oh...just me: October 2006 Archives

I see the Intuitive Acupuncturist this afternoon; I'm curious what she'll read in my body. Three weeks ago, I teased her about the pain - so not my thing. I don't recall the gist of the conversation, now, in terms of what was actually said about my psychospiritual being. (Note: "psychospiritual" is a term from the Alexander Technique. Kate would always ask, "How's your psychospiritual being today?" I don't know if the IA would use this concept herself.)

Actually, now that I pause (considering how to return from that digression, haven't seen Kate for a year or more), it might be this was the day the IA mentioned shame. It didn't resonate for me at the time and she said, "Sometimes I speak too soon." My puzzled question at the time was, "Is that for me or for me with others?" (I recall Spare Man telling me, "You make people feel bad." gulp)

That day (only three weeks ago!) the IA put needles only in my left side, ankle and wrist. The one in my ankle nearly sent me off the table, literally. Thank god the pang is brief. She left me "to cook" for however long, and what ensued was an intense awareness of "action" in my body. I explained it to her when she returned. "It felt as if the entire left side of my body filled with light. Not only was my entire internal space bright and clear, I was also light in mass." What was particularly striking was how transparent, clean, and open my left side was in contrast with my right. The right half of my bodily interior was dark, heavy, opaque. Nothing going on; no movement whatsoever. Still. When I became aware of the sharp bisection I started trying to draw light from the left side over to the right, to permeate the darkness.

"See, you're good at this shit," the IA teased back. I told her I still blog about her, and she said she thought it was an interesting bit of synchrony that her initials were IA, since her field of study is called Integrated Awareness. (Related (?) article on somat awareness.) I've been having more synchronic moments in the past month or so than ever in my life.

My head has shrunk. Seriously! I noticed it some ten days ago or so. I was washing my hair in the shower. My head never had a size before, it was just there while I did my thing. One day, it was small. Or maybe my hands have grown? When I was a young soccer player, new coaches would scoff at my claim of being a goalie. They would take one look at my little hands and say, impossible! I am not tall; perhaps I would have caught more balls if my hands were larger. I was quick, though, had good judgment regarding angles, and launched my body into the path of oncoming players with abandon. Most of my best saves I don't remember. It is as if the moment between anticipating a shot and feeling the ball on my fingertips occurred too quickly for memory to capture.

The size of my hands hasn't changed. I'm pretty sure my head isn't physically smaller, either. Yet, the perception signifies something...

I remember the one time I dropped acid. I remain a coward in regard to drugs; addiction runs in the family and being out of control has never appealed to me. I was curious, though, and I had gotten to known this guy who did acid frequently. I trusted him. It was a mellow trip. I was awake for some 20 hours with no hint of fatigue. I wasn't speeding, just alert. The sound of the cicadas in the springtime trees that night occupied my attention for a long while. My body still remembers standing in a Taco Bell parking lot, listening.

Eventually we ended up back at my parent's house, where I was staying during a break from college. I was amazed that I was still so awake, come 4 or 5 am, but also wondering what the big deal was - I hadn't had a single hallucination. Then I looked down at my hand on the arm of the lounge chair. It slowly morphed into a dinosaur claw. Creeped me out! I was sure my hand would never look the same again.

But it does. Same ol' small hands. Just like my head is really still the same size, even though the rest of my senses seem to be finally catching up with my mind.

Disability comes in all shapes, sizes, modes, and effects. There are legally-recognized versions and emotional varieties. These, or any number of indeterminate cognitive and psychiatric peculiarities, can interfere with intimate relationships and social interactions. For instance, people look at me and see a woman with a mullet who appears physically fit. What do they know? No, I don’t meet the federal criteria of “impairment of a major life function” (Americans with Disabilities Act 1990). I can breathe, walk, grasp, talk, feel, think, and otherwise function within the range of physicality deemed normal. Who decided to limit “normal” and impose such a measure for judging character or the potential worth of one’s contributions to society? Individuals will not claim responsibility, of course. Such boundaries and markers of difference are established ‘out there’ by impersonal forces of culture. The representations are propagated through the media, religion, and a disturbing range of incidental, informal taboos and negative sanctions. Questioning these norms is often considered problematic, disruptive, or unpleasant. When I do wonder about the so-called normal, people situate me clearly: I am deviant.

Fitting few standard stereotypes, I have learned to live through language. Sentiments not spoken affected me first. Often, the untold still wounds me. The silence of non-recognition echoes in words I hear and reverberates in perceptions left unsaid. The speech of my family was self-focused and therefore distancing, functional not relational, unaware and unreflective. My parents opposed each other on gender's fulcrum: mom never swore, dad often did. Anger was the palpable emotion of my formative years. I checked out, merely passing as present. When I woke up, twenty-seven years of my life were gone. How can one speak from pain without blame? I yearned for a language I did not know.

I needed words I could feel, a language that would bring me into my body. I sought belonging among lesbian communities and found that we were not much better at handling distinction than the dominant heterosexual society was at accepting us. Our bodies, full of longing, could not manage questions of dis/ability: our own aesthetics, potentials, possibilities. What is valuable if the body itself is constrained? I have never consistently been able. I fail much more frequently than I succeed. I celebrate small triumphs with all the gusto of athletic championships. Why not?! Yet I notice how the smallest movements can invoke urgency, feeding speed, haste, a rush to . . . where? Meaning constructed by assumption, cues missed, opportunities lost: wisdom becomes elusive. How much have I learned from friends' contemplating solitary visual horizons, or analyzing power’s most intimate nuances? Stillness inspires depth. I lament how long it has taken me to learn to enjoy listening for its own sake.

I cannot explain the random movement of the universe (or the privileges of being white and middle-class) that brought me into contact with Deaf people and American Sign Language. I spent years training to interpret others’ words, to translate their meanings into sensibility for those who could not see. Through signing, I discover my own emotions, investigating the boundaries of my expressive capacities. This practice, of sensing and conveying the intellectual and emotional meanings of others, prepared the ground for me to expand my range. Through this visual-gestural language I excavated buried wounds and static ambitions. The embodied kinesthetics of signing ASL allowed access to hidden and repressed parts of myself.

Through friendships, relationships, teaching and parenting I have observed the effect of words to inspire or deaden, enliven or thwart, create or sunder meaningful relationships. Uttered words (signed or spoken) leave their imprint yet vanish into insubstantial memory. Written down, words are a commitment. I mean this, right now. Writing was not, at first, something I felt called to do. It does not come easily, as signing usually does. The labor of compressing four-dimensional geometrical perception into one-dimensional linear text remains a challenge. I practice daily. When I write, I feel the energy of my being streaming out into the world. I am here. I matter. I want to make a difference. I care.

I sign to know myself. I write to live.

I wrote this piece, Language as Motion, as an example of the "Self-in-Contradiction" essay that is one of the options for the "personal/identity narrative" assigned to students in the introductory level writing course I'm currently teaching. There are a couple of friends who will recognize themselves in this piece (thank you), and I have to give some credit to Just-in-Time, who got us lost in traffic yesterday in Boston. While we were discussing writing as a craft, another part of my brain was mulling this attempt.

I am also conscious of the timing. Language set-in-motion through the last several semesters of blogging and constructing public writing environments for students is coming to some kind of turning point. The theory of language-as-action meets with (a) practical reality of language-in-use.

Yesterday I relaxed. Spent time with friends. Walked in the woods. Ate good food. Saw a decidedly unedifying movie. Stayed up too late. Have been considering when to post about Alec - my experience of hearing the news, the moments that bit the worst . . . etc.

It is beautiful late summer/early fall: shorts-weather yet the trees begin to burst with color.

"We'll pass Steph eventually," they joked about my comps defense, after grilling me for two hours and deciding I needed to clarify a few things. "I want to pound this point in," says one of my esteemed professors. "Not to pile things on," says another. Yeah, right! My chair tried to make me feel better: "People take comps at all levels in this department. The questions you've taken on are humongous." There was a sidebar at one point, about how I tend to experiment in real life...

I still make too many assumptions about shared understanding that makes the reader have to work too hard. This is part of what invites so much interrogation. The interrogation itself isn't bad, although it is hard! Being questioned so intensively feels hard but it is "the ideas that fight," as my favorite antagonist clarified when I said, "You know I like fighting with you." (This, after kicking me a few times.)

Some would argue that it is not politic to experiment with comps. The stakes are rather high, eh? Yet, while we were there, I was aware that I'll never have such an opportunity again: three brilliant minds focused exclusively on whether or not I know what the hell I'm talking about and guiding me through weaknesses, confusions, and potential pitfalls. They push hard because I reach far.