body electric

Hello.

hello

hello

hello

I came here to move.

I came here to dance

I move In public

I dance here

I am moving here

I’m visible here

I thank you here

Thank you

we are the movement

we are the dance

I sing the body electric*

This is the poem that Neil Marcus performed on Monday at the SF ADA anniversary. Reminded me not so much of Walt himself, but of Whitman in Ginsberg’s grocery store poem. Kind of. Mostly because of those first free moments doing ordinary things, after I moved to SF and could take myself places—Cala in the rain (which I said was Ginsberg's supermarket), TenderNob, broke down mobility scooter heavy with brown bags, yogurt cup rolled down the hill, I didn’t care. A kind of singing, that doing.

The way Neil delivered the hellos made for great call and response. Folks hello-ed back in different timbres, radical phonemes for different voices. Neil's dystonic voice loud and distinct. (Oooh Neil, what if you got a pedal and a loop and did sound art with soem of your stuff....I am sayign this because I want to do it...!) A way of giving props to the ‘is’ and the ‘here’ of being disabled and fully embodied. The strong, complex but basic isness, like a work of art (a famous quote by Neil, "Disability is an art--an ingenious way of living") that gets distorted in triumphalist narratives and left out/not highlighted in service rhetoric. Best of all, a call and response that people in the audience could participate in different ways. James and I just started laughing, like when you laugh at a concert because you are so into it.

Later, the wheelchair rider painter dude I met asked me what I did, after I told him I was a kind of an artist too (and thus, could not at the moment, afford one of his paintings). "Oh cool, lay it on me", he said, when I answered that I was a poet. Ad then I had to be all sort of, well you know I am kind of a page poet, which felt good to have a label as an out, but also felt kind of "lame" as they say. I'll have to work on what I can deliver.

[*Also, for me, the poem gave new life to the time in high school when--4’6, 70lbs—would stand in narrow space between bed and TV in the room my mom and her boyfriend slept in—because that was the TV room—and do my exercises to The Body Electric—a bad public access show that had been syndicated. Florid lavender light, big perm, the woman seemed too much like the PT’s from the Wing (handicapped kids zone back in elementary school). She was more blissed out though, less lipstick, gentler. Dan, the boyfriend, would walk by and say something like “Aerobics, Hamburger Head?”; (he called my mother Hamburger Helper. Mortifying. I thought I hated him. He smelled like beer. That was a year going away to college, at which I discovered beer made me more limber than PBS exercises. And that was pre-brain cancer for Dan. Once, when I came home on break, I made an effort to have mature and kind conversation with him, he had lost his hair and did not speak very well by then. We were eating brown rice for dinner. I asked something banal about how he was feeling. He kind of grunted, but then said “I’ve heard you’ve been sick”. He grinned—his reference to a recent 3am call from my dorm to my mom, me worried I was dying after finishing a six-pack. I’m saving that one to tell my brother—Dan’s his father—maybe when he’s gotten past the dangerous beyond his underage drinking phase.]

How I spent my ADA work day

[Photos: Gavin Newsom at SF City Hal ADA event, Olimpais booth at ADA event, Nonsite: Eleni Stecopoulos peeking over laptop, Taylor Brady, Petra Kuppers in 2nd from last picture. Michael Cross, Lesley Ann Selcer and David Wolach in last.]

Pre: Talk at Nonsite with poets, led by David Wolach. His hospital poem practice in which he uses poems to mitigate his experience of being in and out of that institution and even sometimes, in communication with others who are having to be patient. David had us form a circuit around the lovely studio table, in which everyone felt the pulse of the person on our right and then immediately followed with writing that David had given us a prompt for. List, he said, what it would take for you to give up your proprietary self--or at least that is how I took it, for a better idea, go to Nonsite,org. What I couldn't write, fear of bodily functions. Also, how troubling it is becoming that my work-work (job) is about the rhetoric and funding of making disabled people, myself included, more employable. Because our society places value on thing that work/produce. Without voice or words. Because I value myself only when I work (which often means I don't work ((write or move--no time for body work)).

The: Facilitated huge event at SF City Hall on behalf of LightHouse along with Independent Living Resource Center SF, Mayor's Office on Disability and others. Newsom spoke--good time to diffrentiate himself from the current Guvna (oddly, Gavin had a Southern accent yesterday). Quote from Newsom, "Not everyone needs to be in an institution". People cheered wildly for Ammiano, who told a funny story about French toast--i.e. give us real stuff our souls can feed on. Neil Marcus sung the body electric Laura Hershey style and my other art peeps were there keeping it real for me, Axis Dance and Olimpias.

Post: listened to the podcast of Forum from yesterday in which Michael Krasny did an hour in honor of the ADA anniversary with Judy Heumman and Sid Wolinski. I think it was sort of horrible--Judy especially, had very little time to speak. I mean here she is, historic 504 demonstrator and wheelchair user, now DC advisor on disability and international affairs and Krasny, 10 minutes in, is opening up the conversation to people calling the show to complain about too many disabled parking placards and about how costly and litigious the ADA is. Again, there was an emphasis on a social prescription as to how we should treat and enable (i.e. employ) "the disabled" as (Krasny kept saying) instead of a close look at the vital, radical lives within disability culture. And no one likes social prescription, the why of how we should doby "the disabled", instead of the who they/we are, the real cultural value....

Highlights: Meeting Ledya Restrepo--an older Hispanic woman, wheel chair user, who is a peer mentor for the City of San Francisco, disabled city employees; meeting Kenzi, a cool African American guy who uses a wheel chair, paints with his mouth and sells his work upwards of a hundred dollars, very nice stuff, contact me if you want to be hooked up with him; Neil Marcus doing the body electric in velvety fuscia after Newsom left the stage, forming a circuit on Sunday between Rob Halpern and Denise Leto.

common octopi

Thanks to Petra and Neil and Harold, I met Remy Charlip today. Founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Co, hee created air mail dances. He writes children's books abut when octopi marry. And he lives in an old red brick building, a sunny assisted living facility near my place. When we went into his apartment, there were glossy black and white photos of famous dancers arrayed on tables with drawings of whimsical bodies, buildings and clouds. On the sofa and on a crimson blanket. A perfect ending, for me, after Thom Donovan's commoning at Nonsite. (Thank you Thom! Here is what I wrote that I did not share at the table, on your commons prompt:

empty and floating, the commons as weighted by sparse objects ___which bodies get to drift in and out___key preposition is by____ circuitry

folded in___if suddenly everyone's bones were so heavy as to lean against the inner edges of tubes skins___this feeling is actually knowledge, that shifts subjects, common

)

Remy Charlip drawing.

Octopi think with their arms, Wikipedia tells me. (I could have arrived at that knowledge on my own and explored some movement to get there, or known it outside of the fact of it, in other language--that may be the one real problem with Wikipedia. Discovery dependency.)

And, in other news, the new issue of Monday Night with my Scars piece--and a octopus!

The internet tells me I wrote two new things!

My article on Sarah Funes, disability activist and youth organizer is up on World Institute on Disability's Proyecto Vision. All you advocates, community builders, youth-voice folks out there--connect with Sarah. She is up to big things.

And on the flipside, a kind of darker keloid thing from when I was obsessed with Ballard's Crash, orthopedic surgery and internet "dating" is in the new issue of Monday Night. Thanks Jessica Wickens, Nana Tumasi and Co.!

living documents/bodies through process

what does it mean that every word (as in mini-spectrum of concept/sense trigger) toward which I have a poetic impulse (as in, there is making embedded in, a dense nested thing or a thing with lift -switch capability) is exactly what I hoped it would be/”really” mean when I look it up in Wikipedia—and that upon encountering the Wiki-isness of it, I get so much fulfillment, experience such a communion from its Wiki-isness that the poem wants to be only that, me copying and pasting a big fat chunk of the –pedia into a Word document and just toting that around like an Oliver Sacks periodic table/turned shadowbox? I mean, not what does that mean, but is it a problem? In writing, I fear hang-ups before I even allow them to become such—which is probably largely why my writing only comes out in infrequent crazed bursts—when it can’t be suppressed and pre-edited any longer.

But anyway, was Wikipedia-ing the word “document” and here is what is

-Document is the practical construct for describing matter in different forms which retain information for a reasonable period of time wherein it can be perceived by a sentient observing entity.

The fact that sentient and entity are hyperlinked in there is like a complete little winknod from the Cosmos-ipedia. (It occurs to me that this joy in Wikipedia has to do with dictionaries always being too hard for me to read—tiny font).

Looking up “document” because struggling to come up with a title for the writing workshops I will begin to offer in the community—what I am privately, with a covetous sense of direction and ease like never before—whispering in my mind as “my freelance career”, much in the way one refers to their “process"—hilarious, silly, trumped up, vital, minute. Like when you get the breath right for one second.

These workshops as some bridge for me, between what is possible in the poetry community and the disability community. As a continuation of the careful, too careful to be called ecstatic quite--but of actualization, working in collaboration with Denise Leto on our poem for P. Durgin's Post-Ableist Chain anthology. Our system of suspending in waters and gears and tones, as a supported practice that carried over from the plane of the page to act as a a shared water for floating the day, the getting out of the bed, speaking, blinking. And working with Axis Dance to make, what was for me, performance poetry, to move in the spaces between words (now to figure out which words to document/make that language exist on paper on paper....)(Denise, don;t forget, you will report back to me from the MLA panel on Disability and Poetics and instead of feeling like a loser for not being there, I will channel you as OneContinuousWord.com)(in Axis class last night, scrambling to end up on the tape when the music ended, like a goose in the game, the beauty of the straggler built in to the score).

all of that and also Document. As official, claims made and considered, negotiable status, medical, governmental, blue with white stencils. How the person with a disability gets processed or not processed (issues of continuity of care, of receiving adequate services, of getting the best literacy skills because of the need to hold a book differently or take in the print in another form) and how to even that out, how to steady, enliven and empower through developing a life on the page beside and beyond one’s documents. How to create a vital, living document. For persons with disabilities or chronic health issues. Which is not therapy nor healing exactly, but a practice and a radical reconnection to oneself, one’s own impulse and momentum. But more on that later, will create a second blog for that (today, spoke with Georgina Kleege who wrote an open letter to the myth of Helen Keller as a kind of real faux memoir/social commentary. She teaches autobiography and disability studies at UCB. Thanks Georgina for your thoughts!)

I need a title for these workshops. LifeWrites possibly—but I don’t want to sound like a culty gym or a vitamin salesman. Docuability is just crap, though it gets a little closer to what I mean. Send me an email if you have any ideas. Look in your inboxes, flyers and mission statements coming soon.

Mrs. Maybe 3, Arnieville, being Ba-roke

Mrs. Maybe #3 party, poetry reading, tamale-fruit pie-red bean bonanza. Thanks Lauren, Jared and Catherine! Got over the feeling that I read poems which unfortunately strain to be stories and lean too heavily on articles, the the and a's, a kind of perfunctory agony, eyelids sticking to eyeballs and such. There were, after all, vuvuzelas and avatars and I had Bubo, Athena's blinkity owl, in attendance.

afterward, Ashby flea market

in which i paid a thin square slice for some tangly gridded colored space to get light to suffuse through. Michelle Puckett, this is my visual answer to the New Ba-roke Poetics. golden lyrics and such. remember when i said it was Bunnicula that made me want to be a writer? well, it was also Charles Wallace's brothers and sister, dancing, backlit, greeny gold, with his mitochondria.

and then Arnieville (i.e. Depression era Hooverville)

a certain kind of sudden embarrassment, that i call myself a disability service provider and advocate and that i work at a large service agency in SF, but had not gotten over to this traffic island to show my support. the tent city protest has been there for several weeks and will hopefully continue to be there as the budget for in-home care for CA disabled and seniors is facing cuts by %50. why do you see more disabled poeple out and about in CA? because the state in-home care system helps them to live independently in their homes, instead of institutions. please drop by and show your support for that crucial way of life.

Food Not Bombs folks were bringing the Arnieville protesters dinner when we arrived, so they were sort of busy rustling up containers for the change-over of tureens. We gave them some tamales K. made. Met Jean Stewart and Robin Earth from Center for Independent Living Berkeley, said I would make it back soon.

This Saturday, Country Joe McDonald is performing, while the giant paper maiche bloody hatchet Schwarzenegger wobbles along in the median wind. I hope the people who whiz by this strip off of Russell and Adeline get it--it is a small campsite yes, but it is different than other types of sleep-out protests. The sparseness (in terms of tents/protesters) does not mean that the issue is less than vital. These campers are folks who use ventilators, voice machines, electric wheelchairs, etc which is just to say that this type of sleep-out presence as social action/protest is packed with, well-- a lot of presence.

You can find them on Facebook by searching Arnieville. if you cannot make it out of your home or residence, this is a great way to connect and contribute.

"find new way to fall",

A few dozen volunteer dancers, non-disabled and disabled, myself included, joined Axis Dance for a site-based performance at Yerba Buena Gardens. We rehearsed for a few weeks in the park on weekday evenings. The summer-scape of downtown San Francisco. Rush hour, trash can drums, church bells, sudden bright gusts of wind, fog beveling the park into quartz and moonstone facets, the bougainvillea along the railings above the falls, rushing up into that fuscia underbrush glow to lean over the railing and undulate in unison. Coppery green, glinting from reflecting pools. But mostly the white noise of the falls. And then, the day of the performance, the droning, whirly-gigging, keening, cuckoo clock set free sounds of Caroline Penwarden and her orchestra. Sonsheree Giles of Axis directed the choreography.

This experience made me happier than anything. Closest I've come to really being able to meditate. And, skim out endlessly on a (tide) line (in a poem) without any words. Almost home, almost the gulf, being beside the waterfall and with others. Aquatic, hot, breathing under other elements. (Not making it to Florida this summer--but enclosed a little prayer for the waters in this doing, over and over again.)

Missing photo: Poor balance, side-blindness--don't get caught in the middle of recess, stick close to the walls when changing classes. Make quick choices? Mirror others? Find your own stillness? It works if the limits become pivots. It's go in the horizontal now, wordless new lines.

Missing photo: How the face and the falls intersect, after rushing blood with horizontal poppy phrase. Enter this spacious room, quietly, with everyone else. Rotate slowly, slowly.
Missing photo: Braid the distance, make contact, drop across and together.

Missing photo: Collect yourself, carry, over into, timing, guided by, collecting little movements.

Missing photo: Sun dial, wind mill--a kind of chlorophyll.
Missing photo: Wave. Wave! Follow my finger, a gull arcing. It's further than I. Can go!
Missing photo: stealth sleeps, a dreaming in pods,
Missing photo: Bodies rise and fall in waves, cling and seperate, let go of deciding when to go, volition reduced to wisp, fly-away and flap.
Missing photo: When synchronized swimmers dream, there are stragglers, gentle flash mobs, one day during rehearsal--overtaking an old Asian lady in a red coat, we folded her in and breathed like whales.
Missing photo after next to the last collapse: us all hanging in softly active seagull.
Missing photo: the instant in which we stopped growing and got sucked backward. Tried to photosynthesize each brilliant, empty leaning and twirling, reaching and pulling.

P.O.D. Lost in Boorklyn

Announcing Mrs. Maybe Issue #3 & party/reading/bbq/funfest

With brimming hearts & stars in our eyes we are pleased as punch & proud as cows to announce Mrs. Maybe issue #3 is now available! SOUND THE VUVUZELA!!

This issue is a real treasure pleasure trove with words arranged into poems by Brandon Brown, Sara Larsen, Julian T. Brolaski, Lindsey Boldt, K. Silem Mohammad, Emily Grossman, Rob Schlegel, CAConrad, Judith Goldman, David Highsmith, Sara Mumolo, Nada Gordon, Jon Davis, Amber DiPietra, and Dana Ward.

Copies can be ordered online at http://mrsmaybeseance.blogspot.com/

In celebration of this feat we will be celebrating & hope you can join us.

Mrs. Maybe Issue 3 Backyard Party

Where: Catherine Meng's Backyard (write this down: 1825 Derby Street Berkeley)

When: July 11th, 1:00 pm

With readings by:

Lindsey Boldt

Brandon Brown
David Highsmith

Amber DiPietra

Sara Larsen

Sara Mumolo

We will also be pleased to offer readings from a CAConrad avatar and possibly a Malin Wuptke avatar among other spectral representations & bratwurst & cold beer.

Until then, keep being your lovely rainbow-brained selves!

Lauren Levin, Catherine Meng, and Jared Stanley, Editors

--
The Editors
Mrs. Maybe
"Stop seeing things and let the scene begin"
http://mrs-maybe.com