Never Walked In High Heels

It is a strange fact of having a disability that independence and privacy are two extremely relative terms. For one to have an independent life, one must be in control of who takes care of daily tasks which are usually considered private such as bathing, dressing and, in some cases, even more intimate tasks. But these physical activities, “private” though they may seem, are far from private compared to the thoughts, emotions, and desires that go on inside of one’s mind. It is these elements, not the dressing or showers which dictates our actions in life. These are the elements which, when shared, establishes intimacy.

People often assume that I  have a much more intimate relationship with them then I  actually do. Old assistants smell out new ones with the possessive skepticism  of a German Shepard. The thought process is usually I’ve helped this woman with everything, who are you to walk in here and make her depend on you now? Of course, the new help didn’t make me dependent on anyone, I was always in need of physical help.

But this physical help does not give the person helping me permission to assume intimacy, or even worse, authority  over my life. This is a lesson that I was suddenly forced to learn last winter when a friend I was dependent on suddenly insisted that I should take her moral advice as well as her physical aide. We live in a world where we assume seeing each other’s physical nakedness make us presume intimacy on every level.  But service is no longer an act of servitude if it comes with any sort of expectation or desire for moral endowment.

Too often people go into service with the desire not to willingly serve, but to convert. It doesn’t matter if the service has religious, political, or even simple goodwill overtones, there is usually an agenda which is very well concealed, even from the servant. It can be as simple as waiting to appear to be a good person, but there is still an agenda. When this occurs servanthood becomes propaganda.

I have always been suspicious of the people who instantly want to help me whenever I walk into a room. The more enthusiastic they are about being a servant, the more skeptical I become. Maybe this is my own self righteousness speaking but after decades of living in constant dependency I have learned that the best servants are the ones which are least likely to realize they are serving at all.

As I get undressed in the evening, its hard not to talk about the days events. Such conversations are what lovers and partners discuss when they are getting ready for bed. But the person undressing me, my chosen assistant for the time, is not my spiritual advisor, my teacher, or my mother (except in the rare occurrences where that person is indeed my mother). The perceived intimacy between us is really no more than skin deep, proving that although I am naked, I do not have to be vulnerable.

My assistant carries my duffel bag to the stage door and stops. My body, covered with baby oil to simulate sweat, takes its last calm breath before mayhem begins. After I knock on the door, I won’t be able to go at my pace, my speed until we make our final bow in exactly eighty four minutes. Until then I will be moving at performance pace, performance speed, trying frantically to make jokes and complex ideas understood, keeping the audience’s energy up, all while making every stylized move seem natural. This is the job of a performer. This is the job I always wanted. I raise my hand to knock  on the door. My sister in the play opens is and looks appalled, just  like the director intended. I barge onto the stage in my wheelchair.

Instantly and, it seems, undetectable to a great many people, I feel the audience clench up.  It’s not me, I’ve been in enough performances to know what nerves are and how to adjust to them. This isn’t me, its them. Even in our modern age it seems we are still living in a world where as soon as a professional actor with a disability comes onto the stage, the audience becomes nervous, as if they are expecting to watch a train wreck in slow motion. Its  the threat of live performance and part of what makes theatre so addictive. Although we don’t want them to, the idea that action on stage is happening in real time and that performers might drop the ball puts us at the very edge of our seats. We like this risk, to a certain extent.

Unless you put a performer like me onstage. Trained by professionals myself, my performance style is unique at best. My speech is of a slightly different cadence, my movements aren’t always fluid. But my intentions are precise, my ideas clear and innovative, and my stories are, for the most bit, entertaining. And yet each time I go onstage I feel the wave of nerves from an audience wondering if they are about to witness a train wreck. Can she remember her lines? What did she just say?  How long is  she going to be  onstage? Who cast her in the first place and why  didn’t they get a proper actor?

Before you protest and say it’s nerves getting the better of me, I have a confession to make. In marketing my shows disability is never mentioned. My plays really aren’t about disability as it just isn’t a topic which interests me. Leave ghettoized theatre to quota seekers and box tickers. I write the story of human beings which I can play for two reasons. First, I am honestly bored. No one else is casting me in work and many of the companies who aim to do otherwise don’t write interesting characters with disabilities. By accomplishing both I am creating a sound body of work for myself. Contrary to all rumors, this is a top priority for any artist. One must  create work which excites you, if you ever want to have a shot at exciting anyone else. Secondly, my plays are about the human condition. Disability is meant to be a metaphor which allows the audience to lock into a character, not an implacable monolith of a topic. As such, I don’t advertise my plays as being disability art any more than  Whitman saw his poetry to be about homosexuality. Art is a reflection of the human condition which is universal, provided of course, we don’t foolishly become too bogged down by the specifics.

So in a way I’m asking for trouble. I don’t warn potential audience members of a major characteristic of the piece, one which, in fact, might make a number of people very uncomfortable. To my knowledge there is no disability advisory warning or any plot spoilers required for theatrical advertising. Anybody should be able to come on stage in the course of an evening and, so long as their acting abilities hold up, the audience should accept they belong in that story. And throughout western theatre history, the range of acceptable actors has grown to include multiple genders, ethnicities, ages, and a host of other factors. Actors with disabilities should stay in disability theatre it seems. Outside of myself, they are  rarely seen in the West End. And with an audience reaction like what I’ve witnessed, who can blame the producers for not casting people with disabilities. A nervous audience is rarely a paying audience.

While onstage, there is little I can do to ease audience tension except play me role well which, admittedly, is easier some nights than others. I am tied to a script, my hands bound to certain actions at certain times. As much as I would like to call the audience out and say ‘trust me would ya,’ it can’t happen. I am told by friends that after a few minutes the tension dies down and the audience begins to feel more at ease. If this happens I can’t tell when it occurs. By that time I’m so far in the story I’ve forgotten about the audience’s existence. I have taken note of the tension but refused to take it on. I know my work is good and the audience can’t walk out. The door is shut, the lights are low, and for the next hour and a half they have to deal with the surprise of having an actor with a disability on stage.  If that’s such a shocking idea, then I don’t care what the reviews say, the fact the piece exists is enough.

What more could any artist ask for?

“You are a very very brave young woman,” she said turning towards me and placing one hand on her walker for stability. We were on a pedestrian island in the middle of Trafalgar Square, making it halfway across the street before the light changed color. For me it was because I had arrived at the crosswalk towards the end of the green cycle that I had gotten only partway across the street. I had seen this woman edging across long before I myself had reached the crosswalk and, due to her age and gait, only had made it this far.

“Not as brave as you,” I replied, smiling at her gumption. If there is one intersections which distresses me above any of the others in London it is Trafalgar Square. Here, cars guide their way through a maze which resembles a bowl of spaghetti more than an intersection. For every crosswalk there is at least one pedestrian island which warns you that crossing in one go may be difficult for some. Indeed, the lights a choreographed in such a way that it almost takes a study in geometric principles to work out how the lights can be timed in your favor. And, to top it all off, being one of the most famous and photographed squares in the world means that when you are there, you feel like one is at the centre of the universe and everyone in all galaxies both known and unknown is watching you attempt to cross from one end of the square to the other in some sort of existential trek, metaphorically symbolizing the frailty of human efforts in the attempt to strive for meaning.

Or a least that’s my perception. My friends think I’m nuts and offer the advice “when you see the green guy go, when you see the red guy stop.” Thanks.

Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t let my grandmother cross Trafalgar Square alone. And the idea of anyone else over the age of seventy five doing so made me very nervous. I edged forward to offer assistance. Maybe she could hold on to the back of my chair to gain support to cross the street. Even when one is dependent on everyone else, it is still impossible to squash the reflex to help someone else in need when you see it.

“In my day, young women like you barely even left the four walls of their home unless they were heading for a shelter during an evacuation. Good for you.” I froze.

In London, it is impossible for me to look into the face of an older person without wondering if they had been around during World War II. Unlike the majority of working age Londoners, those from the generation who survived the Blitz still look you in the eye. And every once in a while, I catch a fierce gleam inside of the person, without exchanging any dialogue which says “I have seen parts of this city reduced to rubble. I have seen it built back up again. I know that life is filled with both pain and joy.”

This was a woman who had survived much in London, her eyes asserted it. Which is why I was shocked that she would ever call me ‘brave.’ A person who had watched her country be attack by enemy fire when victory wasn’t certain surely cannot begin to find courage in a young woman crossing the street on a sunny day, holding a patent leather bag with one hand and getting ready to dial her iphone with the other.

When local heroes are interviewed we hear them say over and over “I was just doing what anyone else would’ve done in my position.” And perhaps heroism, at it’s root is not about what you do when the stakes are high, but rather what you do when there isn’t much of a choice. Live or die. Fight or roll over. Go out or be a shut in. Cross the street or stay stagnant. In extreme situations, there really are just two options. And more often than not “heroes” are the ones who choose the more desirable option rather than facing destruction.

If two women on opposite ends of the age spectrum can meet at a crosswalk and admire the drive for life in the other, then the best things in this world are both inexplicable and universal. I don’t feel particularly brave just because I choose to cross the street, even in Trafalgar Square. In my mind it’s what everyone does, so I do it too. And maybe those who saw bombs falling on London, who waited it St. Paul’s Cathedral with buckets of water to put out fires, and who rebuilt their lives choosing to keep pushing hope, did so because there was little other option. At our core, we want to keep straining away for more life.

The light turned green in Trafalgar Square, and everyone around us started crossing the street, making it natural for her and I to do likewise. We were on our separate ways again.

What I Know Of Her Son

She is a woman who I have been wanting to meet for years. Ever since I first heard my friend describe his mother, I knew that she was amazing just by examining his outlook, and that she had a degenerative nerve disease. When he spoke of his mother, he keeps the latter fact quiet and simple telling me of what she’d done and what she used to tell him. “She’s fine…well she’s not fine she has a nerve disease. But it really doesn’t affect her that much.” And so, when I finally bumped into her visiting her son while walking down the road at a Sunday pace, I was surprised as she was further along in her condition that he had made it out to sound. As close as we were I wish he would have told me honestly what her status was like and what her troubles were. But maybe he is as blind to her disability as he is to mine.

I always wanted to meet his mother. It amazes me whenever I meet the parents of any of my friends. I begin to understand where they got their values and which matters were the greatest influences on their life. This particular woman raised my friend incredibly well. For my own sake, when I am out and dependent on him it is as close as I can possibly imagine to possibly being fully independent. In such cases I am particularly interested in meeting the mother of the family, mothers teach their children to stretch their boundaries and to think beyond what is normal in order to incorporate people of all types. The influence of such a woman can mean that for the rest of their life, their child does not feel awkward whenever meeting someone strange. Mothers open up the world of acceptability to their children, making the entire universe more inclusive. I have met two of this woman’s sons and I can safely say that she did a wonderful job in raising her children to be as accommodating and as understanding as human beings can possibly be.

As soon as we were introduced, her eyes lit up with a flicker of recognition. She was holding on to her walker and instantly called me by name. From this I gathered that she somehow knew my name and that it was familiar in their home. Watching her watch her son handle my bags and meet my needs for minor assistance, it suddenly dawned on me that this behavior that she was witnessing in the young man that she helped raise, nurse, feed and carry was new to her. She probably never saw anyone rely on him in such a dependent way as I do on a regular basis. The fact is, I depend on all of my friends, but particularly him, and I forget that this often looks strange to the outside world.

Then, almost instantly, I came to another realization, that because of her own disability, someday soon she will be dependent on him as well. For many individuals with a long term degenerative illness this impending dependency is the most fearful thing to overcome. The fact that someday you will be dependent on your children, and at that point in time it is how you raised them that will reflect on how they will take care of you. Again, it is the classical instance of an individual reaping what they sow. As parents teach their children to care for human life and value it in all its forms, the trickle down effect is that eventually they will be under the care of their children in one form or another. Those families who do not bother to teach their children such values and ethics will no doubt feel it when the older generation inevitably starts losing its own independence.

For me the most humbling realization was that suddenly I knew something about her children, particularly her sons, that she knew nothing of, that she would someday be reliant upon. In this small way, I know how her sons look out for people in need, protecting and advocating for them. Both in the slightest and most dramatic ways. They are both unafraid to feed someone when a spoon becomes too difficult to hold onto. They can tie shoes without breaking the conversation and are experts at making sure that someone not only survives, but that they are happy, healthy and know that they are valued. If such a day comes for her when she can no longer perform the tasks of daily living without a great deal of assistance, she will also find that her boys are exactly as she raised them and I am already thankful for those effects.

Somedays I wish I could tell her now that her children will take care of her when she is in need. I wish I could tell her that when her body rebels and she is no longer able to do what was once considered a natural reflex without a massive amount of frustration, she will have no need to worry. I wish I could tell her all the ways that I see my friend stepping up to the plate and preparing himself to take care of his parents when they grow older. I wish I could tell her all the stories of all the times he advocates for me, and that I am grateful to have such a fabulous friend.

And then I can’t help but wonder, if she and her husband raised their children to become such honorable and humane people, perhaps she knew what he is capable of all along.

It’s the signs of the season. Every single coffee shop changes their plain white cups to red ones with snowflakes on them in an effort to be more festive. The light on the trees sparkle and cause domestic disturbances across the country because he didn’t hang the lights the way she thought they would look appealing. Everything is green, red, or blue even if it doesn’t mean to be particularly festive. Our brains work it into that exact classification. Christmas brings out of everyone the kind and excessive spirit; and the token cripple on the street gets all of it. It comes in the form of doors opening and baristas who refuse to charge me for a cup of coffee. At Christmas time I consistently get money handed to me by complete strangers on the street as if I was some Las Vegas hooker.

I don’t know what they expect me to do with this small fortune that they generously give me in the name of Christmas spirit. Sometimes when it happens I am headed out to the office in a suit and five inch stiletto heels, my hair done up in a tight bun, and the stresses of business pressing on my mind. Do they expect me to buy a weeks worth of groceries with it? Is it simply a nice gesture so I can buy myself a little something special? I’m always confused on how exactly to respond and despite looking, I have yet to find a manners book which adequately explains the protocol of accepting money on the street from perfect strangers.

When I was younger this sort of behavior used to happen me all year round. It took other forms of course. I would be in the grocery store looking around in certain aisles and a perfect stranger decided to get whatever it was on the top-shelf which I happened to be looking at, bring it down and put it in my basket. It didn’t matter if I voiced that I wanted it or not; the product was being stared at and therefore it ought to be mine. I thought that this type of behavior would go away in London since it is the land of the stiff upper lip and somewhat emotionally repressed individual. In addition, I thought that maybe with age and a business suit the alms I was given would stop as well. For the most part I was right, it does. Except during the most wonderful time of the year. Then it seems to be a charity free for all.

To make matters worse I am quite literally living in the homeland of “Tiny Tim.” The Dickensian idea of the crippled child who loves God and blesses everyone seems to run rampant on television as every single BBC channel seems to show a different version of ‘A Christmas Carol.” From December 1^st through the 25^th it’s like everyone wants to see themselves as the redeemed Scrooge and rather than buying the goose in the window and sending it to Mr. Cratchit, they do the modern equivalent by offering to pay for my chai tea latte with soy milk or simply place a fiver in my lap and patting my head as they go by. It seems, spited as I may be, suddenly when the baby Jesus’ come out and ice skating is on the top of every fashionable young persons to-do list; everyone wants to be in a Dickens novel and so they race to the closest person with a disability they can find.

The more I fight their good intentions, assuring them that I don’t need their money, I own my own company and can get along just fine thank you very much, the more they insist. And so it becomes a circular debate in the extremes. They want to give me the money and I keep saying I don’t want it; thus making me look like the more humble individual and so they want to give it to me even more. Usually I lose the fight simply because my hands don’t work and so when they thrust the gifts into my lap I am unable to give the cash back to them before they pat me on the head and run off. Usually I am quickly able to find someone who is truly in need to give it to. After all, that is what the original giver wished to have happen with that portion of their hard earned income.

I am sure there was a time in my life where I fit the stereotype of Tiny Tim very well. I was young, loved God, and decisively optimistic. While I still fit into those categories, as an adult I now own my own company and wear skinny jeans and knee-high boots rather than the modest clothing that such a character would wear. However, it became clear that I was a long way off from outgrowing the public’s perception that I am the innocent disabled child that is able to melt hearts and bring joy; regardless of the fact that I had no sleep, have been suffering from cramps all day, and managed to get into a huge fight with my roommate about whether or not ketchup should be refrigerated. Even at my age and having I still don’t know how to stop the Christmas charity of being given money by complete strangers. I would like to stop it completely because where I come from, throwing money at a woman going down the street means something that no doubt would make Tiny Tim blush.

My friend is more than happily drunk in the middle of making disparaging socio-economic comments and spouting off some of the most absurd political philosophy I have heard in my life. He spills part of his drink on the floor. We are in an English pub and as per usual, I am witnessing a social debate which would never hold up in practical circumstances. I can tell that everyone is looking at me, expecting me to say something to end the argument. I am notorious for pointing out logical flaws, particularly late at night and when others are inebriated. However I don’t want to say anything and to avoid eye contact, my iPhone is suddenly transformed into the most fascinating object in western civilization.

One of the worst things about having different physical limitations than everyone else (I almost wrote socially abnormal, but then realized that deep down we all fit into such a category) is that you have to work twice as hard to fit in. Growing up, the first two weeks of a new school were always awkward. The first few days the entire class would sit and stare at me in silence as I attempted to answer questions. An icy glaze covered the entire classroom as soon as my hand rose above my head to speak.

First impressions are always important. A visible difference between you and the standard norm, either in physical deformity, disability, or simply the wrong hair color sets everyone’s judgment against you. Suddenly all of the lessons that you learned in kindergarten, the ones about it doesn’t matter what you wear and all that counts is what’s on the inside, no longer apply. Now all that matters is who you are on the outside and how you portray yourself to the outside world. What you wear, how you speak, all contribute to a strangers quick judgments. People often look at me and assume that I have mental limitations as well as physical ones.

In my particular case, this means that there is no room to make mistakes on those first impressions. Growing up, going all through the month of September meant not raising my hand unless I was absolutely positively sure the answer I had was correct. This of course puts an end to most educational ideas. The world around me did not allow mistakes. Later in life this meant not entering an argument until I had reasonable and logical proof to point to. This was translated into refusing to be a hothead in pubs. Such a refusal goes strikingly against my nature. When you have a disability, there is no room to blurt something out without thinking. Doing so runs the risk of people automatically assuming that you are mentally retarded and usually, such an assumption is set against you anyways. Needless to say, all of this severely limits debate involvement while intoxicated and entering into arguments with intoxicated people.

I would like to live in a world that afforded me unreasonable arguments every once in a while. I would like to have an opinion and not have anything to back it up, but just keep it out of sheer pigheadedness. Unfortunately having unbridled opinion is something I can’t admit to having in public which, when I do have stubborn opinions, makes me want to hold them all the more tightly when I am amongst friends who already know that I am not what I fear to be. In an equal world, I would be able to let my guard down, but that has yet to occur. Rather, there are carefully measured times in which I can assert my views without fear of being judged the wrong way and times that I cannot. While this is true for anyone, usually it doesn’t automatically place you in a certain intelligence quota. The bombastic assumptions which are often thrown in my way doesn’t necessarily limit my freedom; my self expression is a choice I will always make. Sometimes I do limit myself by keeping silent and watching someone else actively prove himself a fool.

I was sending my electric chair careening down Tottenham Court Road while in abject anger. My muscles were tense, I was doing everything possible to dodge in and out of pedestrians and not get stuck behind any slow-moving tourists. Having just been told that my disability was going to prevent me from achieving my dreams, I was currently wishing that the instructor I had just left would fall down the stairs of her flat onto the icy pavement below and break a leg that evening if for no other reason than to show her just how frustrating having a condition that was less than ideal was. Then I remembered her crooked back and knobbly hands that were riddled with arthritis. I take a deep breath and slow my wheelchair to a reasonable walking pace, reminding myself that she does know on some level what it is like not to have the perfect body. She can empathize if she chooses to. She knows the frustration of hands which will not obey her brain and feet that shuffle along the floor that used to run when she was a girl. She knows her condition is becoming a chronic illness, and she is terrified. It seemed a little absurd, but I have to constantly remind myself of the frailty of the human condition, even as a person with a disability, an uncooperative body, looking the beast of frailty in the eye. I often forget that bodies break down because, according to some, mine was never built properly to begin with. I forget that, unlike me, most individuals don’t have a history of years struggling with their own physique under their belt by the time their physical capacity begins to deteriorate. I forget all of this and attempt to remember these simple and unalienable facts of life whenever anyone stands in opposition.

Sometimes, even after remembering the state of human affairs I would still like to speed up the process by running over a few toes and making certain people have to use crutches for six weeks just so that they can get a taste of my reality. I once had a high school teacher explain that it was a small kink in human DNA which causes differing characteristics. A tiny microscopic difference between all of us human beings creates so many silly boundaries and absurd demarcations as to what an individual considers normal and fully human and what some people would consider substandard. The most universal thing about the human condition however, is our own vulnerability and the fear that we all have of succumbing to it, but regardless of our level of terror brought about by the idea of opening one’s self wide and being honest about one’s condition, be it mental emotional or physical, inevitably we all find ourselves in vulnerable positions. To have relationships, to accept intellectual risk and encourage progress, just getting on a bike and riding down the street, getting into a car, stepping onto an aircraft, all of these choices, events, are the stuff that life is inevitably made of. Without these, the new ideas, the desire to mobilize ourselves, life would hardly be worth living so we need to accept that sometimes we do make ourselves vulnerable if for anything at all, but to experience life.

The absurdity of it all is that we continue to react negatively when someone does fall victim to their own vulnerability. Perhaps because some conditions such as arthritis, birth defects, and broken limbs are often out of our control. However if a condition is inevitable, what would ever possess us to lash out or entrap the victim of that condition? We wouldn’t think of becoming irritated by a fourteen year old because she menstruated for the first time. Such a change is, after all, is part of the human experience regardless of how awkward it may be. And yet, we often cannot look a person on his deathbed in the eye, much less our friend who was once perfectly able bodied now confined unexpectedly to a wheelchair after being struck down while in prime physical condition because of some ridiculous accident.

My impatience with the people who fall victim to these absurd beliefs , that life is only livable if one has full use of all four of his limbs and is the ideal weight, height, and intelligence comes from such peoples lack of experience. They have yet to learn what it is like to be dependent on other people who have very little in common with themselves. How, when you are hungry and you want a meal, it doesn’t matter what that persons’ skin color, religious or political beliefs are, all that matters is if they are willing and able to prepare hot food when one is considered unsafe in the kitchen. This forced dependency on each other, the ability to serve others unlike ourselves, and be served by individuals who you would never expect service from, it may well be these circumstances that make us vulnerable, and without them, we begin to lose our humanity.

It is one thing for a teacher to assume because of my physical condition I am unlike her and unable to find a place in “her society.” But the fact is, she is much closer to becoming like me than she would like to believe. It is the fact of living that one misread stoplight or piece of poor judgment on anyone’s part, not only our own, can cause us to wake up completely changed, dependent and confined in ways we never thought possible. I suppose in a way it is hard for me to remember that in her stubbornness to deny her flaws and weaknesses. She and I are much more alike than I care to admit.

People often ask why I do not join a community built for cripples (actually they say “individuals with physical limitations” but the stigma is still the same). I have trouble finding friends who also have physical disabilities and when possible, usually find it best to look at a person not for what he can or cannot do, but rather, who he is or isn’t. In this way, disabilities are the last thing that enter into my mind when examining the qualities of a particular individual. Many I speak to often find this point frustrating, occasionally to the point of hypocrisy. For me, it is simply, life.

I was never raised to be disabled. Growing up, my family did everything to keep me out of an extremely flawed special education system. Even today, the United Nations report that only three percent of all people with physical disabilities in the world are able to read. (http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18) Among women, that goes down to just one percent. This means that out of four hundred disabled women in the world, only one of them is literate. If this shocks you, I’m not surprised. It is shocking. Our world is blissfully unaware of what living conditions are like world wide for people with disabilities.

Recently I saw a report from the mayor of London analyzing the learning conditions of persons with in a city some consider the world’s capital. The title alluded to the idea that people with physical limitations almost live in a different city than London. Being unable to use a form of mass transit such as the London Underground and unable to access many of the neighborhood shops on any high street, people who have any sort of physical limitation know a very different London than those who are able bodied. Transportation is slower, stores with narrow aisles a bigger challenge, invasive even, and the looks from people on the street will often send individuals back inside their houses in order to avoid hostile environments.

But being disabled does not stop with environmental issues. As in any civil rights battle, the problem is steeper and more complex than one would care to imagine. When I was growing up I heard over and over again, “Be patient with yourself” and “take it slow.” Now why I would ever want to slow down when it took me and hour and a half to get dressed that morning is beyond me. However, taking it slow often gets transformed into setting lower goals for individuals with disabilities. It means taking it easy rather than slowly chipping away at a complex algebra problem. Some things, particularly in education cannot be rushed but more often than not the goal post for disabled individuals is removed entirely so that a substandard type of performance becomes acceptable lessening the amount of homework problems, showing the student that he should only have to read the Cliff Notes rather than the whole book, or even insisting that a book is too difficult for a student to read are all common occurrences for someone who was raised to think of himself as physically disabled and therefore expected to take no initiative in his own life. Thus, more often than not, the great schism which faces individuals with physical limitations is not the level of access in their environment but it is their submission to a type of institutionalization which works for societies comfort rather than the students good.

As has been the case with civil rights issues in the past, this false education and insistence that individuals with disabilities are helpless is more detrimental than any staircase or missing form of public transit. It is through the educational system that individuals with disabilities are still often given different books, different classes, different teachers, and different expectations which causes the schism between the fully able bodied world and the disabled world to continue year after year after year. By insisting that the disabled world is somehow separate (nobody said anything about equal) from the way fully able bodied people live their lives means that there will always innately be that division between different people. Inevitably by keeping any population separated, society ensures that they are marginalized. The mayor of London is right, living in London with a physical disability means living in an entirely different city than Londoners who are able to get about without much thought. Perhaps this is why I am so impatient when well meaning individuals tell me to take it slow. It takes me so long to get to my destination in the first place, if I were to take it slow I fear that my world would stop altogether.

Those Who Used to “Teach”

It is often said that those who cannot do, teach. And as some members of my family would like to add, those who cannot teach go into education. But embarking on conservatory training I discovered that there are teachers who cannot do and teachers who can no longer do. Both often make splendid teachers. The teachers who have given up there own performing careers due to age or ailment are often times the most giving of their time and the most insistent on perfection, creating a rare combination of encouragement and admirable standards. All too quickly the image of ancient ballet teachers hobbling on canes comes to mind. People who have seen performance for what it is as well have seen their own careers dissolve through circumstances beyond their control and have thus rededicated themselves to improving other individual’s forms rather than other individuals chances to get into the industry.

A particular conservatory instructor comes to mind. He is an individual who was well known in his day as an incredible Shakespearean actor when, after a stage fighting accident during one summer, lost the use of his left arm. That was the only extent of his injury, however it was permanent and as a result of having a single limb immobilized had to give up his craft.

Sometimes I sit in the back of his class listening to him lecture or give advice to those of us performing and I often wonder what he thinks when he examines me in his studio. An injury, which from my perspective seems extraordinarily small (although I’m sure from his point of view, it was anything but negligible) ended his career decades ago and here I am more bound in my body than he is now despite his age, embarking on a professional acting career with the insistence that disability and physical condition does not matter. He, unlike some of my tutors never offers me a detrimental word or insists that I despair regarding my impending doom as a starving artist. His standards are set as high for me as anyone else and he insists that I can be trained.

I look at him lead the class in warm ups and articulation exercises and more often than not, I am struck by the constant reminder of my ultimate goals of being in art. I dream of a world where having an “imperfect body” or being seen as more representative of the human condition. I have a vision of a world where people take as little notice of physical differences as most people do different races and the insistence of segregating the disabled because they are different is labeled as “hateful” as racism or homophobia, and I believe that it is art, particularly acting which will help our society reach these goals as it normalizes differences and forces our world to look at situations and people which many would otherwise not run into living within their own suburban plan. I want to create art and act in pieces that reiterate over and over that losing the use of a single appendage is hardly reason to bow out of the industry and take up teaching as a consolation career when one is regarded some great tragedy occurs.

I sit in his class daily and come to the conclusion that I would hope if the same injury happened to my teacher today, he would keep acting, even in the face of adversity and insist that he belonged on the stage and his talent did not disintegrate as a result of losing the use of a single appendage. I want to help create the world in which he never had to quit due to an accident that was merely an unfortunate circumstance. I can’t help but wonder if, after the accident, he too yearned for a world where art could incorporate the realities of life.

Trying Too Hard

When my grandfather entered into my room and saw me working on my biology homework for the third late night in a row, he said something that I’m pretty sure had never crossed his lips in his life, “Sweetie, maybe you are trying too hard.” Flash forward ten years later and I am in an acting class; the older woman who leads us reminds me of all the good witches in fairytales that I had read. She is looking at me and commenting on the work I have done saying, “The problem is not your effort; the problem is your work is inhibited by the fact that you are trying too hard.”

Growing up we are told to do to whatever we can to be the very best. We are taught to attempt difficult math problems and other various paths, even if it would require a special effort. We are told in short, to try hard. But at what point is attempting something with too much effort destructive? At what point does trying hard prevent an individual from learning because he is so focused on his effort rather than the subject at hand?

Acting teachers are notorious for saying, “try not to try.” This of course is misleading. As an actor, it is our job to do the homework and invest in the character to the best of our ability and then let go so allowing the muse take over and create something more powerful and true than can be achieved by “trying” in front of the bedroom mirror. There comes a point in time when a bird has to fly and it becomes practical knowledge rather than theoretical.

I have been known to try so hard that people tell me I’m wasting energy, and in some instances they are right, due to the nature of my disability people often tell me that doing X or Y will be extremely difficult and so I believe them and start straining away to make something fit. As a result, there are all sorts of extraneous movements and energies and shutters that go off which an able-bodied person would never have in his vocabulary of smooth motions. I am guilty of trying so hard to make something work, but my own muscles get in my body’s way. In short, my disability makes it impossible to weed out the superlatives of moving.

In life, unfocused energy is an absolute plague, particularly in suburban America. We literally spend all the energy we have attempting to make a round peg fit into a square hole. Relationships, class schedules, commitments that we are not quite ready for, at a certain point in our life become lost effort. You see a boy you like in class, and you end up molding everything you say and do in order to attract him. But of course, ultimately, he was never attracted to you in the first place. A complete loss of energy, for one, forced kiss.

We are, I have no doubt, meant to work hard, but that’s not the same as trying to make things more difficult than they were actually meant to be in the first place. When this happens, we ultimately force ourselves to attempt to control what may well be out of our control, or better off not being manipulated at all. It’s a risk, but sometimes letting go of things rather than ramming one’s head against the same wall over and over is the way towards a happy ending.

In that particular instance, I think my grandfather was wrong, and I think my acting teacher was correct. We are supposed to work hard in school; education and training are supposed to stretch us. He knew that and looking back, as surprising as his statement to me actually was, he would have never agreed about slacking off in science class. I often think of his words that night, when I am working hard and finding my energy quickly sapped, reminding myself that working too hard should never be confused, with trying too hard.

When my grandfather entered into my room and saw me working on my biology homework for the third late night in a row, he said something that I’m pretty sure had never crossed his lips in his life, “Sweetie, maybe you are trying too hard.” Flash forward ten years later and I am in an acting class; the older woman who leads us reminds me of all the good witches in fairytales that I had read. She is looking at me and commenting on the work I have done saying, “The problem is not your effort; the problem is your work is inhibited by the fact that you are trying too hard.”

Growing up we are told to do to whatever we can to be the very best. We are taught to attempt difficult math problems and other various paths, even if it would require a special effort. We are told in short, to try hard. But at what point is attempting something with too much effort destructive? At what point does trying hard prevent an individual from learning because he is so focused on his effort rather than the subject at hand?

Acting teachers are notorious for saying, “try not to try.” This of course is misleading. As an actor, it is our job to do the homework and invest in the character to the best of our ability and then let go so allowing the muse take over and create something more powerful and true than can be achieved by “trying” in front of the bedroom mirror. There comes a point in time when a bird has to fly and it becomes practical knowledge rather than theoretical.

I have been known to try so hard that people tell me I’m wasting energy, and in some instances they are right, due to the nature of my disability people often tell me that doing X or Y will be extremely difficult and so I believe them and start straining away to make something fit. As a result, there are all sorts of extraneous movements and energies and shutters that go off which an able-bodied person would never have in his vocabulary of smooth motions. I am guilty of trying so hard to make something work, but my own muscles get in my body’s way. In short, my disability makes it impossible to weed out the superlatives of moving.

In life, unfocused energy is an absolute plague, particularly in suburban America. We literally spend all the energy we have attempting to make a round peg fit into a square hole. Relationships, class schedules, commitments that we are not quite ready for, at a certain point in our life become lost effort. You see a boy you like in class, and you end up molding everything you say and do in order to attract him. But of course, ultimately, he was never attracted to you in the first place. A complete loss of energy, for one, forced kiss.

We are, I have no doubt, meant to work hard, but that’s not the same as trying to make things more difficult than they were actually meant to be in the first place. When this happens, we ultimately force ourselves to attempt to control what may well be out of our control, or better off not being manipulated at all. It’s a risk, but sometimes letting go of things rather than ramming one’s head against the same wall over and over is the way towards a happy ending.

In that particular instance, I think my grandfather was wrong, and I think my acting teacher was correct. We are supposed to work hard in school; education and training are supposed to stretch us. He knew that and looking back, as surprising as his statement to me actually was, he would have never agreed about slacking off in science class. I often think of his words that night, when I am working hard and finding my energy quickly sapped, reminding myself that working too hard should never be confused, with trying too hard.