If Pigs Could Fly

by Nancy Scott

It is the typical Friday night for the Walking Wounded. We have  gathered in the building lobby by 6:45 p.m.

A former tenant, but still charter Walking Wounded member, brings Millie to visit. We love Millie because there is nothing wounded about her. She is a one-year-old Yorkshire terrier. She loves us all with body-wagging and whining till we sit to be leapt upon and kissed.

The talk is food (including doggy pepperoni) and politics. People poke rent checks through the office mail-slot and push grocery carts to the elevator. Several stop to pet Millie.

Doris is feeding two teen-age grandchildren this weekend. “I bought everything to make barbecue but I forgot the hamburger. Can you believe it?” Mid gleefully comments, “You could probably get by forgetting anything else–somebody would have what you forgot. But you forgot the main ingredient.”

Tonight, I’m thinking there must be more to life than being lobby fixture. Once Millie calms down for the sensible nap on the floor, I’m predicting things will get argumentative or boring.      But into our midst comes Pat. Her mail includes a package and we all perk up, rather desperately. We ask almost in unison, “What could it be?”

“Pig socks,” she says.

That stops us cold. Pat knew it would. She opens the package for us to see. We know she collects all things with pigs. But socks? Debbie narrates, for my benefit, thin socks, thick socks, white socks, black socks, embroidered and glittered socks. Front ends of pigs, back ends of pigs, and one pink pig with wings.

I touch the different socks and Pat comments on how Debbie folds them, matching the heels and putting her least favorite pair on top, saying, “Just find me so I can see what you wear with those blue ones.” Nadia, our security guard, checks a pair in Debbie’s pile, saying, “That pig has cute face.” Mid takes off his cowboy hat and taps his prosthetic foot with impatience. Anne holds Millie’s leash and contributes, “You could wear sandals with the thin socks. That would show off the pigs.”

Does Pat have a “pigs flying” dream? I think, but do not say, that we collect the things that strengthen our mythologies.

Pat mentions that she’s bought pig socks before, but they’re hard to find. “It’s been about four years.” She tells us she bought so many pig socks that she got free shipping. I suggest that she might not want to brag about that particular achievement. We laugh and she collects footwear to head for the seventh floor.

As the elevator moans upward, I check my Braille watch. “Time to go.” I unfold my white cane.  We stretch and unstiffen. Debbie and I take the next elevator after goodnights all around. Mid stays to wait for Betsy, quizzing Nadia with, “When did she say she’d be home?” and “Was she getting her hair done today?” Mid likes Betsy.  He’s been asking us whether he should give her flowers, or jewelry.

From social connections to main ingredients to flying pigs.  However we collect and express them, dreams are a wonderful thing.

 Nancy Scott, Easton, PA, is a blind essayist and poet.  Her over 600 bylines have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and newspapers, and as audio commentaries. An essayist and poet, she has published three chapbooks. She won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. Recent work appears in Breath and Shadow, Contemporary Haibun Online, and Stone Voices.

Quote

To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.
[John Milton (1608-1674), British poet. Second Defence (1654). Milton's sight was impaired from 1644, his blindness becoming complete in the winter of 1651-1652.]

Jack Kerouac Is a What?

by Jeff Flodin

No Kidding, I really heard this: A young sculptor held court over a lunch table of six colleagues.  “I dated a man who loved Jack Kerouac,” said the sculptor.  “I never saw what he saw in Jack Kerouac.  Jack Kerouac is a douche.”

None of the young man’s tablemates contradicted him and neither did I, never having read Jack Kerouac.  But I took the sculptor’s comment as a challenge to my ingrained literary world view, where Jack Kerouac was a trailblazer, a pioneer, a prose visionary.  Maybe his notoriety came more from his lifestyle than his craft.  Maybe his crowd—Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder, Corso—had more talent.  Maybe Jack Kerouac was a hack.

But a “douche?”  What exactly constitutes a literary douche?  Shallow characters?  Trite situations?  Vapid dialogue? I cannot clarify.  My copy of On the Road stayed parked on my bookshelf, never given the mileage of Siddhartha and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. 

I suspect the young sculptor’s verdict on Jack Kerouac had less to do with writing and more to do with the sins of his boyfriend.  People rarely direct their anger at the deserving target.  So be it.  I’m neither the sculptor’s analyst nor Jack Kerouac’s apologist.  What I detect is a lack of cultural and historical perspective.  Jack Kerouac changed the rules of the game.  He deserves his due.  Calling him a douche is like dismissing Jackson Pollock as “messy.”

So now I have decided to read On the Road.  Perhaps this trip will provide the missing perspective on my formative years.Perhaps On the Road will end up in the ditch.  When Ifinish here, when Spelling and Grammar check point out my typos and fragments, I’ll hitch a ride over to the NLS BARD website and download an audio version of On the Road.  Then I’ll be able to come up with my own noun to complete the phrase, “Jack Kerouac is a…”

Jeff Flodin writes the Jalapenos in the Oatmeal: Digesting Vision Loss blog (http://jalapenosintheoatmeal.wordpress.com/).  He also provides moral support for Stella De Genova as she does all the hard work for the Vision Through Words blog.  Jeff uses the JAWS screen-reading software and found, in this story, a major mispronunciation of the key word, for which he used JAWS Dictionary Manager to change the word’s pronounced spelling to d o o s h.  He suggests that other JAWS users do the same thing, as it helps add meaning to the story.

Diseased

by Ana Garza

I see the defective human bodies of the earth,

The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics,

The pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth,

        –Walt Whitman (“Salut au Mond” 1889-1892)

 

When Whitman saw,

probably I was

dozing in a hand-planed chair, listening

to my grown children and my toddling grandchildren

speaking kindnesses in the parlor of some tucked away house,

 

or maybe I was

suckling my mother’s milk or cooing

in my cradle, too caught up in my fingers, the silk

side rails and the wool blanket I rubbed

against my face,

 

or I could have been

sewing that afternoon in the window

of a scrubbed house with lavendered women

whose comfort was that Jesus healed

people like me with mud from spit,

 

or possibly I wasn’t

caught up in the poet’s multitudes but set, like stone,

along the bank–my palm turned up,

a bowl, a bell, my call

for alms above his song–or more

 

likely, I just slept

on a cot, fevered in tifus, warming

my fingers between my thighs, until men or women versed

in charity smudged

rags across my hands and face

to raise me

 

for a meal. More likely, this

is where I was: a school

with broom handles to be sanded

for sale, broken

walls, drafts, bloated

floorboards, loose straw, unfed minds

and idle bodies for the babbling

lookers-on to notice

how the sloppy fingers of the blind stretch,

reaching for a voice.

 

Ana Garza wrote this poem while taking a graduate course on Walt Whitman, a poet known for his amazing inclusiveness. When she came across the line quoted in the epigraph, she noticed that blind people, like herself, weren’t really included.  Ana has an M. F. A. from California State University, Fresno. forty-four of her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, most recently in A handful of Stones, The New Verse News and The Mom Egg.

Blind Traveler

by Stella De Genova

Sitting at my home computer in the Midwestern, American city that I was born and raised in, it feels a little surreal this morning to think about where I was for the last 12 days.  Nonetheless, the reality of it all is that I just got back from visiting family and touring London, England and to top it off, a 2-day jump over to Paris, France.  As a legally blind person, white cane in hand, along with my son who was my traveling companion and my brother who has lived in England for a few years, I’m just as amazed at the blurry, beautiful sights I saw as I am at how many “tubes” and trains and buses we maneuvered to get around.  A savvy traveler I am not and I would not suggest doing this alone to any other blind person but I feel some accomplishment about having been able to run through the streets and train stations of London and Paris.

We literally walked 10’s of thousands of steps and took in medieval castles and homes, art museums and cathedrals and must-see spots like the Tower Bridge, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey in London and its midlands; and the Eiffel Tower, Arc d’Triumph, Musee d’Orsay and Mont Martre in Paris.  We gazed upon the masterpieces of Michelangelo, Holbein, Bellini, van Eyck, Seurat, Cezanne and Van Gogh in the museums.

Sighted people go on vacations and make sure they see the sights and my family took me to all of the required tourist hot spots.  But with my failing eyesight, I’ve found that there is much more to the travel experience than what we see and that is to be savored as well.  It’s true that what I saw was far from crystal clear and many times what I saw was mostly through descriptions but I used my other senses to enjoy my trip.  My visual blurriness gave me the feeling of being part of an impressionist’s painting in Paris.  And I thoroughly enjoyed listening to British accents and the French language that I’ve loved since high school.  The feel of centuries-old cobblestone streets under my feet and the smells of the native cuisine along with the plethora of international flavors and languages feels like all of the senses having a party.  And it always awes me to be in buildings or places that hold infinite stories of told and untold history.  We don’t need our eyes at all to see the bustling ghosts of ancient times all around us.

I also appreciated that wherever we were, the understanding of the universal symbolism of the white cane was apparent and there was a general kindness and consideration communicated by all.  In a way, even though my blindness can make for its share of inconvenience in life, it can also bring comfort to find that most people in this world are inherently kind.  There may be a point in my future when I will not be able to see the photos taken on my trip but all of my senses will help me to hold treasured memories well beyond the sense of sight.

To learn more about Stella De Genova, click on the Statement tab on this blog site.

Blindness

by Valerie Moreno

Stepping in to the world,
my white cane taps lightly
on ground, grass, making music.

As I walk, I am
confronted by assumptions-
“Oh, that poor thing!”
“How does she survive?”

Someone grabs my arm,
begins to tell me of
an operation or prays for my sight

I’m embarrassed, humiliated, irritated-
am I such a intolorable object,
only damaged eyes?

I shake my head,
no, it’s not being blind I contemplate
each hour , every day…

It’s the sound of music,
children laughing,
the purring of my cat,
the voice of a friend

I am not helpless or hero,
triumphant or tragic-
I just want you to open your eyes
to realize I am like you.

Valerie Moreno is 58, a mom, grandma, “mommy” to a mischievious blind cat and a writer. She is totally blind.

Symbolic Transformation

by Jeff Flodin

Last night, I took Randy (Jeff’s guide dog) to his first poetry reading. He remained attentive throughout.  Only once did I catch him with his paws over his ears, and that was during a sonnet, so it didn’t last long.I too struggle with poetry.  While prose poems are accessible, the fancier ones baffle me.  Their meaning goes beyond the page, into the land of symbols and metaphors where I lose my way.

Here in Vermont, among poets and artists, I seek clarity.  I explained my problem to W. B., a modern Renaissance man.  W. B. employed an engineering analogy to explain things.  “I’m lucky,” he began, “to be able to look at something, a machine for instance, and see its inner workings—how the gears, springs and belts create output.  Poetry is similar—words work together to create output.Output in machines is work; output in poetry is concepts. Concepts are not tangible, they reach into another dimension.”

“This is helpful,” I said.  “For starters, I panic at ‘Some Assembly Required.’Must be because I fail to see the interrelationship of physical components even when provided with instructions, diagrams, and audio tutorials.  No wonder I have trouble with concepts.”

“Understanding the process is what I call ‘symbolic transformation,’” said W. B.

“Aha!  I think I’m having an ‘aha’ moment here, “ I said.  “Here’s how.I figure batting averages in my head.  I calculate how many square inches of cherry pie are in a 9-inch pie tin.  I even do cubic inches if I’m really hungry.  Arithmetic and geometry have purpose and meaning. They’re like words.  But calculus and algebra baffle me the same way poetry baffles me.  Does this mean I’m short on symbolic transformation?”

“I like cherry pie, too,” said W. B. “But where I really kick it into gear is when I consider the abstract, the theoretical pie, if you will.”

“I wanta pie I can sink my fork into,” I said.  “So, I guess I’m challenged in the area of symbolic transformation.  I think I’m stuck in two dimensions.”

“Being two-dimensional is valid,” said W. B., sparing my feelings.  “But I find it too black and white to dividethinking unequivocally between two-dimensional and three-dimensional.Why, there can be five, six, ten, twelve dimensions.”

“Now you’re scaring me,” I said.

“The point is that being two-dimensional does not mean that an object lacks value.”  said W. B.

 “Right you are.  Even Freud said, ‘Sometimes a pickle is just a pickle.’  At least, I think he did.  Still,” I continued, “I’m certain even a small dose of symbolic transformation will make me a better person or, at least a better poetry listener.”

“You needn’t feel you need to be a better anything,” said W. B.

“Now you’re getting humanist on me,” I said.

“A nice balance, wouldn’t you say?  Next time, we’ll discuss whether or not zero is possible,” said W. B.  “One school says an object is divisible down to a minute fraction, but never to zero.  Another school says zero is possible.”

“I’m of the school that says when you divide a cherry pie among your dinner guests, you end up with zero pie, unfortunately.”

“Whereas,” concluded W. B., “with my theoretical pie, the pleasure can become infinite.”

Jeff Flodin has RP.  He lives in Chicago and writes the Jalapenos in My Oatmeal blog for Second Sense blind service organization.  This awakening to poetry came to Jeff during his writing fellowship, courtesy of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Access Writing Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT.  February in Vermont encourages writing—indoors, warm, dry and well-fed.  Who says creativity requires suffering?  (You can also learn more about Jeff on the Statement page of this blog.)