The Potty Trapeze

Except ourselves, we have no other prayer--Vassar Miller, a cross over sleight of hand

Why I resist the violence necessary for divine grace relates to a failed devotional youth. I do not “praise the Lord” in the fashion of Pentatonix and their aspirational chorus, though their appearance under Steve Harvey’s televised presentation possibly initiated congestive heart failure, whatever Shawn’s concerted efforts on my behalf toward restoration. My armor crumbled against that transcendent lyricism, and yet resistance remains in the shards of equanimity: I cannot restore the faith that Mary, my mother’s sister, never left, not that she expresses her devout sensibilities on the edge, as I would if I tried again. We are quite past the war with God that we would find in the anti-clerical rebellion of Maldoror, and I spent a good portion of my young alienated heart throbs, their wall of separation, being apart from unity with an anthropomorphic creator. The rest of my lifespan is too short, yet this child Kaylee's convinced optimism and passionate invocation is enough to invite the will to perish. I never had that victory in the struggle for or against belief. As far as my circumstances are concerned, I have to work in very small increments until I can create the psychic wall between my necessary intimacy with this care giver, and the isolation a writer needs; and I can’t rebel. He stayed on rather than chancing a better position because I pouted, knowing what I could more easily manipulate to have my own way than not. Yet I do not have the mortal time left to “give it time,” in the common vernacular. You can count the five months as well as I, still in need of file conversion, particularly as I lost my link to Sean. He told me he would help me prior to Victoria’s ill repute gaining ground. Regardless of whether or not I manage to stay out of Inglis—no small miracle—my wick is at low burn. I’m certainly not going to tolerate tubular insertion into my digestive tract, as did my dialectical predecessor, Vassar Miller, who had a normal spastic lifespan.

The light touch I take with poetics is partly due to the vast aesthetics involved. There are too many poets, too many branches, and I am not known for the sterling discipline of a syllabus, but if I had enough access to her output, I'd clear the table for the critical analysis Vassar more than richly deserves. Her own hymnals embedded in her stanzas are as weighty as mine. I may reject the notion that a superhuman being posits humanity as its primary concern, but I take the ecumenical battle with the autonomic materialism of observable phenomena very seriously, as much as did Steven Sontag's mother. Like Jacob, I will not release the angel from my grip. My hip was dislocated long before the wrestling match ensued. That's Catholic atheism, as opposed to an agnostic cop out.

Verne Miller Bowel Obstruction

"It had begun early that morning when he stopped for gas.--Tom Pawlik, Vanish

The age of my technology makes all this more than a bit frustrating. Friday evening I was able to sync, and sampled an Amazon original, Absentia, which opens with Stana Katic in a water tank, or being punched, or stabbing a journalist in hospital, but this morning, despite cold reboots, I cannot get the hotspot to ping, wonder if it is the anti-virus software. I’d like to lose the USB plug in. It keeps my phone bill high, as the black man who has based his economic decisions on my assurances drags me by my legs in the morning like a fucking sack of turnips, helps me sit on a Jay cushion far too high while the Depends wadding gnaws my rectum for the hours I sit here.

When I lose a long time follower like Justin Murphy, the assistant professor kindred Catholic libertarian, yes, I wince, but caution myself I cannot ascribe reasons for my account removal to his feed. I was going to keep his on mine, may restore him later, but I give very little time to my followers, even failing to recall that Mikaela’s tag line is a far superior resume to mine, and half the time, I do not know what Justin is tweeting, and so I did not rise above the law of an eye for an eye as proscribed in Deuteronomy, and dropped Justin and his specious queries about weed and mass, even as he hit like for a couple of my responses, which seems inconsistent, a drop with continuing validation. Trust me, I know imitating Mikaela’s trained anchor pleasantness would improve my social media ratings, but is Mikaela being hauled off a generic hospital bed by a minority who failed in manufacturing at one corporate plant after another, from food processing to retail? I cannot overcome the cruelty of medical socialism, in my 57^th year, plagued by nightmares of being hauled away by force by a bevy of females similar to the scurrying bitches of VNA, to another institution for imbeciles, while the director puts his hand down my blouse, strangles me with a forcible kiss, as I protest repeatedly that I’ve been matriculated and educated, hauling myself awake much like Stana in her fast moving collision of a lead, it is still nonetheless a variation on my end game, which my readers assure themselves they are helpless to prevent. Going out with a time trigger bomb wired to this power chair, punishing my posture and all but strip mining me helpless, doesn’t present me with that much of a dilemma. March For Our Lives cannot de-weaponize the anguish of a life bowed over the screw.

Robert Byrd’s White Nigger Echo Chamber

"I have to go to Norristown--" The Mechanic

I am literally teasing matted locks of my greying and now wiry hair out of my scalp, ever slowly, and to my mortification, it looks like Gilda Radner's worst day of chemotherapy, the original anti-prime timer, and yet persisting, slowly, tackling the worst before I let a cosmologist do what they can with it, but as it is now, it perfectly symbolizes what 14 weeks of being at the mercy of Medicare has done to me, and this is what Paul Krugman champions, how long and punishing this has been, trying so hard to fend off the iron jaws of “means testing,” my case is now under review at County Assistance. No idea why, as my savings were depleted by 2014. I held off reapplying for Medicaid as long as I could, but knew I would need it (late in the day) for another power chair, but all of a sudden, I am “under review,” in order that the Commonwealth can ensure it protects itself. No one is willing to ensure I am protected from it. The dynamic nigger duo, Trudy and Debra, contracted with Liberty Health to at first pressure me to comply, and then Tom of Liberty Health did his damnest to talk me into signing myself away, but didn’t know his job, that Hahnemann University Hospital couldn’t put me away. I had no condition they could treat me for, but Hahnemann and the Visiting Nurses association, and Mike's bucket seat ingenuity, have virtually incapacitated me. Libertarian political philosophy, perhaps traditional conservatives, as well, may not have an answer for disability, dependence, and rationed care, but the system has some serious dystopian fissures. Maybe it will right itself after boomers have their mass die off, but I am not so sanguine about Western medicine’s  market correction. My father cannot afford to let his wife die in the most compassionate manner, my body has taken fourteen weeks of a prolapse break down, to the point even my arms are now affected by tremors, and these are my options:

a)      Hang on until I can manage a better power chair fitting and ditch hospital bed and hope for partial recovery

b)      Attempt suicide and hope I don’t fail

c)       Give up and allow Inglis House or equivalent facility to torture me into hospice

The Medicare medical equipment model failed me from 14 forward. The Trump Administration had nothing to do with it. I did not have a primary care doctor or practice that met my needs, and still don’t. The VNA is an outsource model staffed by nurses and other therapists near retirement. Mike and I are in agreement here. They know jack shit, this VNA, but private contraction failed too. Hiring Karina from Craigslist was a mistake, and utilizing Mr. Wheelchair broke my strength, my resilience, and the fucking liberal majority insisting I need an attendant has taken 98 days to put my Medicaid eligibility under review. I’m sure Krugman would blame austerity, but that would be too linear. I was in the beginning of needing to curtail and be cautious, in September 2017, but I wasn’t failing; Pennsylvania seems determined to rectify that. I should go lie down, as the grease monkey is coming early evening. Should you pray all goes well for the dowager’s scathing mouth? All I ever wanted was a career, to make something of myself, to have some freedom to achieve certain things, maybe have a good man, but no, 32 years ago, I moved into an accessible 811, and that anguish and rage permeates this one wee blogging platform. 

Activity As Tolerated

State Department denies Tillerson called Trump a 'moron' --Meghan Keneally for ABC News

If I was into this stiff upper lip business, like my former follower Mark, then I would just wade in with a High Castle analysis, in equal parts pernicious and praiseworthy of Rufus Sewell as John Smith, whose series son did the right thing, turning himself in to the American Reich to be destroyed due to his muscular dystrophy,  
I almost followed suit, with a different diagnosis, almost, and ultimately may not have a choice. My shins are emaciated, like my outmoded hardware. My family is at war over the matter, and the assholes from Adult Protection Services are salivating at the bit to put me away, in the Belmont Avenue hellhole, but a few things are holding me off. Control, the right to say no, and a race to save my published work. I can blame this vendor, but only in part. The power chair isn't bad, whether or not he overcharged me. It drives well. I remain conflicted about keeping it. Adapting to it is something else. I was over ridden, by fearsome matrons in their 60's over replacing my furnishings with a hospital bed, can't use that either, my father, his sister, Debra Horne and Trudy Richardson, favorite niggers to hate, annihilated my personal effects, and I am virtually choking to death to lose the 52 year old West African immigrant keeping me alive. She is Muslim, hyper and ignorant as much as caring. We clash daily. She is rough and hurts: only when these ruthless Marxists do their final assessment can I lose Sarrin, if I choose. We all have to fail biologically-- but I just keep taking too many punches, and my ligaments are starting to buckle. Holding my weight, which just eight weeks ago I could manage, is now being contested. Arthritis. But I still have some fight, my hair matted beyond rescue, at the moment.

I lost approximately 18 social media accounts since October, in my semi-anguished outcry, perhaps rightly. Old invalids moaning, after all. Credit Austin for staying with me, along with some others, but I am a bit sore at Mark Antro. He has the right to drop what accounts he pleases, but I'm his ally and thought we were friends, and I mean friends. I am too battle scarred to have a cougar interest in him, but I support him. He seemed puzzled by what he claimed were my 'attacks'. What attacks? For me an attack is telling Paul Krugman he is a fucking fascist at heart. That's an attack.

I always respected Mark and defended him against his critics; having tuned down my woe meter, however, I gained 3 or 4, including, inexplicably, Ed Rogers. Unless I am in error, I remember Ed's more active political currency. I respect his voice, and in the revolving door of preference, followed him earlier, having dropped Jennifer Rubin. I only 'unfollowed' Ed as a traffic issue, tweeted a positive on his Trump tabloid piece. Voila. I've no idea why I've been so graced, and mentioned it to my novelist poet colleagues with astonishment, as only the Trinity knows if the universe has a contracted byline left for a vulgar Italian in her spastic frailty. Is a Principal calling Trump a moron insubordination? If it's merely academic, I tweeted to mogul man "to get his fucking act together". Nothing doing. 

Kapax

Never despair. -- Easy enough for the Argentine

In recent days, my skills languishing because I allowed technical collapse to get ahead of me, I cried out to the former slum bishop of Buenos Aires as if I really did believe him as Santo Padre, while I cursed my mother's sister on Facebook with a level of blaspheme I usually reserve for racial animus . Few, if any of you. truly understand the despair of helplessness, and turn away, unless you yourself are in its thick: It isn't just age, it's the relentless cruelty against helplessness itself. I have been assaulted, physically, emotionally, since nine years of age, and no one looking at me knows how to square this. I coped, not always well, but coped, because I knew I did not need to depend on others as long as the wheelchair and body functioned together. This is, temporarily or not, gone. So I will face more abuse, and laugh cruelly. My choice, fine fellows, languish, or the determination of despair, not that berating myself over my Kevin Spacey miscue helps either.

I was sexually attracted to the star in his heyday, and in my rare twitter moments of being a shallow American, like the rest of social media's deplorable idiots, I gushed at his account "I love you!" It was a way of sleeping with my father, once removed.(Daddy and I are not on good terms, in real time.) I'd never tweet to Woods in that manner, and then Voila, we're in fagland again. I stopped following Spacey because House of Cards isn't relevant to our concerns, and still feel like a naive duped and sickened jackass, almost brazen enough to tweet a hint about killing perverts, which may have put me in Stone's territory, but didn't do it, as it may not long matter. The Usual Suspects did, if we dwell therein long enough, carve Spacey into a male amphibian cast that could be read as a parallel to Foster's on screen chameleons, but other roles, including American Beauty, made me see a heterosexual who emulated Jack Lemmon, and I feel betrayed.

My demented father's sister is the only one who has faith I'll rebuild. I don't, but another reason I hate in the life advocacy is because it diminishes the stature Spacey rightly earned for his twilight years. They media falsely baited Cary Grant in the same vein, but I never believed it, and his survivors threatened the tattles with a lawsuit. 

Hysteria

If I threaten the technician who did the hard drive extraction that isn't going to get me very far, but I'm going to have to call him about debugging, and either or sit here most of this morning trying  to convert my files. I cannot rebuild my publication history from scratch and  expect it not to cost me, as it did moving from Diamond Park to Riverside, as it did with each subsequent computer failure and upgrade; for the time being, my credit card company sailed in, doubling my limit, but this is scant comfort if my accomplishments for the last five years are simply erased. Fault it as you may, but writing has had to become my life. There is nothing else. The deceased Frank Versanti, (or Versante) claimed he was in love with me after he proposed, in monosyllabic fashion, but my interpretation of his enthusiasm was his lewdness was victorious, something which repulsed me, the gluttony written all over his face. His lust to have my asymmetrical breasts to grope wasn't my idea of healthy desire between two middle aged people settling for each other. As much as I tried to go through with it twelve years ago, I couldn't, at 42 to 43, settle for an ape, even if I never quite rescinded my claim on his obligation to me; hence, you'd figure, since I am so emotionally fragile, that I'd be on Amber's side over that of Woods, a fading personality who would take one look at me and imitate the nascent verbal losses of John Irving's Reagan era characters:

Psychic predicted #Democrat lawmaker would be ridiculed by millions. #Genius https://t.co/frxah1mRXu

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) September 22, 2017

Instead, I am with the hot headed old man, even rather sympathetic to his usurpation of youthful women. Lauren Southern isn't wrong, after all. The girl inside of us recognizes the snake in the grass. We even like it. My newfound appreciation of James and his caustic bitr is not the flush of a fan many times removed. He is a known quantity, whether or not my warped body could please him sexually. It is merely a clinical question. Could I satisfy a seventy year old man whose name would elevate my stature? I have no idea, but Woods is worth settling for, not an illiterate spic from the Bronx. 

As a technical matter, since I can now write, offline, though be it from scratch, for the moment, I am less fragile than before, but intend to be dead before the Commonwealth forces me into this fortress, despite the gooey social media policy on suicidal outcry. My whole life has amounted to failing against the grip of regimentation on my throat. I know what well balanced libertarians would say: stop feeling sorry, train yourself to keep the appropriate distance from nursing aide swine. Recognize you cannot cure your pain. Okay, but what do you know of 33 years of case management, aggressive senility, housing authority drywall?

Something Nice, for a change?

"Christ," uttered in exasperated dodged bullet fashion: I met a very together, hip, attractive, industrial engineer at the normative LOTR meet up, who seemed to enjoy my hyperbole which draws a line at macro aggression. You cannot kill them all. (homosexuals) I almost messaged the wrong account, thinking it was she, and I can only be thankful I hesitated. Whew. If I had been a normal birth, dodged my maternal grandfather's physiology, I might have been Sara. Wistful sniff. Her beau has a Dennis Quaid aura, and they kindly treated me to a glass of dry wine, as a round up. I have been having desperate visions of Inglis House with every tremor, and really needed a drink, so happily ran up a small tab. Normally I don't, and when she uttered "nursing home," I let it pass. What more can I say? I cannot ask what you would do, and I burned up my mileage in disability activism a long long time ago, to paraphrase American Pie. Adapt around the decline, or cut it short, stifled 33 years with Presbyterian Homes fuck wits, not the only libertarian sympathizer who needs a lawyer and another landlord, but to the extent this woman represents digital era futures, she empowered me, even wretched in my decline.

Fin, with Brisk

"You can't handle this." --Gabourey Sidibe

How little we actually have to say about eschatology at the end of the day. This always comes back to me, even as I can barely pull myself up on the dull sky blue mattress, as old as my anguish enveloping itself around me at Riverside, the beaten, rusted, Sears Roebuck mattress courtesy of my mother's judgment in buying me a metal daybed that rocked like a tin can. Grotesque little mattress, but I cannot just get another spring coil twin, or a piece of hospital bed foam whose width would collapse too low. It has to be right so that I can pivot on, then push up to pivot off, and this I can discuss, the barren aesthetics of government socialism, not that padre did any better, had I stayed in Ridley Park. He built steep wooden ramps, a plastic shower stall, had violent arguments with me over pubic hair on my washcloth, now he is nurse to his dead wife's nursing colleague, twenty times as sick as the puss gassing out of my colon, due to my respiratory issues, other secrets. I cannot keep up, but neither could an attendant; they'd walk, confronted with pudding, the stench of post-menopausal decline. Those of you who can walk might ask, if you dared, what the fuck do I want? You aren't functionally ambulatory. Everyone gets old. You got screwed, badly. You take too many things to heart.

Okay, but I never wanted this, in the sense that what limited fulfillment I might have had would have been from professional accomplishment, and now this is nearly beyond me, even if my poverty insists that I have to persevere. Fuck what Inglis House writes on its site. If I am legally forced into it than that is tantamount to the games the English aristocracy played, tossing any viable claimant to the throne in a dungeon like The Tower. The very minorities I so freely disparage have mental health breakdowns from working there, in significant numbers, and yet what can I say? Collegiate peers aren't kept. Most of my disabled peers aren't friends, and those who might have been remain faithful to the circumscribed segregated empowerment bullshit which is indeed bullshit when HUD is treated like the plague by private property owners. I can never knowingly trust another lesbian, and what Josie represents is an apostasy, unless religion is to become essentially meaningless. Maybe this is a bug, and it too shall pass, but my life was in no way lived with the compensations most whites expect. I'm destitute, with no people whom I even so much as like, or care to engage, around me, and the only way I can avoid the red death in the castle is to end it on my own terms. 

Marlon's Silent Harmonica

For a dozen years or so he had been feeling as if the vital fluid, the faculty of existing, [...] were ebbing.--Lampedusa, The Leopard, p228

Me being me, my early life ebbing birthday present to myself was to stream Last Tango in Paris, and already knowing so much about it in advance, was more or less diminished by Bertolucci's Truffaut affect, the meta dramatic technique of film within a film. There was an obvious homage to the older French director in Leaud's staginess as an intrepid enthusiast of capture, but shock, awe? Hardly. By today's standards, Schneidner's nascent coyness, coupled with that baby doll face, and Brando's shrewd magnetism, suggested more interesting motifs than Marie's body served in a candy dish. Method acting had engraved itself onto Brando by this point, encasing his defenses, locking away anything raw, except for the impetuosity of his violence, and curious compassion for Girotti's Marcel. Other than that, his performance was a tease, as in so much of his later work. Perhaps he let himself go after the butter scene, because this took what was left, so he exchanged keeping himself in shape for the effortless sating through eating well and over nourishing. Never really my type, I can still see, however, why women like Jeanne would succumb to his domineering ferocity in lieu of true loving congruence. Youth desires penetration of invulnerable pretenses, even if pivotal monologues do not quite penetrate inflammatory deafness, the constant companion to ringing ears. 

I still have time to run sections of the film again, review his weaving leg and what he was smirking to this poor girl, before he toyed with the small wind instrument, before this woman who decided to blame a simulated violation for the rest of her *ruined* life. Actors. What we put up with for aesthetics, inclusive of sudden democratic government totalitarianism for a hard look at power shifts between the sexes. As a woman myself, one whose contorted skeleton would be naked exploitation of a different texture, if substituted in the bathroom scene with Schneider's odd bush, with gradations like an inverted pyramid, I can attest that adventurism can lead to histrionic regret, but like so many doomed artists, even David Foster Wallace, my episodes of being chained to a spurious colon begins to give way to defeat: If I once believed myself matriculated, once made love to ambulatory men, now my grandfather's gastrointestinal turbulence is a psychological erosion of self worth. Rainy days are a bitch, elongated lung creping like a failed exercise in origami folding. Not a particularly good day person, I have been dragging since I woke. Maybe I'll rent it again later, or eat my usage last minute to recapture. Saturated as I am, near 60, with the best of the best, masterpieces, classics, believing I could have done better, myself, had I made better choices, I am glad of Bertolucci's tyranny in pursuit of this vision. Is Last Tango a great movie? I'd say intriguing, particularly with its interior strategies. We'd be a better species if we were this brave for the sake of creativity most of the time. Maybe I'll find a way to stop getting weaker and sicker, and get out, somehow, return to limited functionality; maybe I'll rationalize that atheists are wrong, that spirits retain identity, and that I can join Wallace in doomed ego limbo, or lose and die in Philadelphia's excuse for a wheelchair community. None of you know what to say. It is not one or two bad experiences which lead me to defy Medicaid Waiver services. Nine years have taught me that attendant care here at the bottom is legalized pimping; it does not change the fact my legs are going, my rectum is ready made greenhouse topsoil. After all the trauma I lived, my fail year has dawned, and I am, in all probability, telling Gail Sims, the newest assistant manager, that I'm not recertifying. I am also probably not going to find a pro bono champion between then and the initiation of eviction proceedings.

Pleurisy Lamps

darkness darkness, be my friend

Your favorite dowager never cared much for the British invasion, outside of Elton. I still love the music and lyrics of the pianist and Taupin. That cannot be excised. And I personally believe that Captain Fantastic is a masterpiece equal to any other musical genre, but regrettably, I have to close the valve on EJ's seductive fluidity. It is not so much the politics of culture wars. I knew the entertainer was homosexual when I was 13, on the ward, clinging to my sole pop idol. Today, at 54, I'm psychologically too brittle for the pathos of the duo's best work: "I used to know this old scarecrow," as an obese New Yorker I hung with, intermittently, remarked, is a ballad to determine movement toward cessation as well as catharsis. I can no longer let myself go, for the chords or the falsetto the geek "can no longer do." And I have to keep my distance not to get abusive with old faggy. Just the way it is. But The Stones? People who idolize Mick and Keith are sorry, shriveled souls. Scorsese and I would grimace at each other across our egos, if I had access to  him. We'd quarrel, Martin and I, which I acknowledge is idiosyncratic, given the shared heritage. He is a great artist, Martin, but I'd eviscerate him with pleasure. The Rolling Stones aren't even worth the effort of fending off my narcissism, my terror of losing control of my life. I took a NSAID, to clear some hay fever, and feel easier, avoiding my hard work despite looming deadlines. 
I will not, under any circumstances, go back to a home for cripples. I will use violence, and intense suffering, to avoid it, even if conservatives like Toomey feel that my intelligence will need to accept it, eventually, I will not, and instead force my death, whatever my sin against Catholicism in so doing. or even as a secular breach. Suicide is tough, difficult. Not even depression truly strives for it, within eroding positive love of life, but there are worse things, and institutions like Inglis House are vestiges of fascism we accept as medically necessary. However brutal. I do not truly know if such homes are legitimate forms of capitalism as Adam Smith envisioned the economic system, but it is one area where I reject it, ruthlessly. People are better off dead, whether or not they feel clinging to life under such regimented circumstances is their choice. Euthanasia can be equally as profitable, and though I mock bowl headed junkets like Brian Jones, illustrating my conservative streak against addiction's gleeful destruction, an overdose is a bright and shiny little glory against such suffering I case managed and lived as a little girl. If I have to incite a criminal act against certain cruel minorities lobbing hate crimes with impunity, so be it. I will not go back, and will die on my feet. I don't understand your bipedal rhythm, and cannot convey that lack to you: my dream persona races wind and leaves on wheels, or always looks up at her father, dead grandmother, fat slut of a mother's tortured soul. Intellectually, I get the mechanics, one foot in front of the other, the efficiency of two legs, but even on crutches, walking into class hoping that Jerry would note the distinction, walking is not part of my innate wiring. Perhaps that makes me diabolically clever, clever enough to be stunning, and within this, lies an embedded rationale for eugenics. Another day.

Abject Failure

The last time my computer battery went south, the Toshiba stopped running, despite the external charger. PhillyTechGuy said it shouldn't do that, but that is in fact what it did, and I am broke, and dirty, with renegade pests run amok, the power chair falling apart, lacking the funds to throw my laundry in the wash, even if I fold, and telephone welfare, the attendant I'd land would be someone as desperate as I am; it would not hold. SSI would give me about forty dollars, and it is stringent. Sell an article and I'm in overpayment territory, and when this becomes your entire life because your brain damage was just bad enough, what is the point? Where am I to find the resilience? Maintain my sanity? I am this close to cancelling my Medicare premium, rolling myself out the door, attempting to manufacture a fatal collision with a truck, which I do not deserve. My father's bypass surgery has put him on notice that it too is ready to fly south, and I am having headaches and seeing spots in front of my eyes; his sister, like my sister, is nearly out of her mind, and she thinks I have solutions to spend down. Throwing in the towel merely trebles anguish, and pathos is out of fashion these days. I would not wake to discover that Inglis House would gratify me. Regardless of what the state spent to refurbish the "wheelchair community," it was built not to be seen. It is a castle where human detritus is hidden away, drugged, mumbling incoherently on gurneys-- how am I to live like that, as opposed to an alternative marginally more palatable? Here lies spastic dowager, done in by bad intestines and deplorable domestic conditions, saying livid vicious things to bingo eyes and buck teeth in the sultry air of an unpleasant autumn. If this Jazzy in which I sit kicks, it becomes relatively moot, believing I can climb the fuck back out. I'd have to go away. I cannot fight medical rationing in an unsafe manual wheelchair for another 9 to 12 months because I cannot get past primary care physicians to get at the damn technology upgrades I need. Terms of service policies frown on "glorifying" negative behaviors invariably grinding down to the inevitable conclusion, but I do not see the dignity of enduring lifelong institutional nightmares, drugged into oblivion for the sake of unskilled labor. They left my right hip dislocated, the fucking crippled children surgeons, after destroying what control I had, cutting hamstrings, fusing feet bones, only to hit middle age arthritis just as ambulatory individuals do; barring a miracle, I can't hold the line that much longer, and I'd rather go down much as General Gordon did in his beloved Sudan, doomed in my own Alamo, because I fled to this city, obstinate ass wipe, cratered by her own expectations. The roulette wheel of our elected officials changes nothing of the obscenity of the welfare state, breaking me, breaking your back as well. Parents never see these consequences. 

It Isn't Simply Trudy Richardson's Dissembling Threats

As a practical matter, I have little idea how to avoid Inglis House and all the implications such regimentation entails. People lose more than freedom in a wheelchair community like it. They lose the right to say no, the right to decline medical torture, like forcible cathereterization, which I'd decline, regardless of chronic incontinence. It takes wealth to avoid such a fate, a huge degree of resources. Few have it, and if Presby starts legal proceedings against me for non-compliance with waiver services, I may be able to give notice and vacate myself, but I'm not going to get very far without sympathizers who have the willingness to buck the system and let me age on my own terms. In this day and age, that's pie in the sky.

No one likes nursing homes, but Inglis is a mad house reminiscent of Anne Sullivan's descriptions to Helen Keller's father, even if the rats are few and far between. The odor of diseased human waste overwhelms visitors, which is why few families stay involved with Inglis's wards, and rely on torturing peers like me to roll the front lines, when there is space enough between the gurneys in the hallways, the maddening number of power chairs outside patient rooms. Mechanics I knew from my own service needs could barely walk through the clutter, and as prejudiced as I claim to be, you certainly cannot care to contemplate what this does to the black paraprofessionals who have to maintain these bodies, day in, day out. They quit, try to deal with bitches like me, or more passive savants on the attendant care model, or use their salaries to go through nursing school to keep eating it, many of them not particularly good at their jobs, indifferent, much like my sister. My family would say I'm terrorized by the prospect. Yes, but this is due to Presby's methods, especially under Trudy's jurisdiction. She has been threatening me since she was a new hire, and her latest tactic was to stress fuck my dying aunt. I'm supposed to just let this roll off me and give it the finger? This is why I'm leaving. Going from point A to point B, with scant pennies.
What happens after that, I cannot say, but my literary tricks, allowing for satirical disruption, sans Bulgakov, are few. Far between. 

Back Again Itinery

I had to reboot over the audio, and have nothing to post really, my legs thick, losing water weight at the end of summer, pondering my fate as I close my fifty fourth year. My father's house cleaner is due to visit to "assess" my unit, and if you want the truth, fuck that, though she sounds totally harmless. I want to leave where I live, despite everything, even the probability that I'm signing my death warrant, and I'm going to ask this woman if she'll help me pack, whatever she assesses, with my aunt and her shrieking ugliness. I'm so sick of people, spinning like weather vanes. My entire family knows full well they hate public housing, but because I'm a cripple, oh, it's good enough for me. I'm tired of Marie. I'm tired of my dead mother's voice, telling me to be reasonable, that I'd love it here, that they give concerts. I'm tired of rationales, trying to defy my own biology, even my lack of social media popularity. I'm infected, indeed, placate twitter with sugared civility, sis a seethe, not that the connections are useless, and some of the disability account holders, perhaps they feel sorry, maybe believing I'd be happier in Sydney, or Estonia. Helpific, last I checked, follows me, but again, what would I do as an emigre in the Baltic states? I logged onto their website, typed a profile, and with no prompts required, feel like a damn fool. I like them though, would undoubtedly be happier with no Africans in sight-- aren't I awful, simply incorrigible? What would they call me? väike fašistlik? How would I get there, with what, especially with Putin's eminent domain issues? Slavs. Damn me if I comprehend their mindset, personality cults, collective dissidents, as it were. I may not get the Menippean aspects of Bulgakov entirely. He is a bit of a puzzle, but even the good doctor knew, how and where we live is rooted in a great deal of vanity and cruelty, and I'd raze every damn government housing authority to rubble if I had the power, which begs the question of what I'd do next, even if I did not create this account to dismantle policies, or even to write about remaining bedridden for the remainder of my life in this tough Southern European body as opposed to deciding it's time. I've scaled back on that discussion, despite recent events. I don't believe in it, never did, but the alternatives in my case are fairly dire, unless, and the unless is what's lacking. People I actually like who would dare not to leave me at the mercy of punishing indigence, and I know it's a lot to ask of those appropriate to my station.

Workplace Grievance Assailants

"I almost stabbed the masseuse." --  LaPaglia, Australian usurper 

Satoshi Uematsu is not such an anomaly as mothers with children would like to believe, which is why they should pay attention to the lessons Fuminori has to teach, but more than that; the mentally ill mirror the times around them, as LaPaglia himself may remember from one of his signature dialogues on schizophrenics.

The #knifeattack in Japan was at disability center no surprise: all hate us

— Joanne M Marinelli (@Jozannyme) July 25, 2016

Uematsu may be a rarity in terms of unrest on Japanese soil itself, but his aggression reflects what happens in institutional paradigms. Decentralized or not, ugly situations occur, cut across cultural differences, cut across ethnicity. Mammals seem basically programmed to take advantage of injury, illness, weakness, or other forms of distress. We accept it, even practice it, if the Danes are any indication, when we pretend to absent the human animal from land mass ecosystems, something almost impossible in the 21st century. When it comes to ourselves, that is another matter entirely. While a complex series like The Churchmen is not immune to conflicts of doctrine juxtaposed against material violence, within the seminary itself we do not see knife fights, but HMS as it existed in the 70's under Dr. Chance, who had his own deity complex issues despite his attempt to dissuade second generation Romans against aggressive surgeries, was home to violence with blades in recreation rooms. This writer lived with what the good orthopedist's business represented for three years, before Shriner's took over and destroyed my body for another surgeon's career. Only the records of Home of the Merciful Savior exist, but as bad as it was, next to this the home, with its dark granite facing, was club med. Chance had a private residence across the walk, and it was like his private fiefdom. LRI is in some ways fundamentally worse, as the collusion and fraud of Erik von Schmetterling, Cassie James, and Linda Anthony represent. I shouldn't have to live with it, harassed by a so called assistant whose uncouth behavior makes Joe  Caesar's progenitor.

Corporate Accommodation, Early onset

....There are none so easily carried away as those who are without passion. Turgenev

My chair was taking too long to finish charging yesterday for me to drive to an AT&T outlet for assistance, but as I managed to actually fall asleep last evening, I may make it this afternoon, and if wealthy enough, I'd offer Ma Bell's customer service a buffet. How many spastic trolls are there who get away with venting their criminal imagination using their own victimization? My deeper point about Levora, is that the Catholic nun misread the situation. Why push a dying young woman to get an equivalency diploma without teaching her about responsible behavior? 

Many women do sexually irresponsible things, and I've glided over some of my follies, for which I am now too weary, but one thing drilled into my Fallopian tubes was the command "Do not get pregnant!" And I never did. Cerebral palsy is not even degenerative, and yet my womb was forbidden to nourish a fertile embryo. Carriers, like Levora, who know they're carriers of horrific degenerative diseases should remain sterile. Too much trauma already afflicts us as it is. My anxiety may be a prelude to early senility. Marie [the aunt] reads it in me just as I've read it in her since my mother's passing, and I drink a pot of coffee approximately every twelve hours.

Why not continue to play Russian roulette with psychotropic medications?

Three reasons: I have observed how many mentally ill people nearly die on them, including my mother. A proscribing psychiatrist made her lithium dosage too high, and my mother had to be hospitalized for it a few years before she died. Ditto what I was exposed to at Matrix. Mental and physical illness are not distinct subsets, trust me there, and many seriously delusional patients get that way for physiological reasons, and not simply due to depression or traumatic stress.

Major third reason: Proscribing therapists do not know how to treat those of us with brain lesions. They get it wrong and we overdose into seizures. One of my consumers, Cheryl Ward, had cp about to the degree Linda Dezenski does, but her anxiety was much more pronounced than mine. She died here in the building at the sweet age of 24 because she took the wrong combination of script. In my estimation, non-terminal clinical euthanasia is preferable, even if ideation is occasionally an impetus behind it. Home of the Merciful Savior was bad enough as a childhood experience. Inglis House, however clean its linoleum floors are kept, has the overwhelming stench of human waste concentrated in it, so why do this to ourselves? 

When I selected Rudin in my Turgenev collection, I had no idea it was the author's first novel. My sympathies, being Jamesian, are omnipresent; the titular character is a vain windbag, stuck in time.

I don't have the courage to email Jerry and apologize to him for mangling our three semesters with each other in my posts, nor is it necessary. I sacrificed my chill factor in 2007 to contact him for the sake of his legacy. More than that is treacherous, but in a concession to his intellectual superiority, it wasn't his duty to give me a reality check about life as a quadriplegic, in academia, or out of it, in the intermingling of obsession, and a little hatred in the affection. Chair is done. I'm off, perhaps to ask for a prototype Apple to smash as an outlet, grinning, in resignation.

I know I make things harder than they have to be; I know I'm losing, dwindling away out of time, but it remains equally true I've sat here in the carnage of my career too long, and failed to utilize my savings within the appropriate setting to get away from what the independent living movement did to me; I live with my past dying in front of my eyes, and at times it is unbearable.

Pastoral Interference and the Limits of Compassion

"Does the country kid still have his soul?"-- Bernie Taupin, conversion man

Being an atheist Catholic is in part a contradiction in terms, just as going from a bleeding heart progressive because I was woefully besotted with an air force pilot turned post-modern Shakespearean to the angry anarchist speaks volumes, but one of my first cases which started to cauterize my empathy was that of my long ago neighbor, Levora. A Catholic nun who was socially active in visiting Diamond Park pressured me to pressure the girl to get her GED, and I understood the sister's argument; I befriended my neighbor (and hear my 3 or 4 or 5 minority followers say "Aw," or smile). However, the problem with the Sister's argument, who might have been a case manager, no habit,  was Levora had Huntington's Disease, and I watched this young woman waste away before my eyes. Linda Dezenski, when I still worked for her, told me not to feel guilty as I watched Levora dying in my fabled nightmare, and we see how well I obey the dictums of spastic Jewish sociopaths. Before I met her entire afflicted family, Levora start crying during our tutoring sessions. "It's too hard," and with that, I left her alone, and watched her get pregnant and met her brother and her nieces and nephews, all carrying the gene, and while I was not cognitively in the space I am now as I enter the waning years of my independence, Levora's situation allowed me to realize why the far right and genocide exists. The hell of her physical existence and destitution has haunted me all these years, the brutality of evolution a visceral agony staring me in the face, a fortunate cripple some of you might pity in turn, and religious charity has no solution, no absolution to offer the demonizing pain the inner city scarred on me, and never shall.

She and her brother should have been prevented from procreating for the sake of public health, however this may go against a liberal society that doesn't police consensual sexual activity. That is what the Catholic nun should have worked on, sexual restraint in inner city economics. 

As for Levora, she always had a smile, grateful for an ice chip, but watching her die made my case for voluntary euthanasia, the dignity of controlling the end of life over the brutal indignity of biology. The Catholic Church is wrong about the level of humility those in constant Third World conditions can absorb. Not that materialism shouldn't be critiqued, but striving for ambition, ownership, the dignity of work, these provide self-esteem. If the Curia wants my favoritism, it might support specially designated cities for the LBGT community, since we separate along those lines on a defacto basis.

Wouldn't it be fun with me in charge? Ha.

No Phone, Next Crisis

My battery on the Apple 5c went fritz. It never stops, does it? I think my time with Liberty on the Rocks is done, not that a beer doesn't ease my ligament pain temporarily, but the wind gets sucked out of me, and if I surrender, this is what will happen: I will get inducted into Inglis House, surrender my bodily functions to minority certified nursing assistants, forced on catheters with plastic pantie underliners, have most of my every hour regulated, drugged eventually if not immediately for aggression. Whatever the renovations to the fortress on Belmont, the sterility of the little grey rooms haven't changed, the helplessly sick just staring at mounted television sets, and this is my indigent aging alternative, since the law forbids that I can put myself to sleep. What would you tell me, stop thinking about it and soldier on, shrinking and feeling discouraged? 

My recent exchange with Swarthmore made me feel trivial, insubstantial, despite the fact that the position was something I once did. What could I have submitted without even so much as a passing familiarity with The Bulletin? I have my mildly political topical op ed, a handful of medical bylines, conceded deflation in my cover letter, and had absolutely no response to guide me on samples, soldier on. I bothered Swarthmore's Human Resources department, and they've flagged me because I want to visit the campus, make contact, create another opportunity, and right now, it's impossible to do, even with a tone deaf refusal to take no for an answer.

I filed a damaged phone claim, have an appointment tomorrow, checked Google, powerless despite the fact I've remained passive with the old telecommunications giant. I suppose we'll see what happens. Cheaper device, cheaper plan. I'm worn out, simply worn out, and know I'm not the only one in a perpetual credit crisis.

Disaster, but the moths are tenacious

I set the phone alarm and heard it buzzing, but I sat up at six and took a pass on The Cafe and the computer programmers and working class brawn, missed Patterson Inc because I did not wait and when I stood at the bar the pain was unbearable, all from standard summer humidity, and I spent little over an hour slipping but miraculously not landing on the tile in my own waste, and in desperation drove under the shower head, in this horrible power chair, and neither CBS nor anyone else airs "The Silence of the Cicadas" as a free viewing, and I mope, still cleaning up in the bathroom, not knowing where to turn. Surrender?

Can you contemplate what moving to Inglis House entails at my age? What they will force upon me? I've dealt with the brutality of institutional regimes since I was five years old, and now I have to go back? I would not survive the constraints the system would force upon me, whether or not my dead mother's voice insists I'd enjoy "concerts". In small groups I'm fine. Concerts? Human animals flocking together for song or sports leads to altercations.

Driving under the shower worked, in small increments. I need a live in companion, but not here, and have to decide whether I fight the exterminator in the morning or try the pity violin. Libertarian philosophy presupposes the actual ability to resist, but what the hell am I going to do if Presbyterian Homes seeks state authorization to put me away? Sure, I give my notice, but then access to the power grid goes primal, and an accessible bathroom becomes a four star hotel. I haven't given up on Liberty on the Rocks. I like them, for the sheer incongruity of the group. The brawn mingling with the yuppies, the soft with the hard, but finding friends to give me a hug and support outside of the merciless autocracy destroying us all? That takes doing, evidently.

Without Place

I am giving my notice on Friday, and as of a 4/21 edit, I have not yet, .dragging it out simply through my biological inertia. I telephoned all there is to telephone for the moment, but if anyone can spare me a space, a blanket, temporary lodging-- I doubt I'll beat the clock. I doubt I'll survive, but I simply cannot continue with the duress the system insists on imposing on me as a condition of my upkeep. Dennis O'Brien is undoubtedly busy. Perhaps I'll call his office tomorrow. 

I need to go. If you can help, let me know. This BDT site is where the policy coordinator I met at Sims meeting works. His name was Graham and he had a nice car, dialed his mother by accident on his OS, and I sat there in stained clothing with a noticeably bad occlusion to my underbite, my obviously traumatized demeanor an unspoken crime, in and of itself. No one sees my before and after, only the end result, and I cannot live in this building anymore, Inglis House as an alternative is tantamount to prolonged euthanasia, and this represents my life after 50.

The welfare state is what it is, until it stagnates and collapses under pressure.

Presumptive Rebuttal

"The middle class counts the most," Larry Summers

I feel in the back of my mind that at least part of Medium's Daily Digest feed is a rebuttal to my inflammatory Blogger stance. It is undoubtedly not the case, but I never claimed not to be flawed, and as a flawed imp, I am always arguing, need to be argued back to. Altucher's piece is nicely self-effacing without being an unforgiving turn off, but if I applied his logic to my current plight, I go back to LIFE WITH NURSING AIDE FOLLIES (I could write a fucking book, and half my twitter kindle promotionists say "that's the ticket!") But how can I work when my charming minority warders assault me with one after another civil servant? In 2007, when Debra Horne surrounded me with the assessment team utilized by Presbyterian Homes, my uncle had just returned my battered P-200 I am sitting in now. I offered to give up the cats, but fresh from Eddy's gluttony, there was no way in hell I was about to go through another 50 browbeaten women. 

"We don't want you to give up the cats." That is a racist response, and in the back of her mind, Debra Horne knows it. If Riverside Presbyterian has made me venomous, it has also changed Debra Horne from her first days here in a denim smock with matching pumps. Back then, she looked like she had fallen off something, and was uncertain. We've watched each other, two ugly women, alter within our respective casements, not for the better. She wears a hard, astonished look, with that vomiting orange hair dye women of her type don, because we still share the neural responses to a decorative bird's nest. And I, in turn, have been engraved with stress, and damaged my already damaged jaw line accordingly. Last week, she stood behind the kids from Department of Health and Human Services taking notes while I challenged her about my 22 years here. The boys were bigots too, but kids. What's wrong with a Bedlam like Inglis House, indeed. How any sane person can ask that is beyond me. It is not so much a victory or vindication against Presby. It is a corporate motherfucker and the right wing with whom I have ideologically aligned probably own stock, if reading me assume to themselves I'll have to give it up sooner than later-- this is what Altucher's least resistance, applied to me, would mean, and it will be over my dead body.

Hence my species pessimism.