Wheels, woods, words
In this newsletter we have:
- words in the woods
- stories I've read recently that will give you a good cry; I didn't pick that theme on purpose but turns out that's the vibe
- a few little thoughts on wheelchairs and dance
- flowers, because it's summer!
Let's listen to some Hozier because omg I'm excited a new album is coming: "Would That I" (I borrowed a little bit of lyrics from this one for the title of a story that's coming out at some point - not obvious, the phrase exists on its own, but consider this your easter egg for "Set Alight" when it does drop.)
It has been a stressful spring and overall a difficult year. I always get an early-winter pain spike and this time it never really stopped. At the end of May, my worst slipped-rib flare in years got topped off by a respiratory infection - not Covid, but difficult enough to recover from to affirm my ongoing attempts to keep myself safe even as the world moves on. I am still sore, and there are some stressful upheavals going on in my medical team. I have been taking respite in garden work, and now as it gets too hot for transplanting and other digging I see hammock time in my future. And I sit at the pond with Mr Frog most mornings.
Words in the Woods
This Sunday, 11am, at Kingsland Bay State Park, I am reading poetry and talking about it with anyone who is interested, for Vermont Humanities' Words in the Woods series. It is free but advance registration is requested. Wheelchair-accessible, covered pavilion; masks required (yes, even being outdoors) and there is a PA system. For other access needs, please contact VT Humanities.
I haven't decided exactly what I will read yet, but I do know the arc I will follow, I think - looking at poems for the self, for a recipient, or for many, and windows and mirrors, and maybe some portals too. After I finish this newsletter I am going to gather up my pile of extant poems and do some practice reading to mostly-solidify things. I plan to read some older work, some newer work, and some unpublished pieces too. All very queer all very crip, I promise ;)
It's my first solo reading and my first public appearance since before the pandemic. I hope those of you who are local will be able to join us.
Reading List
I've read some real good ones lately. Lots of feelings in here!
- "Eleanora of the Bones" by Kat Howard: reverent hospitality for the dead, and its disruption. Broke my heart in all the best ways; there is tenderness here that survives.
- "On Planetary Palliative Care" by Thomas Ha: exactly what it says in the title. I'm tempted to pull the quote that hit me like a (deeply caring) punch to the gut but I think it is better for you to get there yourself. I bet you'll know when you find it. When I finished reading this story I didn't want to close the tab, just sit next to it for a while.
- "Strange Waters" by Samantha Mills: I read this one when it came out (five years ago?!) but had a craving for it recently and re-read. It is just as powerful as it was then. There's time travel by sailing ship, and its associated perils, and the question of how you know if and when you come home. What is home? When?
- "Little Gardens Everywhere" by Avra Margariti: a longer one that I also went back to recently, extremely relatable contemporary fantasy about escaping familial abuse, healing, giving back, and changelings. Chronic illness and trans rep too.
Some of these venues use content warnings and some do not. Here are my personal content notes - if you prefer not to go in with this knowledge, skip this paragraph. But it's here if you need it. Eleanora: disrespect of the dead, monotheistic supremacy, burning. Planetary: planetary crises of many kinds, mass death, euthanasia. Strange Waters: loss of parent/children, shipwreck. Gardens: child abuse/neglect, abduction, starvation.
Wheelchairs and Dance
Aerialist and amputee Erin Ball made a post about her relationship (personal and performative) with the classic hospital wheelchair. It happened to be posted on my eleven-year anniversary of my own first wheelchair. It got me thinking about the various levels of comfort and discomfort in performance, and about ideas around wheelchair dancers specifically. I find it a very different world than working (or moving in general) with crutches, more so than I expected before I got going with it; it didn't incorporate into my existing patterns in the same way, or so it seemed. (And there was a whole set of expectations hovering around it, more monolithic than for forearm crutches - ideas about who or what a wheelchair user is, or isn't, or should/shouldn't be, that crutches don't have enough userbase or visibility or something to generate.) My crutches felt like extensions of my being, expanding on my existing movement. My chair felt different.
But I think it is not so different in that regard - it does expand my existing experiences. What's different is what part of my embodiment it expands upon. My chair gives me rest. I started to realize this while working on A Singular They; I knew I needed to integrate my chair as part of my experience, and it emerged that the way to do that was for it to enter at the end. At the end of the show, when I am spent, and exhausted, I can greet my chair like a lover, cuddle it, and be lifted and held, stable and grounded to take in what I have made. It carries me into the end and the aftercare.
(Here is a clip of that part of the show, as filmed in 2020.)
But like Erin, I have found there are a lot of pressures and controversies about how we choose to relate to our chairs. I felt guilty about my use (and not-use!) of my chair for a long time. Every choice felt fraught, limiting in one direction or another, never quite genuine. I always felt like I was doing it wrong. Why couldn't I engage with more dynamic wheelchair choreography, the kind that generally gets seen as impressive, active, skillful, when I can do so with other apparatus? Why did it leave me feeling unsafe and unstable? Why did I feel less free in the studio than on the sidewalk? What kind of message does the empty chair send from the background, if I left it behind? Would people decide I was not disabled enough? Or too disabled? What if they saw me leave my chair? What if they didn't? What if they saw chair and crutches too? Or none of it? Which parts of myself could I show? What did it mean to be visible? What did it mean to be good enough? What did it mean to perform?
In reality, just like there are infinite gradations between "sometimes ambulatory" and "never ambulatory", "visible" and "invisible", there are infinite variations on "uses a chair". We understand - or at least most of us reading, hopefully - that using a chair isn't being "bound" to it. It's not a trap. ("Are you disabled enough? Prove it," sure is a trap, though.) But without a vocabulary for being held, I felt trapped. It seemed like I was faced with an impossible dichotomy of "passive" and "active". In reality, my relationship with my chair is more one of active support; that's what it amplifies. Energy conservation. Endurance. Alignment. Stillness.
That's ok. That's more than ok; it's what gives me the option for more movement of all kinds. It doesn't have to be anything else. It is enough. It may not always get interpreted this way in performance, but there's only so much of an audience's perception that artists can control, and we won't get better understanding of the myriad nuanced wheelchair relationships out there if we don't try to share them, now and then. I'm grateful to Erin for her vulnerability of this kind, especially in the public sphere. And I'm glad it got me thinking through my own enough to consciously make concrete my own experience.
And in the end, flowers
Spring blooms are transitioning to summer. Chives and prairie smoke are fading away.The roses are almost there, but not quite yet. Tree peony is over, bush peony is mid-way. Seedlings are planted out and being impatiently watched for growth. Lots and lots of clearing, weeding, digging to reclaim the long-neglected garden beds (and major invasive species remediation elsewhere) which so far is not photogenic, but give it a year or two or five and...!
Time to go read some poems where things grow.
Until next time,
Toby