hear it.

Even if the other forest's other vegetation can't hear (as we understand hearing), I can't imagine a forest without birds, and bugs, and mammals, and reptiles, and -- on and on. Forests are crowded places, by definition, and they're crowded with many creatures with ears.

But the whole question presupposes that humans are the only "Someones" -- the only real inhabitants in the world -- that, Matrix-like, the rest of existance is generated only by our own minds. It's a perspective that leads to a callous disregard for other living things, and also a willingness to trash our objects, and things we've created.

That presupposition might come from the premise that in order to be a "someone," who can perceive, and feel, and understand, you have to have a soul. And only humans have souls, because we are made in God's image, and God gave us souls....

Maybe that's why so many* Fundamentalist Christians can't understand how an atheist can have any morals at all, and think we must all be self-centered and callous.

...I don't know... just a thought that rises in my head, now and then.

Then again, I've held some sort of Animist beliefs since as long as I can remember having a sense of "me-ness". So add salt to taste...

*Or at least, it seems like "many," based on the comments I've encountered from self-Proclaimed Fundamentalist Christians.