Damage Differential

The pubs and eateries along my radius on Walnut Street have a certain old city charm, and the Cafe at 2011 can boast a certain picturesque insularity, this wounded warrior gratified, that, last spring, the burly Irish got me over the innocuous step, onto the portable ramp, and I set eyes on the Black Adder for the first time, sort of indicting myself for a now pronounced anti-social aura that radiates from me, as I asked him if I could "stay". His response: All are welcome, and while I am not quite as committed an ideologue as he, I've become emotionally invested in the Liberty on the Rocks Meet Up.

But I'm self-conscious in terms of my physical dilapidation. This is  not to convey I was ever great at flaunting my femininity through dressing. Orthopedic surgery made my flexed contortions worse even in youth, but I have graduated, since I wiped out my savings in 2013,  toward a more thorough deterioration. I look like someone now living off the street, except when the will that has kept me alive resurges. Episodic breakthroughs.

I'm also tired of sitting outside, forcing my boys (whoa!) to sit with me on the sidewalk tables when they'd rather congregate in the bar. It is chilly now, and even if the thick set Irish firefighters were so inclined to haul the Jazzy Quantum up the plank, I cannot risk a circuitry breakdown as a result. My Quickie P-200 was already battered that spring, and was off balance, falling apart, so I cannot assume a gratifying struggle to enter the Cafe actually shorted it. I live in the power chair, and no model is that durable, but the Quantum is basically a battery and a plastic caster wheel casing, metal base, and I hate the fucking thing, know it cannot be subjected to punishment. If I attend, therefore, I will be consigned to waving at the guys through the window, feeling alienated as a result, irritated with my hearing loss--but the group matters to me. I've developed an emotional attachment to center city's marzipan radicalism. What to do?

I no longer support the Americans With Disabilities Act. It is a useless statue if properly scrutinized, and for every activist victory, there is regulatory pushback. The owner of the Cafe should not have to modify his establishment for a former middle class cripple on the skids, nearly deranged from the banquet of human suffering exposed and experienced in the Quaker geography of Southeastern Pennsylvania; Black Adder cannot be blamed for picking a location not modified for access, and it may be I am not perceived the way I imagine. It is equally true that I cannot fully engage if the clique has to be charitable by making a point of coming to me. They are there to mildly booze and share a meal while discussing politics. I am there to constrain my inner Mussolini from engaging in a shoot out with federal agents. Maybe one or two of them could hook me on downers, but it is not particularly a soluble issue. If Tom Reid were to pop up, and remember our off campus watering hole called Walios, he'd look at that continuum, probably shocked to compare me as the undergraduate he knew then, turning herself a corkscrew for Tassoni, hanging on Jerry McGuire's sleeve, to the ravaged grand dame that a non-violent software developer, with some additional assistance from Tony Stiles, has to reign in. A handful of local anarchists, conservatives, proselytizers, to these I've attached such internalized importance, in the waning days of functionality. A real diehard libertarian would probably say that the doctors kept you alive as a body to be exploited, and that is just the way it is. Liberals may have felt it was their duty to lift up your potential toward inclusion, and your failure is on your own head for giving the socialist paradigm the finger.

The real truth of the matter lies in self-hatred, what I am, the hell I've seen, like the surgeon detective in Anno 1790, and that too, is insoluble. Quadriplegia is a bitch. I've lived it over a half century, and want to stop living it now, and in disability culture, that is heresy, grumbling. If I want to attend, then attend already. Sigh.

The Complexity of Alain Delon's Syntax

We need to rise up and defend Paris from the barbarians so that I can finish my thesis before I stroke out. I have absolutely no inclination to connect to Alain Delon in any fashion whatsoever, but his work as the suave European mediating between colonial outgrowth and native autonomy, or as a French resistance fighter during the studio controlled footage in the postwar years, and Riva's correspondences to Gene Hackman in the aftermath of the Nixon administration is almost enough to drive me crazy, but yes, it is relevant, my brain throbbing like Leonardo's, so, in carpe diem fashion I'll forgive the dead pan line readings of the cast, with the exception of Perrin, who understands Xavier's psychology, for the sake of the trope. On one level the series simply toys with Faulkner's oft  quoted adage, "The past is never the past." But there is more to it, consciously or otherwise. Regardless of national identity and regardless of ethnicity and impairment, time does chase us all. We can cheat it, like Armin Mueller-Stahl, who can be an alluring character actor, appealing to a woman's fulfillment quotient in his well preserved age, but the very rigor he displays as an old man is a reminder of rigor mortis. Delon's Riva is conscious of this as well. The characters that people this world are shades in a new mechanized paramilitary age, which is just as complicit as the Mafia (the Loggia's) might have been with Fascist Europe of yore. Maxime, as the heir to criminal spoils, is correct when he dresses down Riva about the new conglomerate world order. The rackets have shifted gears, with legalese, high interest rates, term insurance, floating mortgages bundled for Korean investors, but the guy in Florida getting foreclosed on can still utilize weapons technology. Unfortunately, the video of Slager doesn't outrage me, but I've stipulated why often enough, and will choose to minimize any abuse host reportings for the interval, and in fact may never bring it up again, but even if the left defangs ineffective policing, it will never entirely unravel the contradictions between individual self-worth and the analytics that go into aggregate life expectancy and the legal worth of any one human body, which varies according to tort, nationality, region, country, profession, caste; I'll concede cowardice, but bad actors abound, including this one.

I received, and accepted, an invitation to The Cafe, and if I make it, in modestly presentable fashion, I will be, literally, an outsider. Perhaps a compassionate male will offer to lift whichever power chair I take over the stoop, assuming I can navigate the interior. I doubt it, but just as with the Rosenbach in 2013, I am engaging in misplaced faith of association as a possible solution in winter's discontent. We'll see what happens.