Saskatoon

Oh swell

I wish my mom wasn’t so goddamned stubborn. The courthouse is closed, the banks are closed, a line of cars are hightailing it out of downtown at the impressive speed of ten km an hour. And I still have 50 minutes before my mom picks me up. By now the buses have stopped running so I can’t get home that way, and getting a taxi is completely out of the question. I wish my warnings would be heeded even if they are dire. I should not have come to work at all, it was a stupid idea and I should have just told my mom to bugger off and go to work if she wanted to.

Saskatoon

Blizzard!

My mom is weird.

This morning we had a huge debate over whether or not we should go to work. She’s a professor and I’m a researcher of residential schools (which involves burnout, but that’s another story). Anyway, after much squabbling and consulting the Weather Channel, she convinced me to go to work, even though we only had visibility for fifty feet.

Now of course, the roads are progressively getting shittier and the buses are coming up to not running anymore. People in my office are running around panicking and trying to assess if they should be leaving. Mom already agreed to picking me up at 3, but that’s still a ways away and things keep closing like schools and so forth. And spending the night in a law office isn’t my idea of a good time. I hear visibility has gone down to ten feet, and cars are skidding everywhere. In Edmonton tow trucks have even stopped working. Oh fuck, and now Circle Drive is shut down.

I just want to go home!

Where’s my mommy?

Mad Pride

The good parts of Manic Depression and why I actually like it

I’ve been thinking about Manic Depression and the benefits that come along with it, because yes, there are a hell of a lot of additional things that manic depression carries which are really amazing. I kicked off this blog with a list of people throughout history who have had manic depression or other serious mental illnesses, if you go to any crazy person run support centre you’ll usually get a list like this. In fact, they should really be handing it out in hospitals for the newly diagnosed. I tried to link to it but it was being stupid, it’s the post from March 14, 2004.

One thing that is amazing is the depth of emotions. If sane people’s emotions are black and white (to use a metaphor), bipolar people’s emotions are full on Technicolor. Everything is just exponentially more, my capacity for loving someone is dramatically larger than most, although since I have to pass as normal I usually hide that kind of stuff. I also know that people FREAK out when they realize you can love them to that degree, so sometimes I even hide it from my girlfriends because I know it is pretty intense and I don’t want them to run away. The bad thing is that yucky feelings like anger are also exponentially more, and it takes all my will power to avoid kicking stuff around when I’m frustrated.

Although if no one else is around to get intimidated by it I will hit random inanimate objects. But usually I work off angry energy by having a long walk.

The sad thing about having such a huge capacity for love is that it is hard to find romantic partners with the same intensity. Which is probably why things such as assortative mating happens with people with M.I.’s.

Assortative mating is kind of a dumb term. It’s applied to folks with M.I.’s because we have a tendency to date each other. However two sane people with similar life experiences forming a long term bond aren’t assortatively mating. They just have “a lot in common.”

Creativity also seems to go hand in hand with manic depression. A shitload of notable artists, musicians, filmmakers, actors, and writers have manic depression. In fact, so much of the arts is informed by manic depression that contemporary society has in a large part been shaped by people like me, and that’s not even taking into account that world leaders throughout history have also been disproportionately manic depressive. The reason so much has originated in the minds of “crazy” folk is that manic depression’s most troubling characteristic to the outside world is actually useful and important. That would be the classic manic episode.

During a manic episode it feels like, if your brain was a house, all the lights would be on, as would every electrical appliance. If your brain was a television set it would be playing 300 channels all at once, and you would be able to recognize and understand every single channel. To the outside observer communicating with us makes no sense AT ALL because we jump from concept to concept in split seconds. But on the inside it’s actually quite profound and amazing. It means two subjects which people would not think had ANY bearing on each other get linked in a very valid way, and in a way which a non-bipolar person would totally miss. Tragically some of the stuff we understand we get shamed for so much that we lose it or pretend it wasn’t real. For instance, I know a lot of people who have understood language related to colours, or seen how time actually functions. I myself saw how God and “individual” souls relate to each other, but in the end all the sane people ran around going “She thinks she’s God!” It was so frustrating. And I would try to explain the concept but it was so out there that they just pitied me and then made fun of it. My friend Emily and I talked about what it’s like to go manic and agreed it’s like being able to touch God, not just understand it.

Even the Second World War would have had a completely different outcome if it wasn’t for the fact that Winston Churchill was having an extended manic episode at the time.

Hypergraphia is also a very handy part of craziness which some other M.I.’s have as well. It’s the ability to just write and write and write and write. Which is useful for a writer. Most of the time it makes sense too.

And even depression has it’s benefits. For creative people, work made during mania can be edited and reconfigured during a depressive episode. You don’t need another pair of eyes because in a couple months when you crash you’ll be coming at it from a completely different point of view anyway.

So yes, I talk about the ways in which manic depression makes my life difficult, but it has also given me a lot more than it has taken. In fact, some people recognize it’s benefits so much that even if they are stabilized on meds by psychiatric standards, they’ll take slightly less so that some of the “illness” remains.

I should also say that the most major complications I’ve come across can be directly attributed to current psychotropics which we supposedly depend on. In fact my file dictates I should take Zyprexa for the rest of my life, when I’ve been off it for seven months and am doing better than I did for the four years I was on it. Not only that, but it was antidepressants which lead to my hospitalization, and furthermore I never had auditory hallucinations until I started taking psych meds.

Saskatoon

Deciding to Stay in Saskatoon

I’ve come to the decision to stay in Saskatoon. In seven days I will officially have been here a year. I really thought I would just flounce back to Vancouver, but for a lot of reasons I’ve decided not to. For one thing, Vancouver is fucking expensive. I hate having roommates because I’m hard to live with and I know it, so I kept ending up in teeny apartments, I mean 300 sq feet or less. And my books were starting to overwhelm my living space. So living in Saskatoon gives me WAY more space for the same amount of rent. Plus I am close to my cousins again, and I’ve wanted to get to know them better. And I have, but one of the things that made me sad was not getting to know Chris better before he died. He was a pretty cool guy, and god he was so young when he died. Just out of high school. It’s harder when people who are young die.

Also the film industry here is going crazy. Charlize Theron was just down in Regina last month shooting a film. Capote was shot next door in Manitoba, and the infamous Brokeback Mountain next door in Alberta. The costs of making a film here are way less than say, Toronto, or Vancouver for sure. A lot of Canadian comedies are coming out of here too. Plus the best Aboriginal actors come from Canada, and we have no star system. Some people say that’s terrible “Oh my god! No star system!” I think that’s silly. We have Sarah Polley. And if Canadians really want to get into the star system they just leave Canada altogether.

I remember Sarah Polley when she was still a child actor running around in an Anne of Green Gables spin off called Road to Avonlea. So very Canadian.

If the film industry here is booming, so is paranormal activity, like you would not believe. I have seen and experienced some weird shit here. My friend Preston’s roommate has a poltergeist. I have a poltergeist at work who bangs things. I’ve seen UFO’s with my friend Laurel, my cousin has seen a TON of UFO’s, and I found someone else online who’s been seeing tons of them lately. They’re invading and Saskatoon is going to be the intergalactic customs station. It would create jobs. Really though, I have no idea what they’re up to, it was kind of creepy, especially the first one that looked like some kind of dimensional portal opening up, but now it’s getting to be old hat. You know you’re jaded when a poltergeist can’t get a rise out of you. Although if it threw something at my head I’m sure I’d be pissed. Lucky for me I’ve mostly experienced this stuff with other people, so I know for sure it’s real. Sometimes I let weird shit happen just because I assume I must be hallucinating. No, it’s true, that water cooler jumped around. Oh. Fancy that. It’s a real great denial mechanism for creepy shit. Oh, I am seeing things, oh well, I’ll just ignore it, it’s probably my brain having a hiccup. Meanwhile another person with me would yell “Holy shit! Look at that!”

A doppleganger would scare the hell out of me though, or those animals with human faces, ugh, don’t want to see any of that kind of shit. I used to want to experience these things, but now I don’t anymore. It’s interesting though that paranormal events seem to be ramping up. I don’t know if it’s happening in other places. I’ve been having some weird visions too, but I won’t say them.

The other thing I like about living in Saskatoon is being able to learn my language. People keep talking about indigenous languages dying out, so there’s been a revival of the languages. A really cool thing is that a lot of white people are learning our languages too. I like that there are non-Aboriginals who see the use and importance of learning our languages. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up with half of the Cree speakers being Euro-Canadians.

So yeah, I’ll stay here. I’ll probably travel a lot though, or as much as possible. But this isn’t such a bad home base. It could be worse, it could be a two room apartment in the Downtown Eastside.

Popular Culture

My Paparazzi Boycott

I’m starting a paparazzi boycott. I’ve hated them since they killed Princess Di (I’m a bit of a Monarchist) and now they’re harrassing Prince William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton. Already the Prince has pressured papers to stop running paparazzi photos and a few have actually agreed. I think any paparrazi harassment is unacceptable though, for anyone, from royalty to movie stars. I know we ignore it because they’re rich, but I still think it’s sick. So, yes, my paparazzi boycott. It’s going to be hard to follow, but basically I’m not going to watch t.v. programming which uses paparazzi clips, and I’m not buying any magazines or newspapers that feature paparazzi photos. It would be nice if other people did it, but whatever, I just want to have some integrity. It does nothing to decry the attitude of paparazzi and at the same time serve as the market for their photos. I can live without seeing a duchess getting her toes sucked, it really won’t impact my life. And besides, famous people look better when they’re on the red carpet, not when they’re distracted and eating a gyro and giving the finger and accidentally showing pink bits.

Filmmaking

The Canadian Film & Television Industry and why it sucks to be me sometimes

Little Mosque on The Prairie is starting tonight and I’m totally stoked. I saw Zarqa Nawaz’s short BBQ Muslims years ago and laughed my ass off, so I’m looking forward to a good non-white comedy series. If you haven’t seen BBQ Muslims you’re missing out, it’s an awesome short. You can find it at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC). And she lives just two and a half hours away from me in sunny Regina. I hear CBC picked it up, which is good because they’ve had a terrible streak of picking up dumb programs, discounting smart programs, and cancelling programming just when it’s hitting it’s stride in audience numbers. CBC was originally approached with Corner Gas and turned it down, because who would want to watch a comedy about a small Saskatchewan town? Ha ha. Not only that, but a friend of mine told me about trying to get a producer she worked for to pick it up, but he didn’t think it would fly. Not only THAT, but some Saskatchewan Film Commissioner advised people to stay away from it because it was doomed to failure. Whoever did give it backing and produced it must be happy as a pig in poop.

Which basically sums up the problem with the film industry. People make really conservative choices and except for some notable producers and having someone intelligent back you up, some really great stuff gets shoved aside for some dreck like Men With Brooms. Canada has some amazing directors and screenwriters, which is why it’s sad to see a lot of them walk around with amazing screenplays and no one willing to stick their neck out to fund it. Even Atanarjuat, which won the Camera D’Or at Cannes, was denied funding from Telefilm for a long time because it wasn’t in either of the official languages. Who would want to watch a movie all in an Inuit language? They don’t take chances. A friend told me Telefilm wouldn’t fund his feature until he got Michael Enwright to say he was a genius.

I was trying to figure out why the film and television industry was so white washed, so written from the point of view of privelege, until I screened at an Industry festival. I mean uber Industry, like some guy running through the bar loudly yelling “I’m waiting for a call from Spielberg” kind of Industry. My friend was there and we were just flabbergasted, so many straight white people with so much money and so little to say. I felt soooo out of place, raggedy poor halfbreed butch, it was weird. But I did understand why t.v. and film is so often about upper class able bodied straight white people.

The other sad thing about Canadian film is that as a culture we just don’t support it properly. We have crap venues and our theatres have no obligation to meet any kind of Cancon regulations. We’re marginalized in our own country! If theatres had to show at least fifteen to twenty percent Canadian films, our culture and film industry would be a lot stronger. But since theatres are privately owned, you can’t impose governmental rules on them. And it’s not that hard to meet Cancon regulations. Even when I worked at the co-op radio station there were so many Canadian artists that playing the allotted percentage was not at all difficult. Something definently has to change there.

I’m mailing off my application to the Canadian Film Centre for the Feature Film Project today. It’s an interesting program but I’m not sure if I’ll get in. Who knows? Basically they put you through three months of development, including piecing together an appropriate budget and doing readings and rewrites of the script. Then if you’ve satisfied them and they think it’s a good project and ready to go, they financially support the production and post with $250 000 to $500 000. In terms of feature film, it’s not a lot of money, but it also gives you some interesting restrictions that make it easier to learn how to direct a full length feature. No Busby Berkely numbers here. But directing more intimate scenes teaches you more than having a bunch of CGI dinosaurs storm through a boreal forest. If I don’t get in I’ll be on the hunt for a producer and funding, sooo, we’ll see. It will get made somehow. The cool thing about the application is that it allows for people to self identify as both male and female.

Oh yes, and I did find my support material for it, although I had to substitute Anhedonia for Through the Looking Glass. Which actually makes sense considering Anhedonia is more of a drama, albeit experimental, and I’m applying to do a drama. Maybe two samples that are comedies would confuse the jury. What I did realize, again, is that I have a crap system for tapes of my work. Everything is on Beta or ye old timey 3/4,” which means I have to go to a professional dubbing place and get new dubs for everything possible, even work I’m not so into anymore. And I have to get my shit together and make my DVD compilation of my work, because I want to start selling the complete collection to universities so I can make much more money. And it would be a steal of a deal, because I would only charge 800 – 1000 bucks for it (institutional sales are usually 250 – 300 bucks for one short). I don’t know if anyone has that much allotted for acquistions to pay for only one artist, but who knows? At least I would have some DVD’s to take with me to artist talks or retrospectives. And goddammit, I am super in need of having a large supply of support material, especially since I want to try and get to the point of being a full time filmmaker. Meeting a deadline and then realizing you don’t have tapes sucks.

Body Mods, Filmmaking, Homophobia

Get thee hence to the Straight Path

There’s some new anti-homo Christian propaganda out with the charming title “It’s Not Gay.” It shows former gays talking about the men living the the twilight world, and the unsavory side of homosexual life that gets sanitized from the press. I should be angry, but I find it pathetic, and I feel sorry for the x-gays losing the chance to have fulfilling sex by easing on down the Straight and Narrow. But I admit, I had to crack up at this review:

“This is the a very good video. I ordered this and my son had a girl friend the next day. I couldn’t believe it. I love the part in the movie of the former gays. I wonder if they are still on the straight path?”

I wish I had a girlfriend tomorrow. Boyfriends are too easy to get, they’re not a challenge at all. It’s like the difference of getting into grad school compared to getting into community college. It’s late, my metaphors are falling apart.

I’m applying to the Toronto thing tomorrow, I was really good about it. The last time I was applying and missed the deadline I was hole punching in a frantic and running around shrieking. This time I just had to print stuff out and fill out the form again. However, I did hit a snag when I went to package it all up. My support material walked away. Two unassuming VHS tapes just decided to bugger off. I’ve been tripping over them since October, but now that I’m ready to actually use them, they’re awol. Support material isn’t supposed to do that to me. Support material is supposed to listen to my needs!

Anyway, I still need to get this in Xpress post tomorrow at lunch, but it’s late and I’m giving up the hunt until the morning when they will be in their places with sunshiny faces.

My tattoos are at the itchy part, aaaaahhhh! I keep scratching them without meaning to. Most of the scabby has already fallen off, it’s just those last bits that are just hanging on, I can see a couple places that might need touch ups, but they look pretty good. I can’t see my neck one very well though.

Health, Psychiatric Industry

A sad anniversary

Four years ago at around this time I was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Saint Luc Hospital in downtown Montreal. Every anniversary that comes around involves a lot of mixed feelings in me. The nice part is realizing I’ve spent four years since then outside of any institutional settings, even though I was told that I would probably have to go back there three more times, or once a year for the rest of my life. Since being told to scale back expectations of what I could accomplish in my life, I’ve gone back to school and finished my BFA. I’ve written a feature screenplay. I’ve become involved in the Crazy Community. I’ve curated programs for queer film festivals. I’ve continued giving artist talks. I’ve made more videos which are being screened internationally. I have so often felt like giving up and giving in, but I keep trying. Sometimes I feel like I’m going nowhere, and then sometimes I feel everything is happening as it should.

The anniversary is hard though. It brings up a lot of feelings about how I was treated during my code red level of crazy. I think what has upset me the most about it is people demanding that I be grateful for being put in there. Sometimes when I try to talk about the abuse that happened there people just go “Ehn, I don’t want to hear about it,” and in the next breath will tell me some bizarre thing I did like try to drink hand cream, which I don’t remember at all. It’s embarrassing. I often wonder what it would be like for people to do that about other health issues, like making fun of a Poz person for the time they lost control of their bowels, or ridiculing an epileptic who has tonic clonic seizures.

The creepiest part of the anniversary is the knowledge that I could be forced to go through that again. I asked my Aunt once who was also hospitalized way back when she finally got over her hospitalization. She said it was just in the last year. That’s at least 30 years of healing. It does take a really long time to heal from psych wards, and that’s why I don’t think they are a good idea as they operate today. I think they should be abolished and a more humane system put into place, like one that involves temporary supervised housing in a residential area. They could still have nurses and orderlies, just make it more like a normal living situation. And those pdocs only ever breeze in for an hour of patient to doctor appointments anyway. Compounding someone’s mental health issues with an additional layer of PTSD is fucked up man. Also, if someone is upset ask them why, even if they are in a mental health crisis they can usually still explain what the trouble is.

I’ve written about what it’s like to be in a locked ward before, but I recently found an amazing description of it from Ballastexistenz’s blog which I think says it all.

In the meantime, this anniversary lasts until around about Valentines Day, so I’m going to be taking it easy (read: smoke more pot). I’m going to use this anniversary to contemplate on my feelings around it and try to come up with a way to do some more advanced healing on the subject. I don’t know any other people with diagnosed M.I.’s in Saskatoon except for family, but it’s different talking to someone outside the family about it. I do have a friend who hears things too though, so at least I have someone to chat with who understands where I’m coming from more than most. We can even laugh about weird things we’ve heard, or ask each other if there really is a noise. She’s pretty cool, it’s true it’s true. I just think she’s tremendous.

She’s also the one who gave me a shit load of health supplements to boost my immune system, which has gone to crap during all of 2006. It started with a two week flu where I actually wondered if I would die, and then after that any cold that came along I would get. ANYTHING. I’d be healthy for a week or two and something else would hit. The last year was pretty stressful, with a bad job, the death of my cousin Chris in an industrial accident, the fact that I was living in Saskatchewan after nine years in Vancouver, being in close proximity to family again (which I hate to say, are overly dramatic, we’re the Desperate Cuthands), on and on.

It was, as the Queen would say, Annus Horriblis. Anyway, right, so she gave me all these health supplements and I have to say they’re working. I’m taking vitamin C, oil of oregano, anti-viral liquidy stuff with Clinically Proven echinamide, multivitamins, and cod liver oil. She is probably the only person in the world who could actually compel me to take cod liver oil. She even made me eat a fish egg sushi roll, which if you know how fussy I am is a remarkable feat. She should get a medal, really. I’ve still picked up about three colds in the month I’ve been taking it, but they go away after a couple days and aren’t nearly so severe. So I’d say it’s working. But this morning I woke up with a sore throat again and got frustrated. So now I’ve added Reishi mushrooms to my regimine. Reishi is supposed to be like, the granddaddy of immune boosting supplements. It’s used in people with Lupus, cancer, and HIV, it’s just that good. So we’ll see what happens. I also have to start eating better, I flake when it comes to the fruits and veggies, and I could use some more legumes too. I’m still sort of worried I have an immune system related illness. I should see my doctor about that. I had my HIV test and sadly I haven’t had sex since, so I know it’s not HIV.

If I was still on the West Coast I know a Coast Salish person would probably chase me around trying to get me to eat Oolican grease to fix what ails me. And then I would have to eat it and make yummy faces so as not to offend. I’ve avoided the Oolican issue the entire time I was in BC, so I hope it doesn’t come up. Oolicans are sardine like fish which have a VERY strong taste, anyone who can eat Oolican grease is like, so brave. Even braver than the most hardcore SM bottom.

Oolican grease BDSM. Wow, that would be bizarre.

Aboriginals, Humour

NDN Humour

The CIA has an opening for an assassin.
After all the background checks, interviews & testing were done, there were 3 women finalists…
a Navajo, an Ojibway and a Mohawk.

For the final test, the CIA agent took the Navajo woman & handed her a gun…
“We must know that you will follow your instructions, no matter what the circumstances. Inside this room you will find your husband sitting in a chair. Kill him.” The Navajo woman said, “You can’t be serious. I couldnever shoot my husband.” The agent said, “Then you’re not the right woman for this job. Take your husband and go home”

The second woman, an Ojibway, was given the same instruction. She took the gun & went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. Then she came out with tears in her eyes, “I tried, but I can’t kill my husband”. The agent said, “You don’t have what it takes. Take your husband and go home.”

Finally, it was the Mohawk woman’s turn. She was given the same instruction to kill her husband. She took the gun & went into the room. Shots were heard… one shot after the other. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet, the door opened slowly and there stood the Mohawk woman. She wiped the sweat from her brow….
“This gun is loaded with blanks!!” she said, “so I had to beat him to death with the chair.”

*****************

It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets and, when he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the weather was going to be.

To be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. Being a practical leader, he decided to seek advice from experts.

He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the coming winter going to be cold?” “It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,” the meteorologist responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again. “Is it still going to be a cold winter?” he asked.

“Yes,” the man again replied, “it’s going to be a very cold winter.

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. “Are you absolutely sure that this winter is going to be very cold?” he asked for a third time.

“Absolutely,” the weatherman replied. “In fact, it’s going to be one of the coldest winters ever!”

“How can you be so sure?” the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied, “The Indians are gathering wood like crazy.”

*************

The old man was on his deathbed. He had only hours to live when he suddenly smelled the scent of bannock wafting into his room.

Aaahhhh… He loved bannock more than anything else in the world.

With his last bit of energy, he pulled himself out of bed. Down the stairs and into the kitchen he went. There was his beloved wife, kneading the dough for a new batch. As he reached for one, he got smacked across the back of his hand with the wooden spoon his wife was holding.

“Leave them alone!” she said. “They’re for the funeral!”

***************

Indian Heaven

Three Indian women died and were brought before the Great Spirit for judgment. The Great Spirit said,”I will let you into paradise if the beliefs you lived by were proper. Tell me what you believed when you were alive.

“The Cree woman said, “I have always believed in the Grandfathers and the Generations, and that is how I lived my life.” “Fine,” said The Great Spirit. “You may enter paradise and sit beside me.”

What did you believe?” he asked of the Ojibway woman “I have always believed in Goodness, and I have tried to live my life in a good way.”
“Fine! You may also enter paradise and sit beside me.”

Then he turned to the third woman, a Mohawk. “And what do you believe?” The Mohawk woman said, “I believe you’re sitting in my chair!”

*****************************

An eccentric billionaire wanted a mural painted on his library wall, so he called in an artist. Describing what he wanted, the billionaire said, “I am a history buff, and I would like your interpretation of the last thing that went through Custer’s mind before he died. I am going out of town on business for a week, and when I return I expect to see it completed.

Upon his return, the billionaire went to the library to examine the finished work. To his surprise he found a painting of a cow with a halo. Surrounding this there were hundreds of Indians in various stages and different positions of making love. Furious he called the artist in.

“What the h*** is this??” screamed the billionaire.

“Why, that’s exactly what you asked for,” the artist said smugly.

“No! I didn’t ask for a mural of pornographic filth, I asked for a mural of the interpretation of Custer’s last thoughts!”

“And there you have it,” said the artist, “I call it ‘Holy cow, look at all those f***ing Indians.'”

*********************

A friend of mine who lives in Saskatoon called 911 the other day. The voice on the message answering said:

“If you’ve been assaulted by an ndn press 1”

“If you’ve been robbed by an ndn press 2”

“If you’ve been robbed and assaulted & don’t know who did it, PLEASE come down to the station and we will find the ndn that did it & we will have a detailed sketch of that individual!”

Disability Rights

I am not responsible for your discomfort

I am still thinking about the fact that we as a society are still more concerned about protecting the sensibilities of the non-disabled than the rights of the disabled.

Anyone with disabilities will have a whack of stories to tell you about fucked up encounters with the temporarily abled. My friend Preston, who is blind, had some really weird stories from when he went to Germany this summer. In the airport his cane was x-rayed no less than three times, and when he went to board the flight his cane was actually taken away. What did he do to protest? He deliberately walked into a wall. He sees shapes and light, so he knew it was there, but he’s a cheeky guy who isn’t afraid of confronting people with their own weird shit around his disability. When he was in Germany people kept buying him beers because they had never met a blind person before, most of them are kept out of sight of the general public. Sometimes even we forget how different his life is. Over the holidays my cuz and I dropped by his house one evening and all his lights were off. We weren’t sure anyone was home, but he was puttering around in there. None of his roommates were around, so he didn’t need the lights on.

And I also think of friends I’ve had who have been in wheelchairs and how people assume they can push them around without even asking if that’s what they need at that moment. A woman I mentored in video even had someone say “Aren’t you glad you brought your own chair” when she was at an event with limited seating.

Having an invisible disability is weird too, I can pass if I have to, and a lot of people with M.I.’s (mental illnesses) keep it extremely quiet so as not to deal with the stigma that comes along with it, believe me, everyone is always surrounded by people with mental illnesses, we’re a quarter of the population. But I’m not the kind of person who tries to make my life easier because of other’s prejudices. I’ve had so many stigmatized identities already that one more was like, “okay, I’ll take this fight on too, may as well.” If people ask me why I hate Montreal I’ll say because Montreal psych wards suck. If people ask why I was in the psych ward I’ll own up to the fact that I had a major manic psychotic episode. If people tell me I’m not really crazy because I’m too smart or I look normal or whatever I will emphatically assert that I do indeed have this particular disability.

I’m kind of in your face about my disability, because I think the more people see functioning “normal” people with mental illnesses, the less prejudiced they will be. And it’s true, we’re everywhere. CEO’s can have bipolar disorder, along with artists, writers, thinkers, teachers, high level politicians, PhD candidates and filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola.

And even though I’m functioning and can pass in daily life, I also think that people with more obvious M.I.’s should be treated with dignity just as well. Even if someone is having a conversation with you about being the Son of God and they’re blinking constantly doesn’t give you the right to laugh and make fun of them. Nor does it give you the right to permanently institutionalize them because they make others uncomfortable.

When I was first getting diagnosed my state of mind was explained as “excessive happiness” and that my being too happy “made other people uncomfortable.” Having my disability be explained in terms of it’s effect on others was probably why I bucked my diagnosis so much. Had I been told about what the symptoms of mania are and what was going on with my body and how bipolar disorder works, I probably would have had an easier time and I probably wouldn’t have tongued my meds so much. The fact was, however, that my own medical crisis was dramatically extrapolated into the way it was affecting the people around me and how that was my fault. The feelings others were having were worth more than the feelings I was having. I was making people uncomfortable. I was being a huge burden in terms of time people had to invest during my hospitalization. Having a legal aid lawyer to advocate for me so I could get into an english speaking hospital at the very least was considered an insignificant and ridiculous proposition, and a waste of $250.

And then there’s that creepy thing that happens when I out myself to temporarily able people. It’s as if a great relief washes over them because now I’m not a human, and now they assume I am intellectually diminished, and now whatever I have to say can be downplayed as me being “crazy.” It’s called being Othered, and it happens to people with disabilities all the time. There but for the Grace of God go I, how many times have we heard people say this?

Kay Redfield Jameson, a psychiatrist with bipolar disorder herself, has been asked if given the chance she would live without bipolar. I’m paraphrasing, but she said it best. “I would not be able to feel as deeply, to love as passionately.” She goes on to say that the accomplishments of those with mental illnesses have altered and formed our world so much that there may even be a benefit to having something like bipolar disorder, and to get rid of it might be of detriment to the world at large.

Even something as noble as spirituality and religion has been formed by persons with M.I.’s. This doesn’t make these thoughts or concepts less valid, rather it suggests people with M.I.’s may truly be accessing spiritual truths through what is too often pathologized completely as bizarre and meaningless behaviour. I am reminded of what Art Speigleman (creator of Maus) once said about his own psych ward experience and mental health crisis. A friend advised him “I know we’re all the same person, but you’re not supposed to tell anyone.” It’s very much the same for me. When I looked like I was at my craziest, when people assumed my brain was just no longer there, I was on the most profound journey to spiritual awakening than I have ever had before or since. I still carry those truths with me even now.

And what do we know? Ashley might be having the most profound journey to an understanding of the universe than we could ever hope to comprehend. Not all knowledge can be transmitted in terms of language or art or books. Sometimes it really is as simple as seeing a Buddhist teacher demonstrate a zen understanding by turning a flower.

Not only that, but as the technology develops so does the ability for people to communicate who otherwise haven’t been able to. A friend of mine who worked a great deal with special needs people said the first thing and the most important to teach was a no command. And it is important. We can ask Sky was she needs or wants and she’ll shake her head until we get to the real thing she’s been after. We can ask her if she has to go to the bathroom and she can say no. I wonder if Ashley’s parents have taken the time to figure out a no signal for Ashley to use, and even more than that, how they could possibly convey what their intentions were so that she could say no or not. And just because she can’t say no, doesn’t mean it’s okay to go ahead.

Which is really what it comes down to. How can we get to a point where when a disabled person says no, that will be respected? Even my disability involves times when my utterance of No is disregarded. Making sure I’m cared for the way I want involves living wills and Ulysses Clauses, and even then the psychiatric system disregards these.