Phinicky Reality

It has been a while, some months since I have written an entry. I have a website underconstruction http://www.gnuzworks.com and my mind wants to wait until it is perfect, but my heart tells me the purpose is to leave a record of my progress through our social welfare system, and if I do, that’s good enough.

I go on the big boat from the island to Seattle to learn how to make my website from Nick at the Apple store. I take baby steps and then something clicks. It is discouraging and I get tired of looking like a grownup and barely being able to act like a baby. Cognitive time lapse: the reality most people live within – before my coma, I took my brain for granted, until the neurons were tangled like a mixed up switchboard – and it is so difficult to make some things make sense. Stevie Wonder said, “… seems so far away, because we’ve got so far to go.”

I am supposed to start swimming for physical therapy. I am so humiliated by the social work agency that I don’t want their help. They will give me a pass for one month, because “the pool is in limited supply.” I am trying to understand this: the parks department appoints the social service agency as gatekeeper for the disabled and indigent. They must by law, because they just built a new pool with federal moneys. And Helpline House says that they can only let someone into the pool so many times. I am trying to imagine how much water I use up, or how much of my dirt clogs the filters, or how much I distract the lifeguards while important people are drowning. This way I could see how their tickets are so limited in supply.

It is the same with the State program that provides my care. My COPES program. It took a court order to get them to accept me for service – I mean, why should they? You can’t see a brain injury, and if they don’t have to look at me, then maybe I could shrink wrap chicken parts for a living and then I would be okay – and you wouild think that would be the end of it.

Nooo. I call on the TTY. Tina hangs up. I call back and ask for reasonable accommodation. Tina says she is not going to let me ruin her day. I call back and ask for an interpreter. Tina says I have all the phone numbers I need. I call and ask for a supervisor. Tina hangs up, hangs up and hangs up. I aks Tina’s supervisor what kind of training she has had “I know how to answer calls and transfer someone”. The director of the unit, Mr. Early, tells me this is great training. Now I understand why deaf people say that it is natural to be deaf and not a disability. Americans think communication is a mechanical process. Like George Bush, you open your mouth and you will automatically make sense and communicate. When I call COPES and say I want to make a complaint to the State Human Rights Commission, or the US Department of Justice, they hang up on me. I suppose learning how to communicate with their clients would be ruining their day.

Judge Judy is yelling at someone for “being on welfare and taking advantage of the system”. We never think about the hundreds of thousands of beings who say they are making their living helping people. They are earning money, not making a living. If they were making a living, they would want to communicate with the people around them, not make them mad and say, “I work all day with people who don’t appreciate it… they don’t make any sense… then don’t know what they want… these sick people just act so phreeking sick… I know they don’t want help, because I have been trained to answser their calls and transfer them and they never make sense asking for anything…”

Franz Fanon wrote a book called The Wretched of the Earth. If I remember, the whole book mainly says, “If you put your foot on someone’s back, you will leave a footprint. If you push them down into the dirt, they will get dirt in their mouths. If your definition of wretched is someone with footprints on their back and dirt in their mouths, then these people are wretched.” But we all know that they weren’t born wretched babies. The question is, at what point did a child hold a gun to your head and plead to be made wretched.