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Blog started in Jan 2005: 1st entries for Write in Every Genre. Then the REAL ME begins |
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It Hurts When I Stop Talking Sometime in Fall of 1998, when a visit from Dad was infrequent, and primarily at the mercy of his 88 Toyota making the 50 mile journey, I was being treated to lunch. The restaurant was my choice, I think. Sisley Italian Kitchen at the Town Center mall was somewhere my dad had not yet tried, so that was my pick. Either I was being treated to the luxury of lunch and adult conversation without my husband and 5 year old son in tow, or that's just how the moment has lodged in my memory. The more I think about it, they probably were there, but enjoying the Italian food too much to bother interrupting. Daddy and his lady friend at the time, Anne, came up together and made a day of it with me and the family. We were eating together and talking about some of my scripts, stories, coverages, poems and other creative attempts that really were not seeing the light of day. I think I'd just finished a group reading of The Artist's Way and was in a terribly frenetic mood over my writing. I think I'd just given them an entire rundown on a speculative Star Trek script. My Dad asked me point blank, “Why don’t you write it?? Anne agreed. It sure sounded like I wanted to write it. Why wasn't I writing seriously? It's what I'd set out to do when earning my college degree in Broadcasting many years earlier. Heck, I should, I agreed non-verbally. “I will.” But, I didn’t. Blogs can be wild, unpredictable storehouses of moments, tangents, creative dervishes, if you will. I'm getting a firmer handle on my creative cycle. My mental compost heap (which is a catch phrase from Natalie Goldman or Julia Cameron - I can't think which, right now) finally seems to be allowing a fairly regular seepage of by-products. That may be a gross analogy, but I give myself credit to categorize my work in raw terms. It proves that I'm not so much the procrastinating perfectionist that I once was. Still, I always seem to need prompts and motivation. Being a self-starter is the next step. My attempt to keep up in the Write in Every Genre Contest at the beginning of the year seemed like a perfect point to launch the blog. |
| A few hours ago, I sat down to make a blog entry, spurred by my personal resolve to create daily. I had a topic, but being on my computer aided me in becoming sidetracked by not one, but two shopping events (one exploratory, related to an estate auction, and one completed for items the newly set up household is needing). So, instead of giving myself two hours to a "daily" deadline, I only have four minutes. I even sidetracked myself with a quick delve into biographic information about Diane Arbus, and I have no recollection how that happened. My topic is one I had many thoughts about during our strictest lockdown weeks in 2020, when I realized how easily disenfranchised all of us became, but especially those with disabilities. Due to the public health crisis, public restrooms almost everywhere were unavailable. Places to sit were blockaded or removed. We were asked to resort to impossible discomfort, restriction and uncontested loss of access and/or accessibility (or at least outside the expectations of ADA compliance we'd had for at least a twenty-year comfort zone). I do remember being in college during the first decade of global AIDS fear. I don't recall public restrooms being blockaded for that, and scientifically during 2020, it made little sense to restrict access to the degree it was, for as long as it was. Even as California has an approaching calendar date for "reopening fully," I think public restrooms will be rethought by businesses. The food services crews that have worked through the pandemic include many individuals who weren't even trained to stock and clean the restrooms, so if they do not have to, many businesses may just decide it is unnecessary, and continue to block access to everyone. As a woman with a mobility disability, who has worked in the field and relies on highway rest stops, grocery store ladies rooms, or even the gender neutral toilet in a Jack in the Box, or Starbucks, and has found none being made available, I wonder if any dare to bring this to their government officials? Just sitting for longer periods of time, I believe, made me lose function, muscle mass, core strength. Nations, States, and Counties really should be informed that the restrictions "for our own good," took us backwards. Many have function and confidence to regain in the world outside our own door, and most importantly, reestablish and reinforce with our leaders how easily the citizenry can lose their trust when decades-long advances in civil rights are so readily rolled back. |
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