Oeuvre- a Fraction of “oov-ruh” January Part III

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0p6KbO5kaU France Joli 1979

Had a day where parenting my teen daughter, I parent myself and we went grocery shopping and I ended up shopping alone which was fine. Then had a toddler crying who I could hear from the opposite side of the store all the way till I found him w/ a guy who was standing there staring at him like...a blank. No emotion. No words. I felt sorry for the little guy cause it was like no one understood or cared about why he was crying. I mean it had been going on for a good 10-15 mins. And I just drive (my scooter) by looking at them. They were on their way to check out. What do you do?

My son gave me a wooden Easter Island face monument for Christmas that I can put my reading glasses on at night, cute.

How I get up in the morning: I lean forward putting feet on floor (my bed is high) and with Herculean effort push myself to stand upright. I put my water glass from my dresser top onto my walker seat. I walk feeling my body protesting to gravity a few steps to my bathroom. I park my rollerator to the left, and balance myself a few steps with the wall, a bathtub handle and two handbars on each side of my toilet while turning myself to sit. I have to hold handbars to sit on my toilet with a plastic risen seat. After particulars, I go through pulling myself up on bars, pull up pants that I was careful not to be standing on, flush and head out to my walker. I head out of my room some mornings with my doggie directly in front down the hall, stopped for a second in front of the thermostat wondering if I should turn it up, but it was warm enough already. Listened to the silence going by my dd's room and glad she's sleeping restfully. Go the rest of few steps to the table and sit at laptop and here I am.

So I've journaled through thoughts on what it would be like to go back to church after three years out, no thank you. If you read this and have a particular question, just put it in the comment section and I'll be as honest as I can.

On the author Patricia Highsmith- “I often had the feeling Ripley was writing it and I was merely typing.”

By age of 12 she knew she was a boy in a girls body. Do I need to bring out my inner man? That's Jung, right? The balance. Animus and Anima, yin and yang. What does man and masculine even mean? Societal or cultural training? Biological survival , cavemen with strength to do things a woman had a hard time doing and women childbearing? There's the whole thing of gender fluidity. Is it emotions or physical capabilities or both?

Reading “The Price of Salt” which has been made into the movie “Carol”. Patricia Highsmith is an intriguing author, she died in 1995. I just found out she knew James Baldwin (one of my favorite authors) and someone suggested reading “Beautiful Shadow: a Life of Patricia Highsmith. While I'm waiting to get that book, I plan on watching “The Talented Mr. Ripley” which is one of the characters she wrought out of her imagination.

Also been thinking I'm going to go over my Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) notes and start reading the author's she wrote about.

More Mild-Mannered, Never Dull January Sorting Part 2

This month, I'd been pondering public transportation in my little village of Oakbrook. I'm looking forward to warmer weather so I can take my PC and try out some shopping. I'll be sure to blog about it when I do. No, still no pics, haven't gotten the cable yet.

Still studying through on Dorothea Brande's “Becoming a Writer”, free, online.

http://w3.salemstate.edu/~pglasser/18468462-Dorothea-Brande-Becoming-a-Writer.pdf

I've gotten more serious about daily writing times and it's been going in fits and starts. Exercising daily (except Sunday)and drinking more water. Mindfulness is what I need and long for and it's always right here/there staring me in the face but I don't always remember.

If I get distracted or ignore self-care I can feel it by the next day. I've had to cut back on FB time and get the right amount of sleep, nine hours. With the weakening muscles affected by the MD, everything takes more effort. I'm eating balanced like a pot of turkey chili that lasted all month. Spinach salad with a minneola orange inspired this little bit of prose that's wanna be haiku or poetry.

Remembering parfait clouds yesterday evening,

I was making spinach salad. My minneola orange

was a uterus and cervix.

David Bowie's passing this month had me, like most other rockers listening to our favorites. Mine was “Let's Dance” with the lyric “under the moonlight, the serious moonlight”. I copied out all the lyrics, just in case. Never know when you'll run into a musician who can play them. That would be fun.

This month I read “The Revenant” by Michael Punke, who I was surprised to find out was Deputy United States Trade Representative AND U.S. Ambassador AND Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland. I know the movie is out and I think the scenery will be engrossing. I hope they depict the bull boats and did you know beavers are called kews. Or were. 

Here's the Disabilities Studies Reader online again. I need to be reading more of it soon.

https://books.google.com/books?id=IzBtbhdu68MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=disability+studies+reader+4th&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAGoVChMIn7a5sr3lyAIVRhs-Ch2eRAxN#v=onepage&q&f=false

Revelation for me this month in relating to people outside my family: Don't trust people until they've earned it and shown they are trustworthy. I've always been trusting until they show they're not trustworthy. I've had it ass-backward all these years. I have to be careful in the beginning of things because I tend to gloss over signs.

Won't blame it on the chili.

I'm glad I live on the edge of woods. Pretty deep, swampy pine woods. When I was a kid, the ground was all sand, the pines were not that tall and I don't remember swamp. Now the ground is covered in feet of pine and oak mulch. I can't walk down into it because there's a deep drop off and no path. Wouldn't it be nice to have a friend who wanted to make me a path for the PC? “Oh, by the way dear, I saw you looking at the woods longingly and I know you used to enjoy time there as a child, so I'm making you a path, then you can wheel there anytime you want." Swoon.

SORTING IT ALL OUT (still) Part I

Ring, ring, cellphone … “Is this Ms. Scott?” This time from my local tourist company that offers historical Trolley rides.

Me: Are your trolley's wheelchair accessible?

Her: There are a couple of steps up into the trolley.[Insert drum roll and cymbal.]

Later, the same week:

“Hello, is this Ms. Scott?”

“Yes, oh Hi Ms. Jones!” (Not her real name.)

After the chat about how we were both fine & good;

“I'm sorry to tell you that State Agency Rehab can't help you with the power chair carrier for your vehicle because of it's age and mileage.”

I asked since it still runs fine, couldn't we install it and if I get a newer vehicle down the road I could just transfer the carrier also? She sounded adamant that it couldn't be done like that. She didn't have any further information to offer at the time but they tell me I should volunteer somewhere so I can gain more professional experience. But I made it clear I would need my chair for mobility to look for employment or a volunteer gig.

So I called our local public transportation company about taking the pic for an ID I would need for their vans for wheelchair users. Their camera was down for two weeks after the holidays and they only take pictures two days out of the week. Hopefully I can get it next week.

This is on my “to call” list: http://www.mobilityworks.com/financing/grant-assistance/southcarolina.php

Maybe I should put my physical needs, like exercise and eating right before all the looking around for work? I've had to be brutally honest with myself about how much I can do physically in a day. It's a new concept to me called self-care.

I follow a Facebook site called Writing about Writing and found this lovely book:

http://w3.salemstate.edu/~pglasser/18468462-Dorothea-Brande-Becoming-a-Writer.pdf

Like how Dorothea uses the word stimulated instead of inspired. She suggests getting up 30 minutes earlier than usual and before you do anything, go straight to writing. Don't read anything or talk or even make coffee. Do it for at least 30 mins. A few chapters later she instructs: pick a good time for every day to sit down and write. It'll be your time to write every day. Don't let anything get in the way. Write for another 30 minutes and then begin to write a few more sentences , then a few more paragraphs.

In Chapter 5 she has this little ditty: Writing calls on unused muscles and involves solitude and immobility. I need to use unused muscles, have quite a bit of solitude and immobility and TaDa! Here I am.

This following site is chock-full of people in the Disability community and their projects and when I last checked are upgrading their site.

http://www.twothirdsoftheplanet.com/365-days-with-disability

I'm an aspiring writer/artist. I've been so stimulated by 93 year old Iris Apfel in the way she used her intuition to feel out what kind of interior decoration or fashion she needed for her clients or herself.  Check out Netflix, “Iris”. 

Some other books and movies that taught while entertaining me lately are: Helene Hanff, “Q's Legacy”. You know, well maybe you don't, the author of “84 Charing Cross Road”? Of course you do! Well, you should.

“The Never-Ending Story” a film with the following timely dialogue between the boy hero and a vicious stalking wolf:

“Brave warrior, then fight the nothing.

But I can't! I can't get beyond the boundaries of Fantasia!

Fantasia has no boundaries.

That's not true, you're lying!

Foolish boy, don't you know anything about Fantasia?

It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.

But why is Fantasia dying then?

Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the nothing grows stronger.

What is the nothing?

It's an emptiness that's left, it's a kind of despair destroying this world”

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I wasn't expecting it, but had some despairing non-fiction drama myself this past month. Our relationship flew apart. Demolition. Kaboom. It's a process that may heal with time, but for now there's no contact. I'm sharing this because I'm blogging about my life. I'm flying by the seat of my pants both in wondering if and how the relationship can be healed and how to write about it. I write about it in some of my private morning musings. It helps to sort out confusion and trace sources of bitterness.

This was another early morning exercise. How someone might see me coming out my door;

Someone looking at me would see I'm dependent on the rollerator and I look like I'm focused on my movements, I'm a slightly heavy older woman. With short light brown hair going silver. I'm light skinned, today I'm wearing dark tan pants, a blue Scandinavian patterned sweater, and a black felt jacket. People see me lumber down the long wooden ramp with my left hand on the handrail and perch at the end . They don't see internal teetering for balance. They might gather that I'm weak or invalid. I'm weak for what I used to be, but not invalid. Then I'd be lying in bed. I hate the word invalid. In-valid.

Someone might gather about my character and background that I'm determined to go somewhere, that it must take a lot of energy to walk. I may make them glad they can walk freely. I can be seen doing this daily most of the time, sometimes 2 times a day. They may think I'm a quiet person or stuck up because I concentrate so hard to balance I can't raise my hand to wave or look up to say hello. I have to watch where my feet are going. They may feel sorry for me or nothing at all. I'm pretty ordinary looking. I'm coming out of a dowdy period. If they were close enough, they'd see I have an orange multi-strand necklace on with hammered silver rings, earrings and orange fingernails. Also a bright blue and red fleece scarf wrapped around my neck for the cold. They might see the old store beside my car and think I had something to do with that at one time. (I did) They may think something about the old trailer that's had some new remodeling. They may think I must be pretty poor to be living here. I'm not financially independent, but emotionally I am better than I used to be.