Spectacular But Not Moved?

After our recent performance before a non-dance audience, I looked up: a standing ovation and tears. Genuine enthusiasm and excitement about our work. Real appreciation. But what had they seen? As a performer, I believe it is important to ask about reception and to think about it, even if you know that you cannot control interpretation.

That said, I wonder what people see when they observe spectacular stuff -- almost invariably, a large section of non-technical audiences is wowed by the stuff that is visually striking but not always hard to do. People clap when they see the first wheelie (they stop after they realize that it's a standard part of the vocabulary). There is a trick to understanding the sweet balance point; yeah, we are vulnerable to gravity, but it's not per se hard. Hard are some of the side balances and counterbalances with our partners. Hard are timing and rhythm. I am beginning to suspect that the audience responds to their sense of how much we are physically vulnerable.

I'd note here that their sense of physically vulnerable often comes from an unnecessary worry about collision or about us running over a fragile dancer toe. No one worries about the wheelchair users being tipped over backwards by our non-disabled partners (what center of gravity?). No one worries about us being clocked by a leg flying by at 90 mph. They do worry about whether or not we might fall. But there you are. Physical vulnerability is wow. And the more we do it, they more they respond.

And yet, I've been to technically flawless performances and had my first response be, "wow, they must be so bruised." Physical vulnerability is more about risk. About fireworks. It isn't always rewarding to watch. So, risk, in my book, should always be partnered with emotional vulnerability.

This latter is hard to describe. It's not always that we are dancing these huge great emotional dramas. Far from it. Much of what we do is pretty abstract; no narrative, no inherent emotional situation. And yet, people cry. What the hell? OK. Time to stop being disingenuous; there is one piece currently in rep that makes me want to cry. By the time we've finished, I just want to weep from exhaustion (wrote about it here and here). Actually, going back over those entries, I am finding that the operative word is "vulnerable." I feel exposed -- even though I know that I am safe behind the proscenium and safe in my dance persona. You may be hearing my voice, my words; you may be seeing my body move. But that in toto is a construction. It's not me.

So, what makes me vulnerable? How do you achieve vulnerability?

Seriously, Though

When you lie in bed at night (alone or not ... I find not worse: the regular unpeturbed sleeping of a partner pisses me off) and your body does some thing, what do you do with that twitch of fear that rises? What do you do with what if? The "Oh no?" The sometimes, "please, no..." When you beg silently is that worse than if you actually say it aloud?

It's funny that as strong as I actually am and as well as I feel, the underlying insecurity about what happens next and my responses to pain are still there and, surprise, still the same. Sometimes, the hypnosis tapes, the relaxation breathing, the mind exercises, the knowledge that it has always gone away ... Just not enough. Sometimes. You know. I forget.

I forget and my strongest recollection is my fear. It's worse than a fading nightmare. Perhaps even the fear is worse than the current body event. There really is a time of day when the circadian rhythms, or whatever your physical analysis system would name it, fail. When you are most vulnerable to your ugliest monsters. When you know that the dawn is coming and that you would rather not face the light and that you can't stay where you are.

That's the time. That's the time when the absurd bargains you make with the universe seem real and yet futile. Until you realize that you made them last time and that they somehow worked.

Best Bathroom in NYC

This, peeps, is the best accessible bathroom in the city: a fire hydrant. City planners, please take note.

Post contains an image of a w/c user raising a wheel over a hydrant like a dog.










(a friend drew the hydrant).

FriendFeed?

What Is This "FriendFeed"?

This is your friendly neighborhood Wizard, in his long-awaited and long-delayed WCD blog debut!

Many have just begun to dip a toe into Twitter, while some are knee-deep in the wonder and communication of it. Others just don't see the point, and a charming few haven't heard of Twitter yet. Please divide yourselves into two groups, the Twitterati and the Nevertweets. Now let me write to each of you in turn.

Dear Twitterati:

Bravo! There is an unexpected wonder and magic about the types of contact and connection that Twitter can facilitate. It's immediate and pithy, and it helps us understand each other -- and be open with each other -- in deep ways.

But Twitter is like a very noisy cocktail party. Sometimes you aren't interested in a topic but it keeps returning. It can be hard to have a real discussion or conversation when you hear only parts of what's being said. 140 characters is not enough for big ideas.

You may want your friends to know about other parts of your online life: when you publish to your blog, upload photos to Flickr, share an article in Google Reader, favorite a video on YouTube, change your status message on Facebook or Gmail, vote for an article on Digg, etc. It's inconvenient to go to Twitter to tell people what you're doing -- it's much easier to just do things and your friends can find out.

FriendFeed makes it easier to have conversations, to hide things you're not interested in, and to include all your public online life in one persona. FriendFeed is a companion to Twitter -- not a replacement, not a "Twitter app" like Twitterific or TweetDeck, but a complementary service that can send tweets when you do things around the web (like writing a Yelp review or uploading photos) and can help you organize discussions that include your Twitter followers.

Dear Nevertweets:

Telling the world that you're eating a sandwich isn't your thing, I know. But every now and then would you like to start a discussion about something? Would you like to find out what news articles or blogs people felt were thought provoking, or to see the photos from your friends' latest travels? Or would you just like your friends to easily tune in to "your things" across the web? If so, give FriendFeed a try.

How To Try FriendFeed in 5 Minutes:

1. In the right column of this blog, find the "Subscribe" button for FriendFeed. Then click on "Join FriendFeed."
2. If you're on Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter, click on the appropriate icon(s) to link those accounts with your FriendFeed. Your password will be safe, because you'll only give your Twitter password to Twitter, your Gmail password to Google, and your Facebook password to Facebook.
3. You can add other services to your FriendFeed during signup or at any time by clicking on the "Settings" link on the upper right of the FriendFeed homepage. People often link their blogs, Flickr, Yelp, Amazon wishlists, Last.fm playlists, YouTube favorites, Digg, etc.
4. If you use Twitter, click on the "Settings" link and then click on "Twitter publishing preferences." This is where you tell FriendFeed which of your posts you want it to tweet out.

And then you're done! FriendFeed pages update automatically, while you watch, as people make comments and add new content. You don't even need to reload the page; it just changes. By visiting http://friendfeed.com/ you can comment on your friends' content, start discussions yourself, and hide discussions you don't care for. If you "Like" a post or comment on a post, your friends will see the post along with your Like or comment.

WCD has placed two FriendFeed widgets in the right column of this blog. The top widget shows the last 3 posts WCD made to her FriendFeed, much like the Twitter badge that used to be there. She doesn't display the Twitter badge anymore since FriendFeed includes all her tweets. The bottom widget is a FriendFeed search showing all the mentions of WCD on FriendFeed. This search constantly updates. You can Like or comment on any of these posts right here in the right column of the blog.

Even if you end up not using FriendFeed yourself, you've still accomplished something: any of your friends who use FriendFeed will be able to subscribe to you and see your content from around the web.

(thank you, Wizard... enjoy !)

Falling

Perhaps I should not write this post. OK. In writing this, I KNOW I am jinxing myself. But here goes anyway.

I pride myself on some combination of my balance and my skills; I haven't fallen in a very long time. Today, however, I almost took myself over (too much in the bag on the back, duh!). And all the old fear came rushing back. I've written a lot about falling here. In part because it took a while to develop skills and experience and in part because dancing is not a safe thing.

There's this from January 2007: "Falling from your wheelchair has many parts. The moment before you realize it's all over. The feeling of falling. The whump as you hit the ground, and the getting back in." This from 2006: "And I'm running. I mean tearing down Broadway (Iglide can manage about 6 mph -- haha ) when I miss the cut and just splat forwards (the chair manages to tip backwards) right before a bunch of helpful people (who I've just passed) and straight in front of another wheelie." This is one of the most terrifying dance falls:

The whole thing started well, but I hadn't thought ahead fully. I just figured that I would do a side bend and try to get a little lower. Bad plan. I raised my arms, breathed, and went over. As I stretched, I could feel the wheel on the opposing side rising up beneath me -- yup, you guessed it. I had forgotten the counterbalance. So, there I am. For a second, I try to deny what's happening. But the wheel rises inexorably, and my arms are so far over my head that I can't get them back quick enough. No problem, I figure. I will just come back up again. But by this time, I am too far gone to get back. The chair pauses for a second; there's a moment where I just hang with one wheel off the ground. I can see how cool I look in the mirror. And then it's over.

As time has passed, though, I've changed my take on all this falling. Falling is how my shoulder, neck, and hip dance injuries occurred -- chronicled around this blog. Falling is now too scary to think about; it must be avoided at all costs. The word itself just tips gracefully over from one end of the mouth to the other. As you say it, you open your mouth gracefully and delicately complete the "l" sound. The action, however, is different from the enunciation. Of this, I am all too sure.

In rehearsal, we often say "fall and recover." We mean that the falling dancer recovers possession of his or her body (though of course the falls are controlled). We don't mean that the dancer must take time to recover physically from the injury of the fall. Last summer, as I learned to cartwheel with a dancer simultaneously, I bit the dust every few seconds. The tv crew was fascinated and what made us -- me -- get up and start again. But now that's all I can think of. If I fall, I must recover. But recovering has begun to change its meaning, too. When I think recover, I don't feel recoil or simple getting up. I feel retreat. A covering and protecting of my body and its frailties.

So, this post is for the record. Some scary falling video:

You can always recover if you are willing to start again; you may not regain your pre-fall self.

And some photo demonstrations of how to get up: tuck and roll. Tuck and roll. And then drag yourself back to neutral.

Water Walking

"Sit down, shoulders forward, pelvis back, weight shift to your toes, and slowly bring your pelvis forward. And weight shift, left side, right side, don't bend the knee, left side, right side -- not forward."

I watch as group 1 lurches off, arms extended like zombies sleep walking towards the other side of the pool. Everyone is so intent on doing it right that I wonder if they have any idea of what they look like. My thoughts are treacherous; get with the programme; I'm up next. And if I don't concentrate, I will successfully smack my face into the water (again).

It's taken me a while to successfully manage the sequence of movement that is the precursor to water walking. This is the last part of my hip surgery rehab stuff. It's intense, and though I am doing very well, I hope I don't have to do the other hip as well. I could do without going through all that again. I have the suspicion Wizard feels similarly.

When my turn comes, I successfully stand up -- smooth, controlled movement -- and I set off. For the first months, I was like an upright brick; recently, however, I am beginning to find and use my pelvis in the side-to-side movement. Ah yes, the pelvic clock. I push my pelvis to the left. Hooray. I feel like I have finally achieved the ideal "woman's walk;" I attempt to push it back and feel my face hit the water.

Elite, Rich, and Wealthy

I'm hearing and seeing the word "elite" a lot these days. Usually, it's in reference to change occurring as a result of the economic downturn. Elite families, elite schools, elite nannies, brokers, bankers, schools, executives, magazines, colleges, clothes ... Elite. It also shows up with rich and wealthy. Elite. Rich. And wealthy. In the stories I read, they are proffered as everyone's dream. I mean, who wouldn't want to be elite, rich, and wealthy (rich and wealthy are different?)? The more I hear them, the queasier I feel.

The thing that is beginning to bug me is that I am hearing words like rich, elite, wealthy being tossed around in quick succession without any clear understanding of what membership in the class might mean (though that is practically the least of my concerns). I am more worried that it has simply become acceptable to hate the rich (without knowing whether rich means 100K p.a. or 2M or perhaps something in between). The rich, elite, and wealthy are simply nebulously grouped people that are most easily defined as "not the writer and/or projected audience."

I am not about to launch a defence of the people whose greed, ignorance, and stupidity is at the heart of the current economic crisis. These people are not members of protected classes and nor should they be. I don't deny that there are people of extreme wealth who are jerks with and about their money. Those people might deserve some kind of animus.

But I want to think about how we name groups. Go ahead! Stir up trouble, if trouble is what you want. When the revolution comes, next year, I want to be in the forefront. Incite ACTION! Focus on change. This country surely needs it. But if you are just fomenting trouble, hatred, envy, and jealousy, I am not for your hate the rich campaign: I cannot buy into a philosophical position that says "don't hate difference -- disability, race, class, gender, sexuality -- but hate the elite and wealthy (whatever that means to you!)." And I am scared of the world in which this is an unquestioned norm. Social change does not come from fear and hatred.

This interview from NPR's On the Media really got me thinking -- in a lot of directions. The context is generally ugly -- that the wealthy have a P.R problem not a moral problem and, further, that the "aspirational," i.e. not wealthy, but wannabees, are envious. As a whole, however, the ugliness serves my point. There's a kind of morbid fascination shown by the interviewer for the wealthy. I see and hear the irony, but I also see and hear a kind of, well, deference? -- you may have to go through the whole interview to see it. It's the kind of thing I used to see interviewer use for royalty: respect and deference even as you believe in the corruptness of the system. And as for the voice of the wealthy -- he speaks of the rest as envious wannabes. Neither is a good stance to hold towards each other in principle. Neither should serve as a social foundation, a basis for interaction, and a way of imaging the lives of those around you.

The NPR interviewer is Bob Garfield.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay, so the hoi polloi have always had a kind of love/hate relationship with the rich. And at a time like this, I suppose the resentment tends to spike.

DOUG GOLLAN: I think, you know, seeing the wealthy on their yachts and their jets was generally tolerable when they were also able to dip their toe in the water. But, obviously, we're in an economic crisis right now, and many of with their mortgages in their own homes, they’re underwater - car payments and things like that - they are having to make cutbacks in their own lifestyle. And, you know, it’s a little bit maybe of envy that they see other people who are financially so well off that they don't have to change the way they live.

Hoi polloi? That's inflammatory. But OK. It's supposed to be ironic. More serious are the assumptions of tolerance and resentment. *Have* we always had a love/hate relationship with the rich? I don't see that. Envy? EnvY? That worries me. Do we tolerate or seek? Do we resent or fear? The question is more complicated than I know how to answer.

I do know that societies based around hatred, envy, fear, and resentment will neither change for the better nor remain the same.

A Room With A View Or Perhaps Vice Versa

I haven't written about the construction site that is our house in a while.

Overall, I'd have to say that things are going surprisingly well. That is, there is a structure, and things are happening inside it. That's not to say that we've not had some bumps in the road. Utilities. Sewers. Holes. Pipes. Electricity. Propane. And all the hassles with AT&T. But we now have floors, cabinets, tile, bookshelves, stairs, walls, dry wall, decking, windows, a hot tub, and doors. The trailer has gone away, and the office and equipment have been moved inside the actual house. Oh yes! There's even a roof.

We're waiting for a lot of things -- some permits, some final design choices, some appliances. BUT our first piece of furniture showed up (unexpectedly) this week. Yes, I'd say, the house is underway. And that's a good thing, too. The finish date is supposed to be late August of this year. It's hard to see it, right now. But that's what they are promising. (Wizard and I figure that the house per se will be done and that we will be waiting for landscaping).

In the photo above, protective cardboard covers the floor of the living room.

The more finished the house is, the more I become intrigued by it. And what it doesn't have: rooms. Yes, I know, there are places in the house that we name "bedroom," "bathroom," and "living room," but this place does not have rooms in the sense in which I usually experience them. I imagine that actual architects spend a lot of time thinking about the function and design of rooms -- where to put the windows, outlets, walls, furniture, materials, colours, textures, dry walls, paint? panels? glass? concrete? I also imagine that there are article and book chapters theorizing the construction and function of rooms within houses. After all, rooms are where we spend our time and carry out our activities. And what you see above, in the photo, is clearly a room.

Yet, for the most part, I don't think of the place as having rooms. This is in part due to the fact that there are very few doors; some walls don't go all the way up; most spaces aren't square (in my mind, rooms should be identifiably square or rectangular at the very least); then, there's the outside and the outside space. I think that this is the primary feature of the house for me. Because rather than having a room with a view, the house feels like it is a view with some rooms. Not that this is a bad thing -- no, not at all. But it does change how this house functions as a home.

There are rooms with no walls -- entirely outside. Rooms with some walls, half walls, and regular wall-walls. But when I think of home, I recall the places I grew up. Very clearly defined spaces. Walls. Walls. Walls. Inside and out. Hedges. Fences.

I was very attuned to the sense of enclosure. Ours was one of the servants' cottages on what was formerly the village manor. The house is typically what we think of as an English cottage: half-timbred, a thatch when we first showed up, leaded windows, and wattle and daub. The walls leaned in to the rooms -- not ominously, but comfortingly. Nothing was straight; some walls were curved -- not intentionally, but just because they were the originals. The bent beams protruded down into the rooms. The torqued floor beams creaked as someone entered or exited a room. You could never be free of the sense of the walls; the windows served only to highlight the presence of the walls because they showed the world the walls prevented from penetrating the fortress that was our tiny cottage. The walls defined the exterior and the interior simultaneously; they were the rooms.

I think that my sense of the new house begins with the transitionary space. Many contemporary houses have foyer, hallway, entryway space -- I've seen it defined as party space or simply as a "grand entry." Our house doesn't have that kind of static space; the open areas are very clearly defined as pathways to another place. They are designed to transition people through three different "areas" of the house. It's dynamic; there are paths, bridges, rails, lines, windows, sightlines, openings... But it is dynamic. Even though, technically, the transition space occupies a fair amount of square footage, you wouldn't actually -- indeed, couldn't -- spend time there. Not in your every day life nor even in a party mode. As we discuss this, Wizard and I notice that the paths funnel us into the living room and again (in a different direction) into the bedroom.

How to put this? You open the front door, you walk in, and you arrive not at a room but at an intersection. You have to actively choose a direction. Ultimately, you will arrive at a room, but the primary experience of the house is one of movement. When you reach your room; the walls are most likely to be two thirds floor to ceiling glass; the ceiling has skylights. The deck rooms, the view down the hill, and the valley take your perspective away from the walls. It seems as if you could walk forever -- perhaps, though, you'd want to take a zipline across the water to the East Bay Hills. Because the doors are mostly pocket doors, the paths really do deliver you into a room.

That's it: the paths and view outweigh the walls and the rooms.

New Anatomies: Wheelchairs

Use your shoulders as your hips. Your thoracic/lumbar juncture functions as your pelvis, your power house. *Your* core is strong, but it is more of a base than a core. But remember, your wheels are your actual legs.

I try to reassemble an image of myself in my mind. I vainly try to substitute pictures of hip joints where my shoulders are. I add a pelvis to the middle of my back. A platform where my core is. And finish up with an image of feet on my leg-wheels. It's not a successful image. "That," I think, as I grab one of my wheels, "is the consequence of adaptive dancing. You end up with an adapted body. And an injured one at that."

The point about anatomy is singular, though. The more I recover and rehab, the more I write about dancing -- the more I prepare to dance -- the more I think that understanding body and chair as a contiguous coherent unit matters. We/I really have to reconfigure our kinesthetic understanding. I will never be able to study and or understand the physics, but someone should. It is hard enough for me to understand the potential in my hands on the wheels.

Part of this new understanding is disencouraged, if that is the word, by what we think we know about wheelchairs. All too often, even when we are getting customization, the chair and all to often the approach of the provider is about standardization. Take, for example, frames and wheels -- key parts of the chair, no? Let me ask: whose butt-legs are a precise 16x17 square (or whatever your butt-legs happen to be)? I mean, I look in the mirror and expect to see this squarish shape that is the standard seat. OK. So mine is the tapered package, but it isn't tapered the way MY ass is, umm, tapered. Designers make platforms to sit on; they don't think about making bodies.

My most recent gripe is wheelsize. I've been trying to get 25"s to put on my chair. No one on this forsaken planet apparently uses 25"s. Do *you* use 25"s? No. I didn't think so. Apparently, I have a long torso with short arms. (that despite my dance line -- which I think is pretty damn good). BUT I have short arms. At least compared with the rest of you. At this point in my PT/rehab, I can sit really nicely, but I can't reach my bloody wheels. Moving to 25's on my current chair (designed around 24"s and a rotated pelvis) will give me a nice open hip position and take some of the risk out of my work. But wheelchair world is almost designed around 24 inches. Getting 25's -- even to try -- is virtually impossible. I've been waiting now for 5 weeks for a sample from the rep.

Alongside the oddities of my body and the difficulty of acquiring non-standard standardized equipment comes the issue of money. Granted, few people pay to surgically acquire the bodies they desire, but disabled folk have to pay to acquire a body, so it might as well be a body you want. Wheelchairs cost. Wheels cost. Cushions cost. And the cost is not in the realms of the easy. Ebay's cheapest wheelchair right now is $20. It's not easily usable. The kind of titanium, high end aesthetically and functional thing you might crave? Thousands. Thousands.


I am including this video here as a reminder that our equipment itself is so beautiful and has such potential for movement. Each of the customizations here add to the possible movement vocabulary. I have no idea whose chairs these are or what they paid for them. But they make me want to go back to the studio, sit before a mirror, and work.

A Quickie on the Spine

Since last I blogged, I've been around the world and back. Well, all right then, not really. I've returned from NYC and I am off to Tucson with half the US disabled world on Wednesday for the Society for Disability Studies conference.

Meeting so many people for such a short and yet so long period of time in such intense ways has me feeling a little nervous and a little excited. I love doing this kind of thing and yet it brings out many of my own insecurities about how I live my life (when compared to the way others live and any expectations I think others may have about me).

So, I've been a-reflecting.

I'm feeling scattered across the many different parts of my lives. I've been looking for my roots. The elbow tendinitis has me asking what will happen next if I continue to be unable to dance. Where will I go? Who will I be? I will be OK. Yes, I will. But who will I be? What will I do? Will I try my hand in the working world? Will I not work? The issue for me is how we maintain the tissue of connections that link us one to another. Where is our center?

This section of an interview with contact improvisation specialist/founder/father, Steve Paxton, had me fascinated -- both because of what I have been writing about dance and bones and because "contact" in a variety of forms is the technique most often used by dancers with disabilities. Indeed, the contact arena was the space that first really accepted and nurtured disabled dancers. (A short statement of a long and complicated history)

The Material for the Spine is your new DVD and the theme for this workshop, what is “spine” for you?

It is very difficult to sense unless the spine is injured. I had an injury in my spine, and I could not move—it was really painful…I had to use a wheelchair at that time. Thus, something is core about the spine within humans. The English word spine means “column” in Spanish and it may be a better way to explain it. Dance and most sports are focused outside of body, such as arms, legs and shoulders. On the other hand, the spine is the main focus for C.I. I started to create exercises for C.I. through analyzing how to use the spine in C.I. Using this exercise; I organized a workshop specifically for the spine. I focus on the skeleton and how to support the weight. I am curious about the weight of many parts of the body and how it is all connected around spine.

It's not clear to me whether Paxton here means spine bones or spinal cord with regard to his own injury. For the moment, I am going to sort of conflate the two into one huge backbone experience. I am not sure that I knew about my spine as a physical reality before the disability stuff showed up. I most certainly know it, intimately, now. I don't have a spinal cord injury in the traditional sense, but I do have both spinal cord issues and disk issues. And my awareness of my spine is part of every day and almost every move. I warm my spine before dancing, I do spine exercises, I do "spinal stretches" ... I can't get away from my spine (I do differentiate this, slightly, from my back stuff which is soft tissue).

Scattered throughout this blog are various meditations about the place of back and back bone related figurative speech in our world. The spine is central. I hold it/it holds me as the center of my dance technique. There's probably some irony in working for a company the majority of whose dancers have spinal cord injuries, a company whose movement strategies arise from contact (and contact improv). Disabled or not, we all have strong relationships with our spines.

Since last I wrote of friendships of the spine, I have got to know some of you much better. Gosh, this has been a running theme in my writing since March. Huh. Nice to see some growth and development. We IM, email, g-chat, g-video, twitter, and call. Our connections are more than tissue; they are as fundamental to me as my spine.

Knowing what I do of Paxton's work, I know that I cannot do what he does in the way that he does it. I've spent 6 months in physical therapy and I still cannot do a pure PT and dance spinal roll. Try it. It's hard. Rolling is NOT the same as turning over. Here's Paxton talking a little more about spinal work.



You have to use the floor, your weight sinks into the floor, you can push against it and let it give you support and momentum. You can lead with a leg or an arm, but your spine carries you. That said, it's one thing to feel your spine when your spine hurts like f*ck. It's another to feel the spine in any arm movement. Dance technique facilitates this kind of thing -- though it usually talks about the "batwing" the arm beginning deep in your lat, moving from your back. Usually, they mean muscle not bone, but dance does have a vocabulary for thinking about these things.

The Paxton interview again:

For dance, muscle is normally the main concern, isn't it? Why are you curious about the skeleton more than muscle?

Because so many people are already thinking of muscle. From my experience, there are some dance techniques of the spine, but that are not only of the spine. I cannot concentrate only on the spine for that because I need to be careful to be sure my step is correct and how I should move on the floor. Thus, it is necessary to think of the spine deeply. If you study the spine once, you have never forget it. ....

True enough. But what happens when your spine does outre stuff? When your bones and cord are responsible for the very thing that separates you from the standard dance world? Mainstream dance doesn't know what to do with disabled spines. (Oh, check out the work of Laura Ferguson -- artist with scoliosis -- her visible skeleton series is awesome). How are spine and wheels connected? How are arms and wheels connected? Where is the powerhouse? Could what Paxton has to say about rolling on the floor change how my chair rolls across the floor? I have more work to do here.

In the meantime, though, I will pack my cases, roll up my ice cuffs, unplug my heating pad and head to Tucson. When I wake in the morning, I will roll out of bed and begin my spinal warm ups. Then, I will run down to get coffee and breakfast; I will get to reach deep into some of the connections I hold at the center of my life.

NSFW: Again! But it's Art, Honestly!

Today, we went to see some of Betty Tompkins Fuck and Cunt pictures. The gallery stuff introduced her by comparing her work to that of Chuck Close -- photorealist paintings. Up close -- full wall size -- pictures of heterosexual intercourse. Think you've seen it before? These aren't just bodies; it's cunts, dicks (yes, her words), and fucking. It's pierced clithoods, pierced labia, penetration with three fingers (quite entrancing, but also exhausting to look at), texture, hair, so large. It's bodies and sex so close, so, well, real you can smell them.

This was all rather new for me. I'm not a great denizen of the art gallery world. And I really don't know much about art. My tastes are not particularly sophisticated, I assume -- I have no idea what they are. I can only say that I like or don't like an individual piece. I do like some odd stuff. And I like some classical stuff. And, yes, I likes me some cheeze. I was curious to see what I would see. And why I would tell myself that I was seeing it. After all, you can see genitals in action (with and without the rest of their bodies) on the internet for free.

I think the strange thing about this is that seeing art in a gallery (vs a museum) really got to me. I got to looking with a consumer's eye, as opposed to a museum visitor's eye. Museum work is really out of reach; it's given, donated, on loan, purchased, and sky high expensive. Galleries, on the other hand, offer you the fiction that you might just, in another world, at another time -- tomorrow? -- buy the thing you are looking at. You, too, could own ART!

There's something appealing about these, though. It's not just that they are explicit, realistic -- they most certainly are. I can see the texture of the skin, the gleam of light or is that moisture? I want to touch the hair, the wiriness of it. I can see the smoke, smell the funk, and hear the noise as one body part slips against another. Oh, it's real(istic). But it is surprisingly unsexy. I am right there staring at this (girl on girl #2 -- vagina, anus, and fingers) and it's not turning me on in the slightest. Is there something wrong with me, I ask myself. I stare at this (cunt grid #17). I don't feel that stirring feeling. Everything I looked at beforehand spoke to the censorship, the boldness. Almost everything I glanced at (online) came to the conclusion that this was sexy -- I think because the detail, the explicitness, and the frank look at the body is so unflinching that the only word people can come up with is sexy.

I can't take my eyes away, but I realize that sex and explicit stuff isn't necessarily sexy by virtue of its openness. And I begin to look at the detail. I come to realize that it is exhausting to be so close to some thing so evocative. It is exhausting to feel that if you reached your hand out, you might touch the wetness. And then I see: these things are huge! Whole wall size huge. The cunt ring shines out of the blurred focus; that which is in focus and slightly out of focus moves your eye around, yes. But eventually you can't stop seeing. The piercings of cunt and labia in cunt painting #10 ( third from the left, first row here) suddenly look terrifying to me; there's no easy perceptible way in or out of that vagina. The lips look like they are held together with sharp, sharp teeth. In another world, would I be calling this infibulation? I admit to averting my eyes and to not going back for a second closer look. I couldn't stand it. It was too intense. Even now, the smaller, safer web version seems intense.

What would it be like to own one? Would I put one in my living room? Could I put a 58 x 58 version of cunt painting # 10 in my living room? It would dominate the whole room, yes. Would I be able to look at it everyday? What would it take to see something so deep, so unsparing, so ... every day? Could I lie on the couch in pain and look at it? What would my friends see? Could we have movie night and have #10 stare down at us? Could I put one in my bedroom. Well, not all of them are wall size, but could I do that? How would our sex be if we had cunt painting #11 on the bedroom wall? (second from left, first row here)

I want one. I don't have gallery space to display one. I can't imagine daily living with one. I am so drawn to them that the stirring I feel within me is one of acquisitiveness. I want to stare and stare and stare. I want to drink in the power and feel that while I can never own it, it belongs to me. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know how to look at it. I don't know where to put it. But I want it.

Oh galleries and the fiction that you might just be able to own something as beautiful as these.

Dancing in Your Bones

I'm not dancing right now. I was cleared to go back -- hip surgery all good. Wonky shoulder (bursitis, tendinitis, impingement syndrome) strong and stable (finally). And ta-da! elbow tendinitis. I blew my elbows. Unbelievable. So, this is more of a theoretical meditation on dance.

Can I begin where I left off in that last post? The bones of my body hold true for me; my muscles are what my body has given me. So even when my joints are unstable and my muscles torque and spasm, I recognize in these places parts of my deepest self. I strive to hold on to these selfs in every day life and in dance. I strive to bring them to the street and to the stage. Does desiring muscle and bone make me butch and deny me femme as positions from which I can navigate the world?

This, I think, is crip, is gimp. It is an understanding of the sexuality of the deepest and rawest parts of the body -- it is not so much a focus on gender presentation and on responses to gendered roles. It is an answer to the call of the fibres, the sinews, the fluids, and the infinite structure of the bones.

What does this mean for dancing? And, in particular, for dancing in a wheelchair, with the dancers of West Coast? My first insight is a way of thinking about my wheels. I often write about how my chair is part of my body, but it apparently took me a while to get to thinking about "wheelwork." Yes, I wrote this about paying attention to where your wheels are, but even then it hadn't fully sunk in.

Wheelwork happened for me as a confluence of a couple of things. As part of my rehab program, I have been getting into gyrokinesis -- an interesting movement system that thinks about the spine, the joints, oppositions in the musculature, etc. -- a LOT of dancers use it for strengthening and body awareness. It also has rehab uses. Some of the first level exercises are performed from a stool or from a lying down position. As I worked, I started wondering how I could maintain that sense of active base as I sat in my chair and danced. I wanted to be able to keep that flow of energy and power through my legs, yes. I also wanted to be able to make my chair more than something I push -- though I believe *how* I push is important. I wanted to activate it; I wanted more options.

A while back, I wrote: "One thing my teacher taught me was, "Never let them see you pull your wheel. You want them to see the shape, the line, your body." Sometimes, I do that. I ask you to look up at my hand and lo! the chair turns. Mostly, however, I accept my chair as my body and you are invited to watch my hands on the wheels. I move my fingers to draw attention to this part of my movement; I vary my stroke. When I pull, I pull with deliberation. I want you to see that." See the sleight of hand? I am inviting you to watch my hand on the wheel, to watch the action of my pull. What would happen if I invited you to watch my wheel?

I watched one of West Coast's nondisabled dancers kick her leg out; I observed the detail of her feet. The thing that most easily caught my eye was her body shape, but as I followed her body, I noticed a tiny detail -- her feet spoke to the line of her body. Her feet opposed her body; she curled her toes up, out, down, and away. Away with her leg! But as I watched, I saw a little conversation between her feet, legs, and the rest of her body. In that moment, I knew that I had to do something different.

In that moment, I felt like a blob. I dance with my upper body and my arms, but I had not known how to send the active awareness and care that I have in my upper body down into my wheels. How was it that I had not yet made the wheels an active part of the dance expression?

In ballet class, one part of the center work focuses on intricate foot and leg work; some of it is strengthening for jumping, and some of it is intricacy of the feet as a pure art. What would it mean to actively treat the wheels themselves as the focus? Could my front wheels be provoked? I'm not imagining a display of casters, but I am imagining a visually perceptible and physically tangible line that would spread from the casters to my fingers. I am imagining how my rear wheels could kick. I am imagining a movement vocabulary in which I feel the wheels as the opposition and the tiny conversational but essential detail of my line.

I began with the idea of the bones. I am imagining using my wheels as bones.

Butch/Femme -- Crip

To offer my voice in this important conversation, I want to write my personal resistance to both of these labels and to suggest how disability complicates them as defining personal categories.

Bfp begins by wondering where she is on the butch-femme spectrum. Cripchick continues by observing how disability and sexuality are so publicly invisible that even getting to these terms is hard. She adds the terms cripchicks and gimpgirls into the conversation of gender presentation, explicitly recognizing disability as a primary and defining force.

I don't have identifying terminology to add -- though I wish there were a more hip word for somewhat middle-aged bisexual disabled women like me. My goal here is to look a little at my body and my experiences in being read by others. I am talking about how I am read and not how I would define myself, how *I* would identify, because I don't actually know how I would choose to describe myself in the terms of this conversation.

The more complicated theoretical expositions of who we are as women and as queer women in particular recognize that binaries tend to produce alienating discourses of authenticity. If you are not one, you must be the other -- and to be one, you must be ..... But even the more complicated expositions of who we are as women also day after day, time after time, explicitly refuse to recognize the force and the power of disability.

Disability and feminism should go hand in hand. Disability should be an explicit part of gender and queer studies. But even in the hallowed halls of academia and, yes, out here in the wild web blogosphere, disability is only a small part of the conversation, a small part of posts on feminism, gender, and sexuality. It is something the cripchicks and gimpgirls (relishes the words, rolls them around her tongue) repeatedly have to bring to the conversation. And, yes, we do tire of being the voices of "but wait, disability ...." But unless we speak of our experience, the conversation will fail us and, ultimately, you.

When we got into it, the last two women with whom I almost had sexual relationships told me that they read me as butch. Theoretically speaking, it is a little perverse to argue from the point of view of how someone reads me rather than saying I explicitly identify as butch (or not). But I choose to do so because this particular approach shows how disability complicates what we think we know about possible identities.

Behind that word for them was my fascination with my own body, with its muscles, and with its physical strengths. That's something a lot of queer women notice about me, and it is the source of many jokes among my friends. I say queer women, because the straight ones in my life are usually too shy to comment on it. But also behind that word for the two women in question was my active enjoyment of my physicality. I love the power of my body; I flex my muscles, I pat them in public (sorry peeps, I really do; I love them). Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it's sexy. But for the purposes of this conversation, I wonder about that understanding.

To say that it is "butch" to somehow forefront muscularity and physicality strikes me as an interesting insight into how we approach understanding conventional femininity. It is to say that somehow conventional femininity does not explicitly prioritize the tendons, sinews, muscles, and bones of its female bodies. But how can you have breasts, vaginas, tummies, and asses without the underlying structure of your body? Is it to say that somehow conventional femininity is only the visible surface of the body. Is it to say that femme is the performance of the hyper surface -- the explicit recognition and enhancement of aspects of conventional femininity? And that butch is somehow the recognition and acceptance of the deeper muscular structures of the body?

If this is what it means to be butch, then, I suppose, that even in my 5 inch heels, even in my see-through mesh dresses, I am butch. But I also think that disability skews -- I almost wrote queers; I so wanted to write queers -- disability skews that particular assessment of these aspects of my butchness.

Scenes from my life.

You see me on the street. I'm wearing a low cut tank top. Your attention is caught by my ripped back muscles. I turn towards you, flex my arms, and push away. You think:

1. Oh, what an athlete. Wow! Sexy.
   
2. It's a pity that she's in that chair. Such a strong upper body must compensate for her legs.
   
3. She should cover herself up a bit.
   
4. Ugh, and you look in other direction.
   

You see me in the cafe. I'm wearing the same low cut tank top. I admire my arms. Sip my coffee. Look at my arms again, stroke them, and smile a long smile at you. You

1. Smile back and ask if I need help or anything?
2. Panic. Fuck. Did she just ... flirt with me? Shit.
3. Pretend you didn't see, turn, and leave.
   
4. Smile and come right over.
   

You see me in the audience at a dance performance. I'm wearing a mesh dress, pointy heeled boots, and something in between to make it decent. Every muscle in my arms and back is visible; the curve of my breasts rises out of the baggy over-dress; my body gleams through the sheen of the blue mesh. Wizard pushes me into the space. You

1. Wonder if I feel sad watching all those beautiful dancers, given that I can't move.
2. Wonder if I am for real. Disabled people don't dress or look like THAT.
3. Wonder about what Wizard is doing with a woman like me.
   
4. Wonder what it would be like to fuck me.

OK. So, I am imagining the viewer's responses. But these are moments from my life of last week. No, you don't get to ask what happened next. And in each vignette, I really think that the question of whether you see me as butch or femme doesn't really happen unless you integrate or get past the disability question. And what about my choices and my perspectives?

My muscles are as they are because I use a chair and because I dance. Because they are a direct consequence of my disabled life, I would argue that you would have to think twice before you interpret them and my enjoyment of them as part of a butch identity.

My decision to wear impractical shoes is as much a consequence of me not having to walk in them as it is a decision to participate in a particular understanding of femininity. But what do you see? A sad attempt to look normal? A pair of high heels on a woman? Or something so over the top that it slides into the devotee/fetish view of disabled female sexuality? Note that this is a risk that is only present for disabled women. It's a long way for nondisableds to go through femme to fetish. Merely presenting certain aspects of traditional femme for a queer disabled woman puts her at risk of becoming a usually straight object of the devotee community.

Would you recognize it if I made a pass at you? To see it, you would have to acknowledge an awful lot. You would have to understand that disabled people have sexuality, that it can be a queer sexuality, and that I am looking at YOU.

A while back in this post, I spoke of bones and muscle. I'd like to go back to that place. I am drawn there as a dancer and as a sexual person. The bones of my body hold true for me; my muscles are what my body has given me. So even when my joints are unstable and my muscles torque and spasm, I recognize in these places parts of my deepest self. I strive to hold on to these selfs in every day life and in dance. I strive to bring them to the street and to the stage. Does desiring muscle and bone make me butch and deny me femme as positions from which I can navigate the world?

This, I think, is crip, is gimp. It is an understanding of the sexuality of the deepest and rawest parts of the body -- it is not so much a focus on gender presentation and on responses to gendered roles. It is an answer to the call of the fibres, the sinews, the fluids, and the infinite structure of the bones.

Windshield Writing

I have decided that going to the grocery store or, better, seeing me at the grocery store provokes/exposes the weirdest things in people. I don't know quite to make of these; I can't decide whether I feel weirdly cared for or whether I am mildly annoyed. Sometimes, it's hard to differentiate charity from grace. Do you have to go with the object itself and try to forget the intention?

I'm out shopping for some odds and ends (as one does), but I buy more than I am expecting to (as one can do). I ask for help out to the car. So far, so good. But when the hyper cool guy and I reach my car, there is a brochure stuck on my driverside front window. I'm expecting something about an event, a party, some music, an action/protest .... I'm ready, you know? But no. My leaflet is a brochure about Enviromental Traveling Companions. If you don't know this organization, check them out. This is from their website:

Environmental Traveling Companions (ETC) opens the beauty and challenge of outdoor adventures to people with special needs. Every year over 2,000 people of all abilities join us to raft whitewater rivers, ski across alpine meadows, sea kayak the waters of the Golden Gate and sleep beneath the open sky. ETC trips enable participants to access the wilderness, gain environmental awareness, and share the adventure. We invite you to join us on a trip. Groups and individuals of all abilities are welcome to participate in our sea kayaking, rafting and cross-country skiing programs.

Way cool. Definitely worth knowing about. Definitely worth trying out.

But who left it on my car? The brochure that I received was not new; it had been around for a while; it was slightly worn at the edges. Someone had been keeping it around for a reason -- a participant? A volunteer? A donor? Why me and not the other disabled cars? I look around. No, no one else has one. Does someone know me and my car? If you are reading ... thank you! Err. Do introduce yourself before leaving stuff on my windshield; your friendly gesture is a little disconcerting.

And then, there's the taking it the wrong way. "Oh," says the person with my goods, "is that your group outing?" I explain. But apparently not well enough. "It's still kinda group home, though, just leaving it there." I don't know where to turn. In truth, I do feel like it is somewhat de-individuating and homogenizing, even though I am sure the person meant well. But I also suspect that "group home," here, is meant to denote cognitive/developmental disability. Is this code for "retard?" I don't feel like tackling the whole prejudice thing; I duck the battle, smile, agree, watch him load my car, and wish I could have done better.

I go to the grocery store. This time when I return to my car, there are a bunch of Obama leaflets on my windshield. I look around. No, no one else has them. And, yes, it's the same guy helping me out. He's all cool. No, "group home" comments this time. It's all "was I involved in the campaign?" He looks disappointed as I explain that I am an alien with no voting rights. Shock. Here I am -- a black person who didn't vote. I want to turn his words around. I want to find a way to make some sting come his way. We live in a society where citizenship is frequently, but not always the case. But I can't find a way to do it without repeating the same nastiness. I can't exactly say, "It's kind of "retarded" of you to assume that I a) can vote and b) would vote for Obama, you know." I don't feel like tackling the whole prejudice thing; I duck the battle, smile, agree, watch him load my car, and wish I could have done better.

I go to the grocery store, and people leave stuff on my car. Who *are* you people? Umm. Thanks for the information, sort of. I'd like to come and go as I please.

Pleos, Robots, Landmines, and Humans

I wasn't into the electronic pet thing. I wasn't. After all, I have a cat. A demanding, very present feline. Who needs a Furby, Tamagotchi or whatever? Then, I met Pleo. I want a pleo (Yeah, I know Ugobe went bankrupt). I seriously want a pleo. I don't quite understand it; I have pets, I have teddy bears, stuffed animals, etc. I don't have dolls; I don't anthropomorphize too much. And I still want a damn stupid toy dinosaur. I don't even have dinosaur crazes like most of today's kids.... In fact, I've been surprised at how popular dinosaurs are with kids and at the frightening amount of factual information they know (much of which reminds me that I haven't kept up with the advances in science).

Anyway, my desire to bond with this thing, apart from demonstrating my occasional susceptibility to consumerist urges, got me thinking about how people, disabled and not, bond with technology. This article (I've been meaning to write about for, literally, years) is kinda neat, fun, and really relevant for people with disabilities. As John Hockenberry once pointed out: we can teach the world how to live with technology. (No, I don't like his puppetry idea, model, or language -- but that's for later). Back to the WSJ piece on robots.

The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.

This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, built something like that. At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield.

Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly.

The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse.

The colonel ordered the test stopped.

Why? asked Tilden. What's wrong?

The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.

This test, he charged, was inhumane.

A number of people write about the relations of humans and technology -- the people at MIT -- Sherry Turkle, et al ... including the disability community's own Kestrell (nice piece in the recent Turkle volume, Kestrell! Way to go!) -- are at the heart of a relatively new field of study. The disabled community, however, has lived at the edge of scholarship. MIT and the field of disability studies are places that acknowledge how crippled experience can change the future of technological humanistic studies.

In the meantime, however, I will settle for my dinosaur that walks, that mewls, sits, stands, has reflexes does tricks...