Sometimes I pretend to look at things because I feel sorry for the sighted people

 

My late friend Wes lost his eyesight in mid-life when a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting, not involving him, went into his brain. In restaurants, when a member of the wait starff would come take Wes' order, he'd turn his face toward the person holding the order pad and tell them what he wanted. Then the person would hold out their hand for Wes' menu, which was lying on the table, and wait for Wes to hand it up. "He can't see you," I would say. "Wes, can I grab your menu?"

Wes had been sighted all his life so he didn't look blind to others. His responses were those of a sighted person. I was born with optic-nerve issues, and I've had to learn to respond to sighted people in the way that makes them comfortable. Unlike Wes, who could perceive nothing visually, I can see a little out of my left eye, but I also have visual-processing errors -- images jump back and forth, colors shift, etc.  -- so looking at things is not the best way for me to figure out the world. 

But sighted people use their sight much more than any other sense and the thought of diminished or lost vision seems like a nightmare. It's not really that bad, except for dealing with the sighted people, haha. In particular, I have been trained to look right at the television screen, because if I don't, it distresses the other people in the room. When I look at a small television screen, I just see light patterns but if the screen is medium to large, I get a general sense that the people are in a sports car, a spooky old house, a cornfield on a summer afternoon. So when I watch television with other people, I am really just taking in about ten percent of the information by sight, and ninety percent by listening. If someone says "I know you're guilty, because I found THIS in your coat pocket?" I ask, "Is it the missing tube of lipstick?" and whoever I'm watching with tells me if it is or isn't the lipstick. Now, when I want to watch a favorite rflick, and really see it, I watch it on my computer and I sit close to the travel TV I've attached with an HDMI cable so it's a giant monitor. Then I can see people's facial expressions or a set of keys someone's dropped to the pavement. Usually, though, I'm watching movies and TV shows with my spouse or friends, and then I keep my face turned toward the glowing screen because if it makes the poor person with regular eyesight feel more at peace with the world, well it's a small price to pay, I suppose. Poor dears.

 Television, by the way, is not the only thing I pretend to look at. Since smartphones are everywhere, sweet people will pull up something ont heir screen and hold it out for me to "see." I use a vague "Ah" sound which I can adapt once the person makes it clear that I am looking at a prize squash from their garden, and not a vintage Frankenstein mask, a cute picture of a new grandbaby, or a meme with a political theme. I used to say "wow" but it was hard to shift it if it was a picture of the new floral vase they put near their late mother's headstone on Memorial Day. "Ah" is easier to turn into whatever would be an appropriate response. 

 Note:

Here is a link for the Audio Description Project, a website where you can search for movies and TV shows which offer audio description. They keep the list updated, which is awesome. 

 Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.

Well, there's the problem right there

 

The COVID vaccine is a godsend. I have had no concerns about it being safe. A sore arm and a day or two of feeling like I have mild flu? No problem. I have never thought that the government was either interested in injecting me with thought-control nano-bots or capable of carrying out such a hug secret conspiracy. But I did wait to get vaccinated because I am afraid -- not of the vaccine, but of people. 

 Suffice it to say that I have had a number of life experiences which have significantly lowered my personal level of truth in humankind. Over the years, I have pondered -- many times -- how these awful things have happened. I have felt, at times, as though I was approaching an answer but was off the mark. But at the moment I feel closer to zeroing in on the main issue as I've ever been.

 There are two patterns that happen in these difficult moments with people, especially people in authority. One is that I have trouble getting people to overrade their current belief system in order to perceive what is actually happening in real time. 

For instance, when I went to a chain drugstore's pharmacy department to get my first dose of the COVID vaccine, there was a young pharmacist who was instrumental in making it happen because the first pharmacist didn't know how to get my insurance infomration into the computer. So I wouldn't have gotten my shot if she hadn't helped. But then she asked me why I was just getting my first dose when everybody else was getting a booster and I told her that I have a lot of allergies and I'd been worried. 

 "It's better than having COVID, right?" she said, handing me my copy of the paperwork. I could tell this is what she'd said to dozens of people hesitant to get the injection, and that she was assuming that I meant I was afraid of the mild side effects. 

And I thought to myself, this is exactly why I didn't want to do this. You are dismissive of a real concern. I've had some scary moments after consuming or breathing in things that don't bother other people, like clarifiers in light beer, or Febreze, or artificial sweeteners. I'm fine, and then two or three minutes later, or an hour later, or six hours later, I can't blinking breathe.  

This is why, when I have to do difficult things with people in authority, it's good to have someone with me. My spouse came with me to the pharmacy this week; my good friend Sue came with me to the city bus office back in Ohio when they were giving me a hard time. When I have someone with me, sometimes people will listen if there are two of us. Also, with Deb by my side at the pharmacy, if the first pharmacist was chalking up any distress I might feel after the injection to me being a fraidy-cat, we could get the attention of another pharmacist, who would realize it was time to hunt up the ol' Epi-Pen. 

The other problem I've run into in the past so often that it colors my expectations is people substituting impulsive, simplistic action for a thought process with two or three necessary steps in it. Once they've glommed onto the Fast and Easy Answer, they will not let go of it and our interaction will be a power struggle until I give up or make almost superhuman effort to overcome the resistance. The situation I mentioned earlier involving the city bus system was like that. As a blind person, I was eligible to ride the bus for half-price but once every year or two, I had to make a trip downtown to verify that, though born blind and having been blind for fifty-something years, I was in fact STILL BLIND. The oversimplification issue in this case was that the clerk at the bus office believed that all blind people are totally blind, seeing nothing or a black screen or whatever sighted people think blindness is. But actually most blind people can see something -- lighter and darker areas, or vague shapes, or they can see in the center but not around the edges or they can see around the edges but not in the center. I can see, a bit blurrily, at the enter of my left eye. It's like rubbing a spot on a misty windshield to peer through while you're driving. 

So the woman at the desk and I went back and forth for five minutes because she had decided, based on her limited knowledge, that I was faking blindness to try and get a cut-rate bus pass. I had been able to find my way to the window and I could see her enough to be able to look at her face. So she insisted that I read some kind of piece of paper on the counter, and I said, "I can't, I'm blind." She said to read it. I said "I casn't, I'm blind." We did this for five minutes. If I hadn't been forced to come downtown and make my way over icy sidewalks to prove that a television evangelist hadn't cured me of my blindness, and if this clerk hadn't been so disrespectful to me, I might have stooped down so that the tip of my nose was practically touching the paper and attempted to read whatever the hell it was. But I had slid over icy sidewalks and this woman was awful to me, and I wouldn't degrade myself. Eventually another clerk came up and they processed my paperwork. My bus pass was pushed out at me through a mail flap because they thought I was insane (because at one point I laughed and I said that I hadn't know the Argument Clinic on "Monty Python" was real and the staff thought I was ranting about tropical snakes), but whatever.

 The title of this post is "Well, there's the problem right there," and that's a reference to my astrological chart, which has Pluto right up at the top, in the 10th house. The fastest possible summary of that is that I'm perceived as disruptive, even though I'm cooperating and polite and standing on the spot on the floor marked Stand Here. People in organized systems (or rather disorganized systems aspiring to be organized ones) assume I am here to wreak havoc with things as they are. And it's true that when I was younger, and I walked into insanity, I did used to say "This is insane. Why is this being done this way?" as I couldn't see that it was by design, or if not design, by willing cooperation. 

But with the years, I've learned that people who are actually suffering harm within a broken system will still fiercely defend the system and either deny the broken-ness or insist on its right to be broken and stay that way. I am not usually up to the challenge of THAT, so unless reaslly pushed hard and often, I will just go with things. Okay, to make this process happen you need me to rub ketchup into my hair and sing the national anthem while spinning around and around? Hand over the bottle of Heinz and I don't know all the words, and it's you that will mop the floor if I throw up but here I go. 

But I think I radiate a vibe of "this is nuts" and I don't know what to do about that because sometimes it is nuts. So I guess I'll just keep making my backup plans and hoping that maybe I'll get the one person within the crazy system who knows it's crazy and can point to the exit where the escape pods are parked.

 

 Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.

How Not To Become Insane, Part 1 -- time allotment for hard emotions

 My folks were insane. I don't mean like hey man, those wacky parents of mine. I mean they were literally not in touch with reality. My father had an "episode" his freshman year in college, and both my mother and father were stormy and pretty psychologically toxic in general, but after my youngest sister's death, over time my mother lost touch with reality and suffered from persecution dilemmas, which went from thinking the government was spying on her to the belief that we, the rest of the family, were poisoning her. "I know what you're doing," she'd say darkly. My father was always childish and unreasonable and an Aspergery engineer, but a few years after Mom went 'round the twist, Dad went from being a secret agnostic posing as an enthusiastic church-goer to placate my mother to believing that he was a modern-day religious authority along the lines of St. Paul. People on city buses were afraid of my father and changed seats if he sat down next to them. 

I hasten to add that none of this involves mood disorders. The world is -- um, intense -- and most of the people I know in real life have struggled with anxiety and depression. What I'm eager to head off is a mental state incongruent with some version of reality in which a reasonable number of people outside myself accept. How many? Well, for relgious Jews you need ten people to make a minyan and a jury of peers is a dozen people, so how about eleven? I need to keep my mind mostly-aligned with the minds of eleven people at a minimum. 

My middle sister, Eileen, once gloomily pronounced, during a rare long-distance phone conversation, "You know, we're both going to end up crazy too." And I said no we weren't. And Eileen said, well look at Mom and Dad. And I said, ah, but we can make different choices. Because they didn't end up as complete loons all at once. And probaly it was like falling down and slowly slipping down a gradual slope over a gritty gravelly surface, but my parents could have grabbed a tree branch, a boulder, each other. And instead, they kept up a steady daily regiment of poor mental health hygiene. 

Since I lived right there and I am an abservant person, I saw What Not To Do Unless You Want People On The Bus To Move Away From You. So I have started this blog series in which I give a few of how I've managed to remember what my name is and what your name is and am aware that I am not important enough for the government to spy on me and not rich enough for relatives to poison me to gain my assets and I have not been sent by God to tell others how to live. 

 Rule #1: I Do Not Cold-Brew Myself in Unhappy Thoughts and Feelings

 It was true of my mother and father that they both had such personal histories of pain that if they couldn't find something awful in their current existence to focus their thoughts on, they had merely to flip back a page or two in their mental scrapbooks and they'd find somethg soul-destroying where they could settle in until they were cuckoo. 

 When I am outraged or furious, I go to the kitchen and put the digital timer on for two minutes and as the numbers click down, I cool my overheated emotions so that my former 8.5 or 9 is now a 6. Okay, 6.5. Or 7. But cool enough that I can grab my keys and go out and walk off the rest during an unecessary run to the convenience store. 

For something bigger, like hopelessness or grief, I give myself half a day. I keep doing what I need to do, but in a slower and more distracted way, and I explore just how bad the pain is and how cruel Life is and all the mistakes I've made to bring myself to this Slough of Despair.  And then I look at the clock and at a defined time on the clock, I stop the mental gerbil wheel. I know I will still feel the emotions from time to time, but the crazy-making repetitive reconsiderations of what can't be altered half to stop. I have to go on from where I am and I need what's left of my poor mind to make life work. Yesterday I was very sad about things I can't control and I shut that off at 6:45 pm on the dot after about five hours of steady misery. Today I am daunted by All The Things I Must Do and I'm gonna give that a few minutes. Let's say eleven. And then that's enough of that because I've seen what happens, over time, to people who don't stut of the mental whirling which makes the brain trying to solve for an algebraic answer they'll never get because they don't have eough data to plug into their problem-solving mechanism.

  Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.

 

 

Good Memories, #1 -- That time a tiny boy sassed me while I was dressed as Severus Snape

I once got a little treasure trove of Harry Potter items as the winner of a costume contest at a bookstore. I think it might have been the roll-out of the Deathly Hallows book, and I think was was in 2007. My daughter dressed as Bellatrix LeStrange and I went as Snape. I'd cut a thrift-store graduation robe down the front with shears and then cut out two diagonal slits for my my arms. I had a dark Cher wig and I used the same shears to cut the wig so the hair was chin-length, and I used a Rite-Aid eyebrow pencil to darken my eyebrows. Oh, and we had a spooky Halloween ring from some old costume and I put that on. That was it. 

 I won because there weren't really any other people being villians, except for my daughter who looked pretty rather tnan villainous, though she did have a pretty good crazy-person laugh for being in middle school. Anyway, as part of the contest, the bookstore people asked me to come to the microphone and be Snape for the audience, so I just stood there and glowered at people and did an arm sweep, pointing at everyone. People said later I looked kind of scary and how did I do it, and I said I was being my father at the kitchen table when we kids were acting out. 

 I was about to leave the stage when a squeaky-voiced elfin boy, blond-haired and maybe seven years old, or eight and small for his age, said defiantly, "Snape you are the worst teacher at Hogwarts!!"

 And I said, "You will call me Professor Snape, and that will be five points taken for insolence."

 And this small boy, practically levitated with glee as he shouted "You can't take points, I'm a HUFFLEPUFF!"

 I mean, what prize package could take the place of that? Though I think I have a small square box with the model of a flying snitch in it, somewhere. . .

 

  Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.

Things and Stuff -- I kinda miss my more ambitious self

I've been sorting out a lot of items I've accumulated -- selling some off, giving some away, upcycling or recycling the rest. When I started this project, at first I was annoyed with myself for not being realistic about how much room we have in this small house and how much free time I really have each day.

 Over the past few weeks, I find my attitude toward myself is shifting, and I am more compassionate towards my younger self who wanted to try out everything and learn all kinds of new skills and revive old skills. 

 In that last category was sewing. I hated learning it in Home Ec but once I was out in the world, I got better skills and from time to time I've enjoyed making, repairing, and altering clothing. Not fancy things, for sure, but I could do simple projects.  

 About ten or twelve years ago, I got the bug to alter some clothes. An author I admire once said n an interview that when she started making some money, one of the things she did was to have some blouses altered. Clothing I buy off the rack could use a little adjustment; the shoulder seems need to be brought up some, and my pants legs often need hemming as I am long in the torso but have legs that are average length. So I got the idea to buy a budget-priced sewing machine and make some improvements to my wardrobe. My young-teenage daughter was taking a summer class in sewing so I thought, "Hey, we can work together on our machine skiulls!"

 Well, we couldn't. My daughter was fine with sewing a skirt but that was all she really wanted to do with summer sewing. And I found that my aging eyes made it difficult to thread the sewing machine. I could get the bobbin and then, with great effort, get the thread through all the loops and eyes till I pulled it through the needle. But then I dreaded needing to change thread colors or having the thread break. The window of time for me to sew comfortably was closed. I sold off the machine. 

 but I kept a couple of the patterns, thinking I might do some simple projects, like vests, by hand. And then I moved twice, and you know -- various things happened. Recently I sent ofrf one pattern book to a friend and any others I find will go to Goodwill. I'm not mad at the me that was unrealstic about taking on sewing projects; I understand why I still hoped I could do it. But I have plenty of clothes and can easily find replacments at the thrift store if something goes completely to pieces. The pandemic still goes on so I don't need a bunch of going-places clothes anyway.  And there are some advantages to being more realistic, like not having to sort out %^&$#%@& boxes of %(*!#@$%$# stuff!

 

  Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.

The Big Project, Part 1: Trying to help people understand other people better, through history

I have been working on a multimedia history-based  creative project, and it's a new way, I think, of channeling my feelings of not being understood. I so often feel that if people could see how my life has been, where I was, and what I experienced, my choices and viewpoint would make so much more sense to them.

\ This is something that I used to do with fiction, and it's a wonderfully flexible thing to be able to make up people and circumstances. If one writes histoorical fiction or speculative fiction or weird fiction, it's not even necessary to stay in one's own time and place. Alternative History has become a whole genre with lots of sebgenres within it. 

 But I am currently working on a project about a minor celebrity in the Big Band Era, someone who lives in a real house in a real city and who reads real newspapers about actual, factual history. This is a constant challenge, as I'm continuously surprised about how little I know about both American and world history as it affected everyday people. And I used to be a bit muddled about ration cards and the points system for food, but people of the time could not afford to be muddled about such details. A small moment of confusion might make for a bad dinner for the family, or no dinner at all. So I try to really understand how it really was for people of different races and classes and ages at a time period that goes from about twenty years to about five years before I was born. 

 And I'm woking with a disappearing history. Every day a building is knocked down, a library removes some old book from the shelves, a museum takes away an exhibit that no one ever visits and they put in a snack bar and a gift shop to support the remaining exhibits.  So if we want to get in touch with the past, we need to work a little harder. 

 I'm too young to remember the Korean War or President Kennedy's inauguration, and yet the history of my youth is vanishing. I know time is change and the old must make way for rthe new, but when every reference point disappears, how do I try to help people understand where I came from and why I relate to the world as I do? Generations before me were used to places and institutions being more permanent; you worked at a factory and your kids got job there when they were out of school, or you could point to an old brick building which is now filled with offices for the city, but which used to be your own primary school. It's all what Alvin Toffler, who wrote Future Shock, said would happen. 

For example, this is the only photo I can find anywhere of the radio station where my father worked for several years. 

 

 I could go into many, many boring details about how different the building looks from the days when Dad worked there. Raymond was a two-line road in those days, not a divided highway with a median strip so the building used to be much further back from the roadway, with a big rectangular parking lot in front. And that panel over the glass doors in front had red letters, each at least three feet high, which said W - G- E-E. And now not only are the letters not there, but I think the old wreck of a building has been razed. At least I have this photo to show that there onces was something there. The manager's office was to the left, the studio with a large glass viewing window, was right in front of you as you walked in, and the advertising sales staff worked in the office to the right. If you went past that there was a small studio to the right where radio commercials for local businesses were recorded in front of a cluster of floor mikes huddles in the corner.  

Younger people may feel more secure because their friends' phones hold pictures of videos of their shared experiences, and their parents have uploaded their graduation parties on Facebook. But maybe cloud storage will someday be so expensive that people's histories will be deleted with the click of a key. I don't know. But I do know that creating a portait of a character whose more active years were in the 1930s to the 1950s does something to help me cope with a past which feels like it's blowing up behind me as though I was a character in an action movie running toward the camera.

 Standard Blog Post Disclaimer:  If you feel that my viewpoint is askew, that my facts are doubtful, and/or that I don't know enough to be writing about whatever my chosen topic is, then that's what you think It is not necessary to tell me that, or imply it in comments. I'm not a spokesperson, a jornalist, a public official, or an influencer. Even if I'm off the mark, I doubt that anything too terrible is going to happen.