Lorna, prime member of Team Filipina, is uncharacteristically determined when she asks me about my historical shoulder pain. How long did I have it, and how did I get over it? I sing the praises of physiotherapy. Lorna is fishing for information. She tells me that she doesn't like sitting around, doing nothing...being even slightly incapacitated. Which is what she fears, shoulder pain becoming shoulder trouble, becoming incapacity...and she's barely 60 years old. I listen attentively, nod affirmatively Read more [...]

'I can feel it,' Marlou said to me one day, a winter day, although the season hardly mattered. 'I can feel it spreading.'No further details required, cancer filling in not only the bodily cavities but the mind's fear spaces so readily that the listener automatically completes any descriptive sentence. Feel it. The body expanding. Interior parts never experienced now touching others. Followed by painful invasions. Then dryings and drippings. Followed by those pervasive, wrenching experiences of offness Read more [...]

Do Hollywood directors actually yell 'action' when the camera rolls? In this digital age, do cameras even roll? As for me, am I on a roll...or rolling to a stop? And if I knew either way, why would it matter? More to the point, what if a director...actually, the 1920s silent variety, complete with knickerbockers and megaphone...walked right through my open front door and yelled 'action' at me? Several times a day, in fact. Wouldn't this be good? I mean, really. For closely allied to FDR's famous Read more [...]

How has disability shaped my outlook? Someone asked me this, suggested I ponder the matter. Splendid. Except that it's a bit like living inside a hurricane. With so much to experience, who has time to ponder?Let us deconstruct a representative, albeit intense, moment in disabled time.Bedtime.  Accompanied by fatigue. The latter known to induce pilot error. Wheelchairs included. Which explains why in the course of readying myself for bed last night, whipping the chair around to head for the bathroom, Read more [...]

Why the day begins at 4:45 AM is anyone's guess, but certain anxieties have already begun creeping through the darkness, so what the hell. Some staring into space until the central heating kicks in at 5:30 AM, followed by more space staring, then dropping one leg, then the other, off the side of the bed, abdominals kicking into their muscular max, and I am sedentary. Notwithstanding, of course, standing. That is to follow, and it is a slow and delicate matter, the extension of the right paralyzed Read more [...]

Rolling down El Camino Real, there is nothing royal in the distance, except a royal pain in the arse. Orange worksite bunting is signaling me that some part of the way ahead is closed. Which it had better not be, not entirely, because I am not taking any shit when it comes to wheelchair access, not today. Which is a good thing. For me, definitely, and for the greater world, possibly. As for the latter, I could not care less at this moment. Out of my way. And if I do have to go out of my way for the Read more [...]