Another
observation is that an article I wrote for the Anglophone Chao Hanoi online
magazine got published. Apparently, many people read it, though an additional
many come to me now saying they saw an article about me. Indeed, I wrote this
article about me. Chao editor and chief Carlos may have written the exact same
piece, but that would be pure coincidence.
The
piece was drastically shorn from a sprawling beast I struggled to rend and boil
down. I guess the main idea I landed upon was to address the novelty of my presence,
and its relationship to the actual difficulties I face, which is distinct from
whatever inherent difficulties there are in being blind. I didn’t mention this
in the piece, but by itself, blindness isn’t particularly bad, or even, dare I
say, of much consequence. But blindness is no noble gas. Nor is Jumping Jack
Flash. It is rarely to be found by itself. As Carlos told me, if I wasn’t an enigma
before, I certainly will be now that thousands have gotten a whiff of my
article—I wrote it by the way.
A notable blind poet, memoirist, and professor
Steve Kuusisto published
an interesting piece recently. Here he boldly admits to feeling regret over
a perceived burden he places on fellow faculty members and university staff in
his pursuit of accessibility and inclusion, all be it with resolution to persist.
How real this is. How constant is the feeling that one is a burden -- that even
if one can say they are accomplished, they are differentiated by the burden
their disability inflicts on others in the upward struggle. One is slapped into
feeling that way -- that one should be ever obliged or contrite in their demands.
Someone else may suppose that academia should be a paragon of inclusive,
equitable thinking. If this was so, I’d still be in academia.
This reminded me of some ponderings I had o’recent regarding
the topic of help. Thank you to a conversant Finish lady at the Jazz bar on New
Year’s Eve, and perhaps to the irate neighbor who sprayed us with a hose (I
initially thought it was Champaign) for awakening some concise thoughts on the
matter.
Help is not a passive act. It is an assumption of power.
When you help someone, even with supposition of supreme altruism, you are
assuming the role of power barer in a relationship. Political? Yes. Say you
offer to cook someone food, and that person, hungry, and far from home accepts
with no strings attached -- perhaps you are the one driving that person home
after moreover. That person is obliged to accept whatever it is that you cook
as good fare, not to mention your dawdling, smoking, groping, probing, forgetting
that the person is allergic to raw box jellies and may prefer listening to Lana
Del Rey’s sinus congestion over your political podcasts. The helped is usually
considered one who has made their big decision already, and that decision was
to receive help. The precision of that help, the inappropriate behavior of the
helper, and available alternatives to flee to are inferior concerns in the shadow
of the big deal – the charitable deal. Constantly a blind person as myself must
fish deep into their cerebral pockets for the best decision to make – to ask or
not to ask – to accept or turn-down assistance. Asking someone for something
simple as directions or accompaniment to a location might bounce back in un-wanted
grabbing, endless delays as the in fact ignorant provider (counter to initial presentation)
checks their phone and asks other passers-by, and ultimately quite likely an
unwanted final destination as it has been discovered upon parting. Sometimes
refusing help, even in the kindliest way possible is seen as an act of aggression.
The imperfect helped is the taboo of the picky beggar, the biter of feeding
hands, the out-of-turn ignoble one. The helper is the chevalier, the master,
the gigging saint, the political tactician. Lowe, what a temptation it is to jump
in the box car of charity. Mighty no-no to surrender such an opportunity,
especially when it is in motion.
I think of the time I
asked a roommate in Worcester MA to drive me to the train station (of course
there’s no decent public transit to the transit station from Main Street -- cabs
in the city are, and perhaps still are, excruciating, all be it likely in the
form of ride-sharing. He immediately regretted his decision to help. His mind
was in agony. His decision was one of proscription rather than thoughtfulness. The
time was rush hour. The 20 minutes or so of the ride featured frequent profanity
on the top of my driver’s lungs, accompanied by slams of his fists on the dash.
“You should’ve asked me an hour ago champ” he said through clenched teeth several
times along the way. I genuinely offered to get out and call for a cab, and
pushed gas money into his mitts, but he refused. ‘And woe to him who has
exchanged one’s charitable power over a blind man’ thought he. Does a proverbial
fisherman dare share his trade with a lowly blind man, risking closure of
equally proverbial houses of oms, and opening the sea to plagues of well-fed
blind folk, and some fewer fish? Often, we blind people are given special
seemingly benign favors we are not told are just for us. For instance, a visit
to a large café where we are told to sit down and be served. We may debate over
when and where to play the disabled card and accept freebees; but if we are not
even told it is a freebee, let alone something we shouldn’t expect at a future
visit, how are we to comfortably plan our actions? We may sit down for a half
hour before realizing the error of our assumption we’d be served, perhaps not
even knowing where we should order. The point is the power differential too
often disarms the assisted of that capacity: the power to plan, to expect what
others expect, and to react with resilience to change. I believe in the goodness
of altruism and necessity of equity; but the power dynamic tied up in charity, reliance,
condescension, ego-itis of physically normative differentiation – all that is
to be feared.
Speaking
of poetry (See Steve K above), and to know a tree -- poetry is a troublesome
subject for me. Sometimes it seems like license for people with no discernable analytical
skills or articulateness to be artists and get applause. Sometimes it is quite
lovely!
Anyway,
here’s a brief contribution to bad verse, for the golden retriever at the local
jazz bar…
Those wags, yes and that wagamuffin.
Those beats, this brush, the wind, and that drum.
My lady. What is it? That’s right.
Itches are words by the boatload bin.
Through the gag-…inducing… smoke I’ve come,
for the old… furry you… this night.
P.S.
A nice fella chatted with me at the corner coffee shop next
to Tay Ho (the lake). He hadn’t read my article it sounded like, though he had
seen me around quite a bit – surprise surprise Mr. Sight-ala. Anyways, we
talked about naturalizing beavers in Ho Tay? No sir. We talked about my
blindness, which I’ve been talking about on this blog most of the time, so it
is apparently circumstantially fine. We talked about him a bit to bring some balance
after all. Apparently, he met a blind person 😊. One thing he stated that stuck with me was “you
really take us out of our comfort zone.”
Should’ve gotten some clarification, but I get the sense he was
talking about all the folks like himself that simply encounter me on the street
with barely an exchange. Little that I said to him was particularly heavy-hitting
or said un-good-naturedly.
I told him “well, I try hard to make people comfortable all
the time.” That’s the truth. Kind of the job of many a minority to make those of
the normative substratum nice and comfy.
“You do man” he said simply.
Not sure why he said what he did then other than the honest
fact that the sight of me, perhaps interacting with me makes him a wee uncomfortable,
and he was facing down his discomforts by getting to know me a bit. Fine I
suppose, but why should it be my burden to cause discomfort? It doesn’t strike
me as my innate responsibility to assuage people of their hang-ups like that. Well,
that is…have I taken too many fish from the lake? I am told it is recommended
not to fish there.
