Hand-Crank Paper

Don't ask me to speak aloud.
There are switches to
Fill in blanks
In cadence
Imprecise and chopped together
From your scraps.

Double time my interpretation into
Auditory stimulation of
Communication centers
Beyond the inherent
Protocol for the duration of
The mechanism.

(music boxes cranked fast
Distort tunes
Throw off gears
And break springs. )

I need no words

I need no words
To fly
To scream or to
Let you know yes
To communicate
Create build love empower.


Words are only involved
Because you would call me
Storyless
Deny my oppression as real
And yeah this is bending
Into it but


You never would learn
Without your own
Supports and adaptations.


Maybe your over dependance
Is your own damn
Limit of "vision."



----

Written in response to "typical" language processing privilege by otherwise awesome community storytellers, Allied Media Conference in Detroit, June 29th, 2012

Echoed at 3 and 24

My niece has been

echoing and copying

everything lately. She copies

words from

upset teens on TV-

"My life, my family no

one cares about my life!"-

when she is

upset and

Bounces across the room

in joy joy joy

with words from

Lilo and Stitch on her lips.

But she's 3, and

so it's normal for her

at that age to echo

echo echo echo

words.

I can't find the words

to say everything and

so I send her, him copied words

of my self

doubt- "Fast as You Can

run free yourself from me"-

and cite, cite, recite the words

from songs

saying I

Love "Something", "I Want

You, you so bad"

bubbling the beatles and

Fiona and Adele and raging

Rise Against As I

"Pulled on these

bootstraps so hard

that they broke." at

24, it's a pathology.

________

Written in Response to Julia's blog post, Metaphors Are Important: An Ethnography Of Robotics, as a comment. The following songs are echo'd in this: Fast As You Can by Fiona Apple; Something and I Want You (She's So Heavy) by the Beatles; Disparity By Design by Rise against. Links are to Youtube videos with the lyrics on screen.

In response to a statement on class privilege that happened to be ableist

[Image is text on a slate: “I do not care what you drive, Where you live. If you know someone who knows someone who knows someone. If your clothes are this years cutting edge. if your trust fund is unlimited. If you are A-list B-list or never heard of you list. I only care about the words that flutter from your mind. Ther are the only thing you truely own. They are the only thing I will remember you by. I will not fall in love with you Bones and Skin. I Will not fall in love with the places you have been. I will not fall in love with anything but the words that flutter from your extraordinary mind.”]

Okay, I get that
You are giving a valuable lesson
about class and love and all that
shit our society builds burdens out of.
I get it, I do.

BUT.

When you reduce people
and what you are able to love to
words “fluttering” out our minds
You are building a system based
on mindless Ableism-
Demonstrating your “able-minded”
Typical processing privilege.

I can never claim to know
where when or how you learned your
words, your language, that which flutters
out your brain into things so easy for a
world in which you are “normal” to Understand
and to get meaning out of.

BUT

That doesn’t mean I can’t tell you
EXACTLY how much bull shit it is
to assume that’s how I or Anyone
else gained language, How we think
how we process our world.

Let me tell you how
when I speak it is with borrowed words
trying to figure out what must be said
to communicate the WORDLESS NESS of
the thoughts and concepts in my mind.

I am not an empty void in here- I have amazing
Twisting, entwining, and vast thoughts which
I may NEVER be able to fully translate into
your “word language.” Years of trying mean
I have images of words trying to dance with
the pure thoughts I have- a brutal habit
that allows me to survive your world
with my apparently non-“extraordinary” mind.

So don’t reduce me, my thoughts, my feelings,
my being into words.

Don’t do it to the
random passer by, don’t do it to the
young man who desperately tries
to make up for translation brain errors
by assuming that gaining xyz will
allow him to pass in a world that
would call his inability to articulate
all his thoughts properly as
Vapid, or as sheep like.

Don’t do it to the girl who can’t speak
at all, and wants the status her lack of words
denies her while she taps at
her Assistive device to let you or her
friend know what she wants in her
coffee order.

Is it wrong to value people based on
class markers? I’ll be the first
to agree with you there in my
woman-formed body and torn
thrift store dress.

But my agreement with that
doesn’t mean I won’t
call you out on your own shit.