Never Walked In High Heels

Athena  is taking a much deserved break. She’ll be back Jan 4, 2010.

I’ve recently discovered that there are some situations in which public transportation is completely inappropriate. I’m not speaking about situations where vehicles are inaccessible, or difficult for me to use, rather, just the opposite. I’m not having unsaid difficulty. But someone else is in a situation on public transport that is absolutely bizarre.

Today I was on the bus going home. The bus was shockingly empty, until about halfway through, at which point twenty people entered the bus at once. Being preoccupied with my work, I continued reading the book I was currently using as a resource for my occupation. The bus traveled on a little way and I noticed two things: the first thing was how exceptionally quiet this particular bus ride was. It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and of course children were still at school, babies were home for naps, and the businessmen were still in their cubicles, causing an absolute dead silence on the bus, unique for London Transport. In this city, you don’t talk to strangers. Ironically back home, the reason you don’t talk to strangers is that they might be weird, whereas here, the strangers will probably think you are weird for talking to them. And so, we all listened to our  iPods, read our books, and faced forwards in silence.

The second thing I noticed was that I could swear I suddenly smelled fresh water fish. Strange smells are unfortunately a common enough occurrence on public transportation, particularly on a bus, and so I dismissed the smell assuming it to be on account of someone’s poor hygiene.

As I was reading, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw what looked like a bit of trash. Again, a very mundane thing. And then I noticed that the trash wasn’t obeying the laws of physics. When the bus would slam on the breaks, this object would go towards the back of the bus, not towards the front, as the rules of inertia dictated. I took a closer look…

My first reaction was that someone had let a frog loose on the bus. Perhaps a school kid wanting to cause trouble, or simply losing his pet. And then I noticed that this object was not only alive, but crawling with eight legs. Frogs, to the best of my knowledge, don’t typically crawl (or for that matter have eight legs), and so my mind went into desert mode. Immediately I thought it’s a tarantula. And then, as I examined the creature underneath the seats of the bus (fortunately on the opposite side of me), I began to wonder where on earth anyone would have the resources to get a tarantula in London, given how much they guard the selling of lockable knives and chewing tobacco, I was amazed that someone not only was able to get a hold of a tarantula, but also had the boldness of releasing it on a bus. Boldness or stupidity…you choose. But, my reasoning further deduced, arachnids are typically hairy. And this looked slimy. I watched it a little more and realized it was a crab. Over 5 inches in diameter, it was a crab. There was a crab loose on a public bus in London.

Now, this immediately put me into a very unique position, because being on public transport, if I am to say anything to a stranger, such as “Hey there’s a giant fresh water crab on that seat and it’s really scary,” they would immediately assume me to be one of the crazy people. It’s part of the territory when you have a disability. You get to be the victim of everyone’s stereotypes about disability. And they would smile and nod, claiming that they didn’t understand. I know because I’ve relived this situation over and over. I was not about to do it again. So, I closed my book, sat back, and tried to watch the scene unfold.

Within seconds a woman in full African dress goes from being seated to jumping with both feet on the seat and screaming (how on earth she was able to do this in an ankle length skirt, I don’t know). And then, the small Chinese woman from the front of the bus runs to the back, picks up the crab, runs back to her seat, and places it into a blue plastic grocery bag, which is also full of, well, crabs. While doing this act, she crosses from the front of the bus to the back apologizing to every person along the way, as in, looking at each of us and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And I sat there in utter disbelief of the entire absurdity and, might I add, multicultural diversity of the situation. The rest of the bus ride was silent.

The entire thing felt like something out of Annie Hall, which made me immediately wonder, did Annie and Alvy take live lobsters on the subway with them in order to get them back to Annie’s kitchen? What do you do in a society that is dependent on public transportation if you need to transport something really absurd such as sea life or crustaceans? For a public transport system that attempts to meet everyone’s needs, there are some things even the folks at TFL can never even dream up.

The Asian woman waited until 5 stops later to get off, securely holding her two grocery bags of live creatures. I can only assume that somebody had some very fresh crabs for dinner that night.

It was ten minutes to 8 o’ clock in the morning, and I was going to one of my favorite businesses in London that I often frequent in the wee morning hours. This particular place is like a second home to me, full of young women who to me feel as though they are my sisters rather than a client-professional relationship. That being said, the lever of professionalism and expertise in this particular establishment is stunning. That being said, driving up to the door there was a gigantic water heater about 5 feet tall and 3 feet in diameter, which not only did not belong there, but also had nothing to do with the store itself.

“What in the world…!” I yelled inside, opening the door as best I could while moving around the obstruction. Two employees came out and, although laughing hysterically at the situation, told me that the obstacle had nothing to do with the store. At that moment a maintenance man got out of his van and walked past.

“Is this yours?” One of the employees asked. She’s barely five feet tall and has pixie-cut blonde-white hair. She’s one of my favorites because she not only looks as if she can cause mischief (which she often does) but also has been put forward for several awards in her industry at an alarmingly young age.

“Yeah,” said the man. A single word spoke volumes of subtext such as, “and I’m having a really bad day, so don’t you dare bother me.”

“Well, we’re going to have to move it to get her inside,” she said rather directly.

“Fine, fine, fine!” And at that moment the maintenance man kicked over the metal cylinder at full power.

“I’m all alone here today, I can’t do everything,” he said, continuously kicking the water heater. At this moment, the pixie became fierce.

“Well there’s no need for that kind of behavior now, is there?”

I began to speak up, feeling as I often do in such situations, that it is somehow my fault. Logically, I realize that this is not the case, but there is always that emotional tweak inside me that cunningly says, “You should have never gone out of the house in the first place. Look at what you’ve done.” And so I opened my mouth to defend everyone possible in the situation.

At that moment, the owner of the establishment, Karine, came out. She is a model entrepreneur in every sense of the word, someone I lovingly respect as well as professionally admire. Her Australian accent and blonde hair always makes me feel like there is the grace of Nicole Kidman nearby.

“What is going on here?” she demanded. And the pixie and I immediately began talking at once. The pixie to Karine, myself to the antagonist.

“Get inside, both of you, get inside right now,” she demanded, opening the door further and guiding my wheelchair in.

“Karine, I’m so sorry-” I began, wanting to apologize for the entire situation.

“You’re my customer. Get inside and go get yourself something to drink.”

I turned around to say something to the man. “I said, get inside, you’re my customer.” And with that, I was inside the door.

Sometimes, it is, unfortunately, refreshing to have someone do the right thing without being told to do so. And when you don’t even realize that their action is the right thing to do until they do it, it takes your breath away even more. Someone decisively blocked my entrance to Karine’s business. As a paying customer, it wasn’t my job to fix it. It wasn’t my job to apologize for someone else’s idiocy, or even attempt to be diplomatic. It’s rare in this city that a business person has such capitalistic foresight to realize that for all their customers to be equal, and to want to spend money at their establishment, they have to do some human rights work themselves. I don’t know why I found Karine’s behavior so shocking, because of course, I chose to spend my money there as a vote of confidence in her establishment, as recognition of value, when I discovered that hers was one of the few places in London that voluntarily put in a stairlift between their upstairs and downstairs, and as a statement of satisfaction when I knew that her employees would treat me as professionally as anyone else, and do whatever it took for the effects of my disability to disappear within the walls of her business.

People often say that human relations and business can never go together. They are opposing poles that will never meet. I don’t believe that. From what I see, the businesswoman I respect in Karine doesn’t believe that either. In order to be worth your payment, you must be willing to see the human being, what she needs, and take it upon yourself to provide a service of value. That’s why, even if there is a water heater in the way sometimes, I walk to Karine’s with the full knowledge that my money will be well spent.

It’s 5 o’ clock at night and the same monster that has been facing me all day, is still staring at me from my desk. I’ve gotten up, gone to Starbucks, blown my nose half a dozen times, surfed the internet, and the monster is still there. Not roaring loud at all, just staring at me in that annoying way that only such a monster can accomplish. I am, once again, looking at a blank page on my computer screen.

Anne Lamott calls them “shitty first drafts” and says that they are absolutely vital to the writing process. Even as an adult, I am skeptical of this conclusion. I survived my entire high school and college education, and a masters degree, not doing first drafts of any paper. I would sit down, write, run it through grammatical checks and spell checks, maybe find a few errors in logic here or there, but on the whole the final draft would be done by the first time I wrote the paper. For earlier levels of education that would require you to attach former drafts as evidence of your own individual work,  I would then take the finished product and fabricate drafts behind it, switching paragraphs around, taking out thesis statements, and introductory sentences, making it look as if a seed germinated into a full-fledged paper.

Part of this is a combination of too smart for my own good, as well as extremely lazy to do anything properly. And the other half of my reasons in working in this manner is because of my disability. Being able to type an alarmingly slow rate meant I didn’t have time for third and fourth drafts. By the time I got the first draft done, it had to be turned in the next morning. And so I survived every level of education thus far, handing in first drafts of everything, which meant I never had the permission to write shitty first drafts.

When you’re working really creatively, you have to be able to do that. You have to give yourself the freedom to write loose-ends and dangling participles, unformed ideas that might not go anywhere and entire pages that will probably be thrown out. This is something that even without a deadline, I still cannot afford myself.

Did Tolstoy write shitty first drafts? Or Shakespeare? How about King David? Did he sit in his palace and say, “I know this is supposed to be divinely inspired, but it looks like crap to me.” All of a sudden I can’t help but wonder if this is what drove Hemmingway to the bottle, and Lewis Carroll to opiates. Overall, we don’t normally think of E. M. Forester having teenage acne and Oscar Wilde muttering obscenities when his pen ran out of ink. Did they allow themselves to make bad jokes that the rest of us have never seen? Did they wake up late and run out the door with mismatched socks to a meeting that they completely forgot about? Did Jane Austen ever have menstrual cramps?

I remember once I was sitting backstage at a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was one of my first times backstage at a professional production, and I would look over to the other side of the wings to see actors goofing off right before they were supposed to go onstage. Behind the curtain it wasn’t serious. It was however, human, and miscalled cues, silly spoofs, and mislaid props were all just part and parcel of the experience. I pointed it out to an actress, saying, “It’s not all magical. In fact, being backstage is pretty mundane, as entertaining as it is.

“Yes, but doesn’t that humanity make the magic of the art all the more powerful?”

The beauty of any piece of work is not the success of that piece, however perfect it may seem to be. Rather it is the artist’s willingness to fail, however invisible it may seem in the final product, that makes the project so much more remarkable.

As a creative person, I haven’t been able to consistently master the ability to risk more and fail harder, as Beckett put it.  Maybe someday I will, and perhaps when I can consistently do that, I can see that a blank page is not a monster, but yet, an opportunity for so many possibilities.

The credits roll across the movie screen as we step down the stadium seating to my wheelchair. It was one of those movies that is supposed to give you chills and send tears to your eyes all at once, and, in every conceivable way, it succeeded. This was a movie about the ending of the slave trade, an issue that, today, seems absurd that men could possibly think of as right for centuries. I sat back down in my wheelchair and quickly left the theatre with my friend.

“What took them so long to end slavery?” she asked me with the honesty of someone who simply wants an explanation in order to settle one’s conscience.

“Didn’t you see the movie?” That’s not what she meant, of course. She didn’t want the reasons as to the logistics of why the horrific trafficking of human beings kept on year after year. She wanted to know how the vast majority of people could ever think that it was right. “It kind of makes you wonder what issue will be fought for the next 300 years from now, future generations gasp in horror because we allowed such injustices to continue.”

And it was an amazing point. In order for humans to progress, changes must of course be made. The fact that 500 years ago a man was simply a subject of a king, women couldn’t vote 100 years ago, or 50 years ago a black man had to sit at the back of the bus, seems inconceivable now. We look back at the men and women who came before us and it’s sort of shocking, wondering how on earth they could ever have slept with a clear conscience and not gotten up with the vision of a battle to fight every morning. How could the status quo of the past have been kept on so long if it was so blatantly evil, to the point where it did not value human beings’ lives as their own?

But, of course, it went on until a small handful of people realized that slavery was wrong and not part of god’s vision for the treatment of humans towards each other. This small handful acted as literally a gadfly on civilization, so small but refusing to go away and be killed, while everyone else thought that they were crazy. If we believe in progress today, we must inevitably understand the same to be true. That there will be an issue that the majority of the people pass by and let go, which is wrong, and future generations will point to us and say, “How on earth could you have let that go on for so long?”

Unfortunately, I do not know what that issue will be. I know what I would like it to be. The troubles and aggravations I see in daily life are battles that will not allow me to rest until they are won, but that doesn’t mean that mankind will be any closer to winning them in my lifetime, or in my childrens’. But there are issues out there a majority of us simply pass over, myself included, without seeing the horrific repercussions of such actions. And all we can do is hope that we might see and understand what these issues are and take action to end them very soon, before the future generations turn to us and ask why.

It was unusual for anyone to knock on my door, but particularly on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t expecting anybody and so when my roommate and I opened the door, we were even further surprised when a man we had never laid eyes on became visible.

“Excuse me, the ramp outside, is it yours?” he asked in a thick accent, which I immediately recognized from my years in Chicago as being Polish. I looked at the communal door that all of our flats shared, and there was a ramp my friend had built me by hand about a month before. The step to get into the apartment building proved to be too big for my wheelchair, so I asked one of my guy friends to build me a ramp that my roommate and I could carry in and out of our building as needed. He had worked hours on it, making it light enough to be moved by one person, yet sturdy enough to look well made and stable enough so that anyone could walk up and down on it.

“Well I’m from apartment 6A and you can’t use this ramp in our building.” Essentially what he was saying was that I couldn’t use the way I get into my building. I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way, but he offered no explanation as to why this would occur.

“May I ask for an explanation, Mr. 6A?” my roommate demanded.

“Yes, it looks terrible. It’s not professional and we don’t need it. There are many rules to this block of flats here. We don’t let people hang laundry outside. That was to dissuade the immigrants from moving here. We don’t allow loud parties, so the homosexuals couldn’t move in. And we each are allotted only a certain number of plants to have on our porch so that the Chinese won’t want to live here either.”

I looked at him dumbfounded. Within the past 15 seconds he had managed to discriminate against approximately ¾ of the world. It was remarkable with what speed and efficiency he was able to do it. I immediately wanted to remark that people in America used to feel that way about Polish people, but I held my tongue. When he left, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

I had run into discriminating people before. The world is full of them. I had run into people who were idiotic about accessibility, insisting on their architecture instead of what I needed to get by. Even my own high school was full of these individuals. What disturbed me most, however, was the fact that 6A came into my own home and started making demands on how I should live my life, how I got into my building, and of course, how I could and couldn’t adapt the problems in my life. I would agree that if I had built a permanent structure without the permission of other residents in the building, I would be in the wrong. But, this was not the case. The ramp was to be brought out and removed every time I came in and out of the building. My roommate brought it out, I rolled down it, and she removed it, back into the apartment. It would hardly be out for longer than 5 minutes, and yet this was enough to disturb 6A and have him come into my home insisting that I meet the demands of a man I had never seen before.

I didn’t live in that flat long- about a year, and that was sufficient. I found out later from another resident that this man was a member of the board of directors for the block of flats, and she would terrorize her because she was in a wheelchair also. After this, I didn’t care how great the location was, or how low the rent was. I was very glad I left and walked away from such bigoted idiocy, for lack of a better term.

I have thought of 6A a lot in the past few years, and wondered what he is up to. My friend assures me that he hasn’t changed a bit. I understand his pride in his home. It’s a beautiful location. But, given that he lives on the third story without an elevator, I can’t help but think that he is getting on in years, and how many more years will he be able to climb those two staircases as easily as he does now? I can’t help but wonder how he can feel so strongly about immigrants given his thick accent and the discrimination he himself faces as a result of that. Or, maybe I just envision him struggling more than he actually does. The human condition is changeable, that’s why we can always relate to one another, and the position of an individual in one decade may change drastically in the next, given politics, physical ability, or simply location and demographics of the surrounding area. The time will come when, for one reason or another, he too will have to pick up and move, as we all do. I just hope that before that, no one makes demands on him in his own home.

He was the type of person who says Homer is his favorite author although he has no idea what that means. A good looking man, at least in photographs, he was able to spout popular opinion so eloquently that we all thought he was a perfectly lovely man if not a little bland. When he introduced himself, he did it with all the right moves, so you thought he really wanted to get to know you, be on your level, respect you, and talk about important things—things, which few people are willing to speak about.

Then you would ask him about his opinions, a detailed question out of curiosity, and he couldn’t back them up. “Everybody just knows it’s a fact.” Talking about deep issues, his eyes would eventually glaze over, and he would dismiss himself quickly with a pale face and little to no idea of what was just said.

Lots of people buy into popular option—believing what they hear on the news and read in a magazine. I’m learning that people are spouting out the same statistics, the same quotes, and even the same opinions—all just hand me downs heard from one person and said to another until they become the stuff of legend. This is nothing new of course but I feel like people have begun to just glaze over, to not pay attention to new ideas. They would rather stay just as they are than have their opinions refined. I find walking around London, hearing the same quotes over and over, repeated almost like automatons scarier than any zombie that might visit my door on Halloween.

Often people will refuse to engage in conversation, simply repeating these lines and catch phrases even when they have no relation to the subject being spoken about. This particular individual was extremely good at dropping into a conversation without the pretext of the last five minutes. Working with him was like working with one of those dolls with the string in its back that you would pull and it would say random things. His eyes looked alive, but often what he said bared no relation to what was being discussed, and everyone would stop, look at him for a minute and then go on realizing that no conversation piece from him was helpful as of yet.

Time and Newsweek simply are not enough to form an opinion. They’re the crux of pop media that one has to read in order to be called “well-educated.” If you follow books suggested by certain individuals, memorize statistics on any cable news station, you are entitled to call yourself well-educated and well-informed. But the very concept of being well-educated suggests that not everyone is. How can this title be yours if you are just reading the same things that everyone else reads?

Getting into political discussions today is about as creepy as watching the Stepford Wives at a grocery store. You come up with an obstacle and they simply don’t know what to do. If you say that one of Maya Angelou’s books wasn’t good, no one asks you to defend it; they’ll just shut you down. Going through life not thinking and with the brain shut off is becoming a more and more common occurrence, almost to the point where you expect popular opinions to band together and start doing the Thriller dance down the street as you run into your house to take cover.

Don’t shut off your mind—the very organ that makes life worth living. People need to learn that it’s okay not to have an opinion. If you don’t have time or the interest to go further than headline news, that’s okay, perhaps your resources are better used elsewhere. So many walk about the planet unconnected and yet can quote every statistic on last nights news, seeking anything that will numb their minds and put their conscience at ease, even if it means refusing to dig deeper into an issue and really find out the truth. The most moving sight in the world is the sight of man fully alive, questioning boldly, and holding fast to the truth.

I was out for breakfast with some friends of mine when I was introduced to an older woman who I knew by association. She was wrapped in a blue-green scarf and she looked really quite fascinating. We began talking and someone brought up the political subject of X. Now for the purpose of this entry, I am not going to tell you what X is. X is a certain national figure, but I will not give you any other details or political associations. If I did, the purpose of the piece would be lost. I like X but X is not particularly popular in the mainstream right now, and I know if I would tell you who X was, I would immediately lose you, I think your reaction would be focused on X rather than on the point of this entry. This is evidenced by the woman’s reaction when I gave my opinion on X.

“I can’t believe you like X! What is there to like? There is nothing to like about X.”

Her response was so visceral that it was shocking! Here I was, a perfect stranger giving my opinion and she immediately shot me down like a schoolgirl wanted to shut up anyone who didn’t believe in her popularity. However, in this response she made it clear that not only had she no respect for X, she had no respect for my opinion of X, and through her ungracious response made it clear that she had no respect for anyone who wasn’t as starkly opposed to X as she was.

Now, had I known her for years, and years, I could understand her reaction, but on first acquaintance it was shocking. It made me feel repulsed by her, and as I was just trying to gather up information about this woman to determine whether or not she could be a potential friend, this graceless display came out, making it doubtful that I would ever want to be her friend in the first place. It also made me question what she valued. Clearly, it wasn’t me. I had commented that I disagreed with her within the first hour of us meeting. That couldn’t have been a particularly good introduction, but later in the conversation she claimed that she was a great “embracer of freedom.” Now, given her reaction to our differing opinions, I immediately had doubts as to whether or not this was really true. Freedom, more often than not, means that people are free to agree with us, but in the case of this woman, she wasn’t interested in anyone feeling free to disagree with her. And for that matter, did she really even respect her own opinions? If she did, surely she thought that they could stand up to my own disagreement and would be able to at least hold her tongue rather than immediately jump all over someone who disagreed with her on a relatively small issue.

Disagreement in my mind is one of the most important and fascinating elements about human relationships. It’s through disagreements that we all become better people, not clones of each other. Our ideas are challenged and refined until they become impermeable and at the same time flexible enough to take on a great many people and relationships despite the contradictory beliefs. If there is disagreement among seemingly educated people, shouldn’t the first question be, why do you believe that, not how could you ever believe that?

I had known her for less than an hour and in that time had seen a single reaction that immediately turned me off from seeking a further long-term relationship. Because of one reaction, one potential friendship was gone.

“He who says it cannot be done should not be the person doing it” –Chinese Proverb

I used to think that every man wanted to see progress in the world. When I was little, I simply saw things getting continually better. Computers got better, sleeker, more responsive, we celebrated men like Martin Luther King Jr. and learned about the appalling slave trade of the South. History for me was a progressive march towards finding man’s rights and making the world more livable for all. And so I thought, this is what everyone wanted—that we all work together to make the world a better place.

A friend of mine this week told me that my dream was impossible. Just flat out no, if, ands, or buts, it was never going to happen, so I should quit trying now, impossible. And though it was the first time, coming from him, it was not the only time in my life that I had heard that something was, “impossible.”

People who say things are impossible are more often than not proven wrong. The company IBM used to say that someday there would be a market for as many as 5 computers in the world, and at the time I can see why people would think having multiple computers in one home was impossible. It’s not that I believe they were vicious; it’s just that they didn’t know any better. Can you imagine what folks said to the Wright brothers as they built their airplane or NASA for that matter? Again, ignorance and a lack of imagination are often two of the greatest things inhibiting progress.

However, I didn’t realize until recently that most people are really quite comfortable remaining ignorant and having no imagination. This is the newest disturbing fact I’ve found in my adult life. Rather than reaching beyond what they think they are capable of, people stay stuck, sometimes for perfectly good reasons like putting food in their family’s mouths, but they are stuck nonetheless and then resent others who fight to remain unstuck. Change does happen beyond the wildest dreams. If you could go back in time and tell Harriet Tubman that we would one day have an African American president, she would probably have been shocked. Or what about someone recent as Martin Luther King Jr, who made his “I Have a Dream” speech exactly 40 years before Obama received the democratic nomination at the national convention. He probably would have laughed—they both would have, and chances are they wouldn’t have believed it. My entire life, people have told me that things are “impossible,” and recently I heard it from a close friend—someone who I thought would never say that word to me. After 25 years, I would think folks would know better then to begin to tell me that something is impossible. Everything is possible, and particularly for those of us who are willing to sacrifice what it takes to reach for it. Dreams of justice and equality, honest representation, and balanced creativity for tomorrow, must always survive the inadequacies of today. Dreams worthy of coming true will always come true.

I will close by addressing the men against innovation and progress. Perhaps you are one of the people who insist on living in fear, or perhaps your horizons stop with the limitation s you see before you. Either way your world is small. And while people with small worlds have an important and practical place in society, you do not know the entirety and vastness of the universe. None of us can. How can you begin to say that something is impossible when you’ve simply never seen it and never dared to explore what it would take to achieve it? Just because it is something you have never seen does mean that it does not exist. You have chosen your world and it is compact and probably serves you well, but please let us choose ours.