My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I formulate infinity stored deep inside of me…
Archive for December 20th, 2012

Tattoo #67

December 20th, 2012 | Category: Life,Tattoos
Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, here we are, tattoo sixty-seven, I currently have no more after this one. Don’t worry, sixty-eight is totally coming in the next few days. Still, right now, sixty-seven is the newest.

It’s a bee! Why a bee? Why NOT a bee…?

There’s one just like it floating around somewhere else.

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Tattoo #66

December 20th, 2012 | Category: Life,Opinions,Tattoos,Thoughts on Music
Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this is another Aimee Mann tattoo, lyrics from her song, Long Shot, which is off of one of her earlier records, I’m With Stupid.

To me, the song’s about this relationship that just goes bad over and over and over again. The one person keeps trying to end it for lots of reasons, solid reasons. Right? Yes, sure. Not really, though. All those reasons that seemed so solid just end up being, “please love me more.” Love isn’t rational, it’s just something you feel, and want, no matter the reasons for or against it.

Anyway, the tattoo felt appropriate.

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Tattoo #65

December 20th, 2012 | Category: Life,Opinions,Tattoos,Thoughts on Music,Thoughts on Writing
Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo is from a PJ Harvey song, The Soldier, off of a record she created with John Parish, A Man a Woman Walked By.

I really like The Soldier because she takes the incoherent, yet vivid nature of a nightmare, and makes it coherent. Few writers can do this well, I’m talking song writers, fiction writers, any sort of writer. Dreams, and especially nightmares, are just not easy to put to words. You want to keep it wispy, surreal, vivid, yet something readable and compelling.

The song is about a soldier who has seen horrible things, done horrible things, is damaged, completely fucked up by these experiences, and at the end of everything just wants to go home. That’s how the last year felt, the last few years felt, leading up to this tattoo. I just want to take all my damage, everything I’ve made so external, I want to take it all and go home,

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Changing tropes

December 20th, 2012 | Category: Life,Opinions

Here’s my problem with the “Technology Made Me a Real Boy!” trope.

Society pretty much sees us as lamps, expectations for the disabled are REALLY low. We’re not automatically expected to go off to school, get straight A’s, fall in love, get married, everything that was totally automatically expected of my brother. I was never told I COULDN’T do these things, but I was never pushed toward them, plans were never made, nothing was expected.. The first time I told my mom, “I met this girl online, I have a date tonight,” she had no NO IDEA what to say, or do, or even think. I just went and she didn’t try to stop me. The lack of expectation never bothered me, it actually pushed me, but it definitely bothers many.

I had this one disabled friend, Stuart, his family sheltered and coddled him, told him he could do ANYTHING, just like anyone else. He had a closet full of tennis shoes, just so he could look “normal.” The problem was, he was so sheltered, and protected, and told “YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, YOU’RE NORMAL!” that when he ran into a normal road-block, when he couldn’t ride the rides on a field-trip to Busch Gardens, or when it finally got too hard to hold a pencil, he’d lose it. He felt how not normal he was perceived by society. It wasn’t, “Maybe a few of these rides should be accessible” or “Maybe technology could just replace my pencil,” it was, “Oh God, I am so not normal!” In general, to his middle-school teachers and peers, he was just the “disabled kid,” and in turn, that’s all he was to himself until he got the flu that killed him.

So, we have two problems. Society expects nothing from the disabled, and the disabled feel inherently less than, and when parents over-compensate, that feeling of being less than only comes on harder, because after all, nobody with SMA will ever drive a car.

I don’t like the low expectations, on both levels.

I want to see society shift toward, “Sure, you’re different, but that only means you’ll need technology, you’ll need personal assistants to have the same experiences as anybody else. You’ll have the experiences, you’ll just get there differently. You’re not a lamp.”

I don’t want to see disabled people saying, “I felt like a lamp, I was absolutely nothing until I got X device. Thank you! Thank you for making me a real person.”

The trope should be, “People often treated me like a lamp, people who never took the time to try to communicate with me. I was seen as furniture, but I’m not, I just had all these thoughts, feelings, that had no easy way out of my head. Now that I have X device, people can see the me in my head, who I really am. Thank you for giving me a better way to communicate, a way to show what’s always been behind my eyes.”

Do you see the difference? “Technology empowered me,” rather than, “I was broken until technology fixed me.” People with disabilities should NEVER FEEL less than, we should insist on having the tools we need to show the world who we really are, human beings, not lamps, or broken dolls.
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