Clerc Scar 33 12-16 April 2010 Contents ===== Monday Chasing Vistas 30 Melanie Bond [Memoir] ===== Hearing Parent Ala [Poem] ===== Tuesday Learning Literature At Georgetown Mary J. Thornley [Essay] ===== Sun Tangled In Sun Jim Cohn [Essay] ===== Wednesday Olives Willy Conley [Story] ===== The Man In Berkeley Dack Virnig [ASL Story] ===== Thursday Stoffel's Guide To Hypnotism Scott Stoffel [Humor] ===== Deaf Time-Travelers Adrean Clark [Cartoon] ===== Friday FEEDBACK FRIDAY [Letters to the Editors] ===== We welcome letters to the editor in response to this piece. Send to editor@clercscar.com. We reserve the right to edit letters for space and clarity or not to publish a letter. We are always open to submissions. Submit your writing, artwork, or video to editor@clercscar.com. To subscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Subscribe daily" or "Subscribe weekly." To unsubscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Unsubscribe me." Find us on Twitter and Facebook! Visit our archives or bookstore at http://www.clercscar.com. Copyright 2009 by Clerc Scar. All rights reserved. ==================================================================================== ===== Chasing Vistas 30 Melanie Bond Words: 1,863 [Memoir] WChapter 94 A Cold Night We checked into the campground near Grant Village. I loved paying only $6.00 per night to camp here. Not a bad deal, I thought, for being in possession of a Golden Access Card which granted me, a legally blind person, free access into any national park and a 50% discount off camping fees. The downside was that there was no electric or water hook-ups for our pop-up camper. We thought we'd be able to heat our camper up by connecting our propane heater to the van's alternator but that didn't work out for whatever reason. We were stumped as to how we would be able to keep warm throughout the night without any heat in the camper. At an elevation of 7,170 feet, I knew that temperatures could drop 30 to 40 degrees overnight. We all wiggled into our sleeping bags fully clothed, threw on extra blankets and tried to keep ourselves warm as best as we could. What a miserable night it turned out to be! I kept shivering and tossing and turning every which way. I tried rubbing my arms and legs, and my hands and feet to warm them up. But still I could not seem to get warmed up enough. I worried about Harvey and Dano being cold and wondered whether Buddy Bear was helping to keep Dano warm inside his sleeping bag. Finally, during the wee hours of early Thursday morning, August 31st, I woke up at around 5:00 a.m. when Harvey jumped out of his sleeping bag and made a mad dash to the men's restroom. At that time, I decided to get up too because I wasn't sleeping very well at all. I grabbed a few things, ran to the van and jumped in, hoping I'd find a warmer spot here. Boy, was I ever wrong! The van was just as cold as the camper. I berated myself for not having the foresight to grab my sleeping bag out of the camper. I shivered some more and slept fitfully until daybreak came at around 8:00 a.m. I turned the car heater on and watched the digital thermostat change from about 30 to 35 degrees F. I didn't like how my muscles had become fatigued with the cold. I tried jumping out of the van but with a stiff body, I almost vaulted out of the van head first! This wasn't good! I told Harvey that I'd had enough of being cold and that I didn't want to camp another night here again. We made the decision to pack up and find a better campground somewhere else within the vicinity of Yellowstone National Park. Chapter 95 Grant Village Happenings We drove into Grant Village about a mile from our campsite and saw a quaint general store, lodges and restaurants, a laundromat, and a post office with the U.S. flag flapping in the breeze. Best of all, there were public HOT showers! For $3.00, I took the longest, hottest, most luxurious, soothing, and calming shower that I had ever had the pleasure of taking in my life! When I finally stepped out of the shower, I felt totally relaxed and revitalized, especially after I had just survived a miserable cold night! We ran over to the post office in Grant Village to check and see if my sister Cynthia had sent us a package containing all of our mail which was being forwarded to us. The package never arrived at the post office. What a disaster this was! There were important documents that we needed, such as a new license for our camper (it had a temporary license which was due to expire within five days), new canes I had ordered, bills we needed to pay on time, and, we hoped, mail from our family and friends. As it turned out, I had given Cynthia an incorrect mailing address which simply did not exist. We called Cynthia up on a pay phone and asked her when she had sent the package to us. That's when she gave us the bad news. Cynthia explained over the phone, "Well, the reason you didn't get your mail in West Thumb is because there is no such address as West Thumb General Delivery in Yellowstone. Since I had no way to get a hold of you guys, I didn't know what to do or where to send your package to! I can send the package to the Grant Village General Delivery where you guys are but it might take 3-5 days for it to get there!" Harvey responded, "That's not good! I can't see us staying here at Yellowstone for another day or two. We'll probably be leaving Yellowstone by tomorrow and heading up to Montana. Can you look up a post office address in Montana where we could pick up our mail?" Cynthia replied, "Let me see here. Well, there's a post office in Missoula, Montana. It'd be right on the way to wherever you're going. How about I overnight your package to Missoula so that by the time you get there, your package will be waiting for you? Be sure to pick up your package in General Delivery." "Sounds like a plan!" Harvey said. "Thanks so much for your help! You guys take care now. Bye!" I couldn't understand why I had gone wrong with the West Thumb General Delivery address. The more I looked at a map of Yellowstone, the more I began to realize that these names, such as West Thumb, were not towns or cities. Oh, my! West Thumb was a geographical point of interest within Yellowstone National Park! How had I missed that? I felt like an idiot but not for too long. After all, with my faulty vision, who could blame me for being wrong? For the moment, we were homeless and so was our mail! With everyone feeling famished, we headed over to the Grant Village Restaurant for brunch. It was a good thing that Buddy Bear accompanied Dano because he was hungry too! On our way through the open lobby, we spotted two life-sized brown bears wearing nightgowns and nightcaps. After we enjoyed our fine meal, Buddy Bear decided to visit his bear pals out in the lobby. He climbed up between the two bears until he reached the arm of the smallest bear and made himself feel right at home. Dano sat contentedly on the floor with his legs crossed while listening to Buddy Bear and his pals exchange a few growls and make a few paw swipes at each other. Finally, we had to tear Buddy Bear away from his pals so that we could make our getaway to the West Thumb Basin. And, of course, Dano scrambled to keep up with all of us as we headed back out to our van. Chapter 96 West Thumb Geyser Basin We drove out to the West Thumb Geyser Basin to see what Yellowstone Park was all about and whether it would live up to its incredible reputation. Boy, did it ever! We were thunderstruck and awed to see before us a spouting thermal wonderland along the shore of Yellowstone Lake's West Thumb area. Signs were posted everywhere warning park visitors to stay on the path as the grounds were unstable and dangerous. Beneath its hard-crusted surface was hot boiling water. To leave the path was to court deadly danger. Unwary or careless park visitors in the past had been severely burned who required immediate medical attention. At least one visitor died after he suffered severe third-degree burns over his entire body. This was certainly cause for some concern! No matter where we turned to look, there were rising billows of hot steam issuing out from every crevice and hole in the ground, from fumaroles (steam vents), shooting geysers and boiling painted pots (colorful soft mud pots) that reached temperatures of nearly 200° F. The colors of the soft mud pots depended on the composition of soil, clay, minerals and bacteria that were brought to the surface through continued thermal activity. Wherever our noses turned, we couldn't avoid smelling the pungent acrid odor of sulphur in the air. If there was a real hell somewhere in the universe, this place was just a tiny sample of hell on earth! In the upper basin was a winding dirt path, one that was at least on terra firma! As we headed toward the lake, the dirt path turned into a beautiful boardwalk path with protective rails. At this juncture, an unusual event occurred. As we walked along, we came to an opening in the railing. About a hundred feet in front of us but on the other side of the railing and walking toward the opening was a large wild buffalo that finally stopped to graze peacefully beside a short shrub. We managed to get past the rail opening quickly and quietly so that we wouldn't disturb the magnificent beast. We stood and watched it quietly for a few minutes. What a blessing to be so close to it, yet one must always be prepared for any potential and sudden danger. It almost seemed close enough for me to reach out and pet its humongous head. Not wishing to tango with the bison, we hurried further down the path until we were out of harm's way. One false move and It could have wrecked our whole day! At a spot closest to Yellowstone Lake from behind the rails, we had a clear view of the Fishing Cone, formerly called the Fisherman's Kettle or the Fishpot Spring. Here was a hot spring volcanic cone that protruded out of the water with steam coming from inside of it. This was an anomaly--how could there be a hot spring in the middle of a cold fresh-water lake? As the popular story goes, fishermen from the past would catch their fish in the lake and drop their fish on hooks into the Fishing Cone to be parboiled for dinner. However convenient that might have been, dropping baited fish into the Fishing Cone--a known geyser--could be a very dangerous proposition should the geyster roar to life! In 1919, it erupted to a height of 40 feet and to lesser heights in 1939. One fisherman was badly burned at the Fishing Cone in 1921. One of the deeper hot springs we enjoyed viewing was the Abyss Pool. Visitors often found themselves gazing endlessly into what appeared to be a bottomless pool. However, its depth has been measured at 53 feet. The colors vary from turquoise-blue to emerald-green to various shades of brown. In 1883, a park visitor described it as "a great, pure, sparkling sapphire rippling with heat." We viewed other hot spring pools such as the Seismograph, Black, and Blue Bell pools, and geysers such as the Occasional, Blue Funnel, Surging and Lakeshore geysers. Dano liked the Twin Geysers named Maggie and Jiggs that were named after two early 20th century cartoon characters. His favorite was a fountain geyser where several geysers shot off at the same time to create a spectacular fountain show every few minutes. [To be continued next week.] ===== Melanie Bond is a deaf-blind writer based in Bay City, Michigan. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Hearing Parent Ala [Poem] Do you know that in the darkness The only words i see Are the lights glancing off The smooth porcelain Of your pearly whites i know your lips are moving. Are you Talking to me? Conversations with you are always brief. Banal. i hate talking to you. i hate how you talk at me. You throw out consonants like a fishing net And hope to catch clams of comprehension. The net always misses. My voice feels screeching and scratchy. Dry. Nasal. Ugly. Not like my hands when they effortlessly flutter Through the air (admittedly a bit gracelessly) Sort of like whales gliding through the ocean Stout bodies straining, surfacing Leisurely plopping onto back fin (Do you think they ever envy the way Dolphins leap into the air A smooth, sharp pop--barely making waves?) But you beam at my Toad-like voice And glance around, discomfited every time My fingers kiss the space between you and me Sometimes, i think, fuck it And sometimes, i think, fuck YOU But your prerogative is of the highest importance. A classified folder. Top secret. Urgent. A five alarm fire. The sea parts for your needs as i choke on the salt water. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Studying Literature At Georgetown Mary J. Thornley Words: 283 [Essay] We've read RIP VAN WINKLE, Mark Twain, selections from Martin Luther King and Thoreau, and now we're into SHANE. The professor has a number of film clips to show us, underlining the independent American spirit, rife with individualism, the man always going off alone (a short clip from one of John Wayne's movies) riding off into the sunset, disappearing over the mountains. He's a rogue hero, a figure of unutterable romance, and he wins, but then he's got to pack it in 'cause no one's comfortable with that loose cannon around. He can't be tied down, can't get married, can't settle. To view the SHANE movie, the professor inserted the cassette and when the image loomed on the screen, he clicked on languages and there in large print were the words CAPTIONS FOR THE DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING. Seated at the rear of the classroom, I saw two heads in the class turn my direction. Funny, it was like they were both pulled by the same string. What did they expect to see that they hadn't already seen? Maybe having seen the words, they wanted to see what it looked like in the flesh (although I've been there all semester). If so, then a DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING is a gray-haired woman, thin, quiet, attended by a young girl with an improbable machine at the rear of the classroom. What about those who didn't turn around to shoot me a look? Maybe they were satisfied--or maybe they knew I would see them turn. What if they'd all turned to look? I guess that would be my cue to ride off into the sunset--and take my loose cannon with me. ===== Mary J. Thornley is a Deaf writer and a graduate student at Georgetown University. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Sun Tangled In Sun Jim Cohn Words: 2,736 [Essay] Disability Freedom in the ASL Poetry of Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures --Allen Ginsberg, Death & Fame To talk about disability as a way of liberation--as a social value--is one thing. To embody its freedom is quite another. The freedom of disability is not simply liberation from the attempts of generations to modify, disrupt, correct, or eradicate the socially estranged body. Disability freedom refers to an uplifting of the collective value of all people until such a time as their discourses--in their most subjective form, poetries--are felt compassionately to be a part of everything that is. Disability freedom is a state of mind in which even the most stubborn collective actions are stripped of stereotypical thought-forms. Such a freedom refutes the polities that turn all societies into vicious distorters of man's intrinsic potential. The essence of disability freedom is within each of us. It is a way to live without the production of obstructed personalities condemned to the stricken margin. The poet, Gary Snyder, has noted in "The Politics of Ethnopoetics," (1977) that to work against cultural genocide, one must be a vanguard for the initiation of cooperative projects in order to explore ways of presenting oppressed poetries to outsiders as values in themselves. One such cooperative venture in the cultural expression of disability is Flying Words Project. Peter Cook, who is deaf, and Kenny Lerner, who is hearing, crossed DYSCENTRIC boundaries--lurring the lines between genres of spoken word performance poetry and deaf storytelling. As Flying Words Project, they forged an original and simultaneously translated poetry based upon experimental principles of contemporary American poetics and a masterful control of American Sign Language (ASL) prosody. Flying Words Project is a luminous chapter in the history of American letters. Meeting in Rochester, New York, in the early 1980s, at a deaf after-hours party, Cook and Lerner began to generate a magic universe of original ASL mock-epic poesy known for its variable rhythmic structures coupled with a sense of antiheroic opéra-comique. When the poems started to appear, around 1984, it was as if Peter Cook had reinvented the signing space--the visual and movement-oriented body text through which the poem is produced and "read" in the black box theater of the mind. Cook astonished hearing and deaf audiences alike in a series of voice-interpreted public readings, manifesting a new body of ALPHABETIC handshape wit, SPATIAL image pictorialization, and RHTHMIC time-keeping forms. I was immediately taken by Cook and Lerner's work--its intricate pattern of visual melody and insistent rhythms that draw and hold attention--the way each sign is brought to a necessary place. By elongating or accenting the shape of otherwise ordinary deaf sign-talk, Cook's phrasing opened signs up to their living emotive force. It was the pure human muscle power of naturally composed deaf mind, against the hyper-rational, narrow abstraction of English, that initially made me pay attention to Flying Words Project. Cook and Lerner created startling new works of ASL poetry: "Charlie"--a poem about the crippling effects of the Vietnam War told from the perspective of a dog, "Deja Vu Salesman"--with its existential picaresque rogue handing out suitcase vanities to a cast of past-fixated neurotics, and "Holocaust"--a woeful exposé on the disability experience of Nazi concentration camp liquidation. It seemed, at first view, as though we always had access to the luxury of their experiments, as though we always had a world where paint drips up and dead bodies float down from the sky. The power of these early Flying Words Project poems--and something they alone created--is in the fundamental ability to convey to deaf and hearing people alike a positive sense that disability is a meaningful function of compassion. In the poem, "Weak Spot," a casually tossed Frisbee strikes open a chasm into which the entire material cosmos falls in mad surreal cataclysmic glee from the weight of its conventions. This "falling" uses a rhythmic visual repetition--in audio prosody defined as chant (Padgett, 1987, 44-47). Cities, nations, armies, continents--their polluted forests, oil fields, endangered wildlife, seas and battleships, stars and satellites--all come crashing down to dissolute ends. "Weak Spot" is a chant for breaking down narcissistic and delusional mindsets of permanence and monotheistic exclusion--gods, prophets, saints; devils, satans, ghosts, and shadows all fall into one hell chasm. The visionary power of "Weak Spot" is created by an expansive catalog of multiple subject-identities. This use of multiple subjects allows the entry of deaf otherness, prophesized by Whitman in DEMOCRATIC VISTAS, when he wrote: "To take expression, to incarnate, to endow a literature with grand and archetypal models . . . a new creation, with needed orbic works launch'd forth, to revolve in free and lawful circuits--to move, self-poised, through the ether, and shine like heaven's own suns . . . to rise upon, cohere, and signalize in time, these States." (Miller 485) The poetry of Flying Words emanates formal and thematic correspondences closely associated with major schools of experimental American poetics practice focused on compassionate liberation through language arts. Cook and Lerner's interest with the malaised body politic places disability freedom alongside feminist poetries from Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein, through Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, and Anne Waldman. They bring forth marginalized citizenship and social justice perspectives that have resemblances to the post-colonial poetries of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement; in particular, the equanimity themes of Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, and Amiri Baraka. Cook and Lerner's politically conscious, investigative poetics echoes Kenneth Rexroth, Andrei Codrescu, and Edward Sanders. Beat Generation traditions appear in expansive pad your skull in a wooden kimono pictorial juxtapositions found in Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso. Giddy exuberance reminds me of the works of Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, Bob Kaufman, and Lew Welch. Computer-age eBeat poets whose circles include Flying Words Project are Antler, Andy Clausen, David Cope, Bob Holman, Eliot Katz, Tom Peters, and myself. Absorbing these variant communities of hearing literary influences within ASL, Cook and Lerner invented a dramatic, cross-cultural vocabulary for conveying deaf intelligence. As early as 1989, HIGH PERFORMANCE review critic Josef Woodard pointed out that "their performances typically consist of several pieces, ranging from the wryly humorous ?San Francisco 1988' . . . to the politically charged [?Romero'], a piece about the murder of El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, to the wondrously irrational dreamlike parable ?Einstein Under the Apple Tree.'" This range of aesthetic, social, political, epistemological, and anti-ideological themes, as seen through the eyes of the deaf, was unheard of before Flying Words Project. From "Blue Velvet," another earlier work, I vividly recall first viewing shifting scenes--from suburban normality, to bacterial life under the soil, to the decaying inner sanctum of a lopped-off ear. And in these associative images, I realized this "lopped-off ear"--borrowed from filmmaker David Lynch's own visual vocabulary--became a Deaf image reflecting a complex status relationship with hearing people. That symbolism--repo'd by Cook--is an original no-concept view of disability. A visual compression of the myriad misconceptions of deafness into a singular image statement, Cook's blue velvet ear challenges the viewer to get rid of contextual dry rot as did Andy Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. Flying Words Project often contradicts society's tendency to conventionalize audiocentric relations. Their poetry is filled with a keen-eyed pantheon of socially diverse figures that, in sign, come alive with exact and concrete body calligrams (Padgett 33-36, 52-56). A March 2002 performance I saw in Boulder, Colorado, provides a case in point. Cook and Lerner performed a new poem, entitled "World War I," in which an old deaf man is discovered at the war's end by an allied forces soldier. With no formal communication possible between them, the soldier gestures the question, "What's happened?" Cook shifts his body, and taking on the character of the deaf figure, shows the old man describing the horrors of watching innocent civilians bayoneted to death in cold blood. The old deaf man then uses the most simple gestures: moving his crossed hands repeatedly and emphatically outward, and shaking his head back and forth, as if to say of war's destruction and death, "I've seen too much. I can't take any more, no more, no more, no more." Cook's characterization of the old deaf man was electrifying. After the performance, University of Colorado at Boulder ASL graduate studies research professor, Brenda Schick, commented on the reasons why. Schick said that the exactitude of the Cook's sign language, reconstructed from the context of the European Deaf Community in the early twentieth century, was as precise in linguistic detail as it was emotionally chilling for the horror those patterned utterances conveyed. Unlike English, where abstraction leaks everywhere and drains off candor, Flying Words Project's portrayal of the old deaf man's successive fluid body expression provides as close a measure of the test of the truth of a "sentence" as I have seen. Only a sentence that would take all time to pronounce would carry more natural attribute in its reproduction of the thing itself. The aesthetic root of Cook and Lerner's argument against conventional mind stems from an interest in THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER AS A M EDIUM FOR WRITTEN POETRY (Fenollosa and Pound, 1936)--a text that celebrates the image-in-motion aspect of text-making. As a cultural activist, Ernest Fenollosa observed that conventional mind is constructed around the erroneous assumption of an objective linguistic standard. The basis of this objective standard, he argued, is the idea that a sentence gives expression to a "complete thought." But as Fenollosa observed, "in nature, there is NO completeness . . . no full sentence really completes a thought" (11). One of the clearest examples of sign language as a medium for authentic, living, thought-pictures appears in Flying Words Project's impromptu series of short poems catalyzed by Cook and Lerner's understanding of Fenollosa's work and its approximation with that of the ASL sign. Cook performs a series of short epigramma that illustrate several transmutations of the Chinese ideogram for "east"--glossed by Lerner in its traditional interpretation as "sun" + "branches" + "tree" (Fenollosa, 33). Giving the classic Chinese illustration for "east" a close reading, Cook translates "sun" + "tree" + "branch" as a pastoral scene. First, the sun rises over the horizon. Then, its rays become tangled in the branches of a tree. The sun and the tree become caught in the movement that transits between them. The sun continues on its motion up into the sky. The tree remains as it was, in stillness. Cook's poem conveys this thought-image with only a minimum of gestures. The poem is all economy--no wasted motion. Cook's body language colors his translation with the vivid sense that one has just viewed a priceless Chinese landscape painting. They follow this traditional rendering of the original gloss for "east" with two variations--"Sun Tangled in Horse" and "Sun Tangled in Sun." In "Sun Tangled in Horse," the sun's rays come up over the eastern horizon only to get caught in the body of a horse. In this simple act of substituting a horse for a tree, the traditional image for "east" suddenly becomes ambiguous and absurd. In "Sun Tangled in Horse," the sun is surprised to see itself acting upon a different object than the branches of a tree. The horse is surprised to have the sun acting upon it as if it were the branches of a tree and not a horse. There is the no-surprise of the horse that pays no mind to being acted upon by the rising sun. And there is something inside the horse that resists being acted upon, is acted upon, but within itself, cannot be acted upon. And really, the sun caught in a horse is as valid, as arbitrary, as the sun caught in the branches of a tree. And why shouldn't a deaf poet be at liberty to point this out to both the Chinese and the American people? "Sun Tangled in Horse" is a commentary on terminology, on definition, on the way language changes perception, and on the way political talk doesn't change the way things are at all. What's significant is that in the substitution of horse for branches of a tree is an allowance for multiple meanings. One such possible meaning is the poets' own resistance to convention. Another possible meaning is an interest in expanding arbitrary symbols to a whole new unconditioned reality. Another possible meaning is to simply express an original poetic impulse. Another possible meaning is to comment metalingually against passive obedience. With just a single substitution, "Sun Tangled in Horse" can be seen as a vivid shorthand for all the multiple heritages of multiple communities fighting for the dignity of multiple people with multiple identities. In the second variation, "Sun Tangled in Sun," Cook and Lerner take the traditional Chinese definition of "east" all the way out. Two suns rise in different directions, only to find themselves meeting one another in the center of the sky. The viewer has an immediate awareness of a psychological space where individual consciousness struggles with its impeccable otherness. When self-absorbed ego meets self-absorbed ego, there's a sudden vacuum, a clear and calm emptiness. Divided heart, divided mind--"Sun Tangled in Sun" points out the awareness of freedom breaking through the limits of mass brainwashing--impositions that are themselves none other than the emptiness of all consciousness. The essence of disability freedom in the poetry of Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner is in their poetry's ongoing suggestion that all social positions are ambiguous, at best. Since their earliest performances, and even before the first works--from our all night conversations--I was awakened to the language sound stream that turns my own sensibility into images and thoughts and feelings as having little variance with the shape stream from where their poems come. If there is an overarching achievement in their work--packed as it is with the contorted knowledge that sick people despair, that beggars cry endless Our Father's and Hail Mary's, that Old Hell was thrown open by Man, and the dead have bad dreams--it is to have expanded the visual prosody of American literature in order to gain absolute attention for the quality of human experience. Unborn people of the future may assume that the poetics of ASL was always that big. It was not. Too many a deaf blues man and deaf blues woman ended up like Neal Cassady--the hero of Kerouac's ON THE ROAD--dead on the tracks, run over by an unheard train. For me, Flying Words Project is a different kind of pathology--the study of paths. Living together on Laburnum Crescent in the early 1980s, holding barstool court with their lightning hands among the gloomy patrons of Mr. Ed's Tavern, their poems arose in the darkness over the silence of a blaring hydrogen jukebox, to reverse--as Allen Ginsberg prophetically wrote in his final book of poems, DEATH AND FAME (1999), "the rain of Terror on street consciousness U.S.A." Endnotes Cohn, Jim. 1999. Sign Mind: Studies in American Sign Language Poetry. Boulder: Museum of American Poetics Publications. 28. Cook, Peter. 1996. I Am Ordered Not To Talk. In The United States of Poetry. Mark Pellington, dir. New York: Washington Square Films/Square Arts. Fenollosa, Ernest. 1936. The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry. Ezra Pound, ed. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Ginsberg, Allen. 1999. Death & Fame: Last Poems: 1993-1997. Bob Rosenthal, Peter Hale, and Bill Morgan, eds. New York: HarperFlamingo. 70, 46. ______. 1955. Howl. In Howl and Other Poems. City Lights Pocket Poets edition. (original release date). Miller, James, E., ed. 1959. Democratic Vistas 1871. InComplete Poetry and Sected Prose of Walt Whitman. Cambrdige: Riverside Press. 485. Padgett, Ron. 1987. The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms. New York: Teachers & Writers Collaborative. 33-36, 44-47, 52-56, 65-66. Shapiro, Karl, and Robert Beum. 1965. A Prosody Handbook. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. 1-2. Snyder, Gary. 1977. The Politics of Ethnopoetics. In The Old Ways. San Francisco: City Lights Books. 19. Williams, William Carlos. 1954. Selected essays. New York: Random House. 256. ________. 1967. Autobiography. New York: New Directions. 264-265. Woodard, Josef. Fall 1989. Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner: Flying Words. In High Performance. 59. ===== This essay appeared in Jim Cohn's collection of essays THE GOLDEN BODY: MEDITATIONS ON THE ESSENCE OF DISABILITY (Museum of American Poetics Publications, 2003). It is available for ordering at http://su.pr/1Z1AJI Jim Cohn is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the author of many books of poetry and essays. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Olives Willy Conley Words: 1,297 [Story] "About time you tried something different," said Ilene. "All you like is beer, beer, beer. You need to expand your mind a little." Her hands made the shape of doors opening above her forehead. She pours the martini from a pitcher. "I don't trust martinis," said Ryan. "What goes in them?" "I don't know." Ilene took a sip. "You've never had a martini before?" "No. But I know that hearing people put green olives in them--yuck! You might as well drop a pat of butter in your drink." "What about black olives?" "They're healthier. More like a vegetable." "Is that why you asked for black olives?" "Yeah, and to make it a deaf drink. Go on, try one." She plops another black olive in her drink. "No thanks, I'm going to stay with the green ones." "I'm telling you, the green ones are fake. They stuff those little red things inside them." "Those are called pimentos," said Ryan. "Whatever they are, I don't like them. They remind me of hearing people, sticking their little red tongues out, yakking away. Yak-yak-yak." She makes little back-and-forth tongue gestures like a dog panting. "Ilene, that's not very nice!" "You're too polite with hearing people. And, please don't sign my name--that's not deaf culture." "I'm not going to fight over this again. I want us to have a nice, quiet dinner." Ryan unfolds his linen napkin and spreads it over his lap. "Fine!" She fishes out her olive and nibbles on it. "So, how's the black olive make yours a deaf drink?" "It looks different. It's black, solid. No holes. No red tongue. And it's tough in the middle, like it's got guts." Ryan snorts. "OK, whatever." He raises his drink to propose a toast. "To what?" "A DIFFERENT anniversary," said Ilene. "But this is our first anniversary." "I know." She spits the pit into her hand and slips it in the space under the edge of her plate. "So it'll be different no matter what," said Ryan. "I know. Turn off your voice." "How do you know I'm using my voice?" "The veins are sticking out on your neck." "I can't help it. It's a habit. I'm working on it." Tired of signing with one hand, Ryan sets his drink down. "You're doing good. I really appreciate your trying." She lifts her drink. "Happy anniversary." Ryan lifts his glass again and looks at Ilene from across his glass rim. "Black, hmmm. Interesting." Ilene squints her eyes and swallows. She mouths the word WHEW. "Whoa!" said Ryan. He clears his throat. "That's a martini!" said Ilene. "Tastes like gasoline." "I love it. So powerful." "No more for me. That's it," said Ryan. "I feel a slight buzz already. You?" "Too dangerous," said Ryan. "Only live once." "I have to drive." "Then I'll do all the drinking." She gulps the last of her drink and pours herself another one. "So...do you want to have a discussion?" "To discuss what?" "Oh . . . discuss us." "What's there to discuss?" "I'd like to know what's going to become of us." "We're in a relationship--it's good." Ilene picks a black olive from the little white bowl and sucks on it. She toys with it in her mouth. "What do you mean become of us?" said Ryan. "Do you see anything in the future for us?" She signs without moving her lips, shifting into her deaf-deaf mode. "I don't have a crystal ball like . . . I see . . . I see . . . Ilene married with 3 kids . . . a farmhouse . . . I don't know. That's hard." "Don't you have any idea or, you know?" said Ilene. Ryan takes a big sip of his martini. "Arggh! Whew. That burns." "I mean, we've known each other, what, twelve months now?" "Twelve months!?" "What're you looking at your watch for?" She quickly spits out the olive pit and puts it under her plate. "Hey.. . . . hey, look at me." She nudges him hard. "Don't do that here." "I wanted your attention." "It's not polite. We're in a restaurant." "That's deaf culture," said Ilene. "In a hearing restaurant, no!" "Want me to yell for your attention?" "No." "I can yell." "No. Not polite." "It's the deaf way." "It's rude." "What do you want me to do?" "Just slide your hand across the table and softly say, ?Excuse me.'" "I'm not going to talk," said Ilene. "You can." "No, I can't." "You don't want to, that's why." "That's right, it's my choice." "You were willing to yell a minute ago. What's the difference?" "I prefer not to use my voice, okay?" "But you said you wanted to yell." "I did not. I said ?Do you want me to yell?'" "That's it. That, that," said Ryan, pointing at her sign for YELL. "Is that what you want?" "Yes, that's it. That. You just said it. You asked, ?Do you want me to yell?'" "DO you want me to yell?" "Yes, that's the one." "I'm asking do you want me to?" said Ilene. "NO! Of course not." "Okay, then." "Obviously, you were willing to use your voice." "No. You have a good voice, I don't." "Oh sheesh. Well, I'm willing to be more deaf-deaf when I'm alone with you." "Okay, fine. Let's see you be more deaf-deaf." "But when we go out, like to this fancy restaurant here, we need to have manners, not deaf manners." "What do you mean deaf manners? You make it look negative." "Not negative. I respect deaf culture where it congregates. But in a place like this we have to follow the rules of hearing culture." He demonstrates. "Napkins on your lap, order drinks, followed by appetizers, main course, dessert, and leave a tip." "Go on, deaf people leave tips!" "Not the ones I know." "You mean I have to adjust according to what culture I'm in?" "That's our society," said Ryan. "What do you mean by deaf manners then?" Ryan becomes more demonstrative. "Nudging other people hard, slapping the table, stomping your feet, waving your hands, yelling ?HEY!'" He snickers. "What's so funny?" "I just yelled out loud." "You did?" "Yes. Now the whole restaurant is watching." "You really did yell?" "Yes! You didn't see my veins?" "That's what you call deaf manners?" "Yeah. That." "I get it." "You gotta conform," said Ryan. "Say you walk into a blues bar. Everybody in there is black. There's a live band playing blues music. You must follow their rhythm, their moods." He claps his hands rhythmically. "You can't do all that deaf hand-waving, table-slapping, foot-stomping stuff while they're playing. Really spoils the blues mood. You know?" "I know. That's common sense." "What's common sense?" "Yeah, it's common sense," said Ilene. "What? When you nudged me like that? You call that common sense?" "Really, I didn't hit you that hard. I just touched you. You're exaggerating, you always do with everything I say." "I'm going to pour myself another drink," said Ryan. "Aren't you going to eat your olive? People tend to eat their olive after they drink a martini." "Oh, you mean hearing people?" "You know what I mean." "Now, who's the one that's copying hearing people?" "It's not copying. You do whatever you want." "I don't know if I'm going to eat this or not. I'm going to leave it out." "Wow! On the table? Are you sure that's good manners?" "I'm going to be different. You watch." "Hey, I thought you weren't going to have another drink," said Ilene. "After the initial shock, it doesn't taste so bad now. I feel a DIFFERENT kind of drunk." "What do you mean a different kind of drunk?" "A sophisticated drunk." "Yeah, a hearing drunk." ===== Willy Conley is the chair of the theater arts department at Gallaudet University and the author of VIGNETTES OF THE DEAF CHARACTER AND OTHER PLAYS. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== The Man In Berkeley Dack Virnig [ASL Story] To watch the video, click http://www.clercscar.com/?p=845 For those who are Braille readers, a text summary is provided below. A deaf man visiting Berkeley is watching different people pass by. He notices a man with spectacular dreadlocks, holding a coffee cup and a broom. The deaf man is thrilled, wants to ask the man how he did his dreadlocks. He types a message on his pager, and approaches the man. The deaf man taps the other and points to his pager, but the man in dreadlocks does not look at the pager. Instead, he talks jovially. The deaf man is confused, and points to his pager. The other man jabs his broom at the deaf man. As he jumps back, he is shocked to see that the broom is actually a cane, the kind used by blind people. The man in dreadlocks is a blind beggar. The deaf man remembers tactile communication and tries to put the blind man's hand on his. But the blind man jerks away, speaking angrily. The deaf man realizes the futility of the situation. He reaches into his pocket and puts his last five-dollar bill into the blind man's cup. As he walks away, the blind man finds the money and waves it in the air, asking for the amount. The deaf man gestures "five," but it is futile. The deaf man leaves. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Stoffel's Guide To Hypnotism Scott Stoffel Words: 473 [Humor] Ever since I decided to start this week's Guide (five minutes ago), I have been fascinated by hypnotism. It's truly amazing how a professional hypnotist can unlock the hidden chambers of our wallets and lighten our burdens. Sometimes, they even unlock the hidden chambers of the mind and discover its long-lost whereabouts. To get a better understanding of how hypnotism works, I decided to visit a professional and see for myself. Doctor, hypnotize me! My deafness and limited eyesight threw King Kong's monkey wrench into the equation, but the psychiatrist was game to give it a shot. She did, of course, live to regret that rash decision. Lady, you don't know who you're dealing with! Nobody--I mean nobody--is going to get into my mind and find her way out again. In keeping with Poetry Month, I put my experience into a bit of free verse. Here's . . . My Visit with the Hypnotist I went to see the hypnotist in her lavish 13th floor office. I heard she was good at exploring minds and wondered what she might find within the hollow caverns of my skull. I reclined upon her leather couch, while she sat cross-legged in her chair. Nice set of drumsticks, those! Now she wanted me to stare at her pocket watch, which dangled from a gold chain, but I found her legs much more interesting. The watch swayed back and forth, back and forth. the legs just stayed still. Annoyed, she held the watch in front of her chest and insisted that I look at it. I didn't have a problem with that, except I really couldn't see her chest through the cardigan. She told me to follow the watch with my eyes and demanded that they put her cardigan back on, among other things they'd removed. By George, she's good! Read my mind like an open book! So I watched the stupid watch-- say, is that why they call it that? I soon grew sleepy with boredom. She wrote on the whiteboard and passed it to me. It said, "Can you hear my voice?" My eyebrows went up to the next floor. She wrote some more on the board, wanted me to listen closely to her voice, hear nothing but her voice. I told her I just couldn't, because my eyes were having trouble putting her clothes back on. My eyes are really bad. She told me to close my eyes and try to relax, get my mind off sex for a few microseconds. Okay, I'll try anything once. She wrote some more on the board and handed it to me. Hm, relaxing with my eyes closed created a minor complication. Doc, I can't hear what you're saying with my eyes closed! She gave me the middle finger sign in tactile. I thought she'd never ask! If there is something you would like to have a Stoffel's Guide for, send your ill-advised request to: scottmstoffel@yahoo.com ===== Scott Stoffel is a deaf and legally blind nut case. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Deaf Time-Travelers Adrean Clark [Cartoon] To view the cartoon, visit http://www.clercscar.com/?p=850 For those who are Braille readers, a text translation is provided below. Two deaf time travelers appear in a room, where a man sits at his desk, writing. "Look, it's Laurent Clerc!" "True biz! In the flesh!" The time travelers immediately go to Twitter and Facebook on their pagers. They stop, and look at each other. No signal. The time travelers VWORP home while Clerc looks up, puzzled. ===== Adrean Clark is a Deaf cartoonist. She is currently working on her first comic book, 8 Ways to be Deaf. The complete story is at http://su.pr/9fyJoS Back to Top ==================================================================================== FEEDBACK FRIDAY ===== Re: "Hearing Parent" by ala This poem reminded me of my parents and their awkwardness in darkness. They were always getting too close, pushing their faces close to mine. I would pull back, push them away, or tell them to get back. They thought I'd 'hear better' if they got closer. But I could see better if they weren't so close. And at night, especially, they'd talk louder (which they did anyway). They never remembered afterwards and next time would again get too close. And again. And again. I understand the anger in the poem. And where the speaker asks, "are you talking to me?" yes, it was impossible to know who they were talking to. Mary Thornley ===== We welcome letters to the editor in response to this piece. Send to editor@clercscar.com. We reserve the right to edit letters for space and clarity or not to publish a letter. We are always open to submissions. Submit your writing, artwork, or video to editor@clercscar.com. To subscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Subscribe daily" or "Subscribe weekly." To unsubscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Unsubscribe me." Find us on Twitter and Facebook! Visit our archives or bookstore at http://www.clercscar.com. Copyright 2009 by Clerc Scar. All rights reserved. Back to Top ==================================================================================== privacy policy : site map : contact us