i love people's willingness to get hype over dumb shit.
I was driving home today and pull up to a light. As i'm slowing down i 👁️👁️ lock 👁️👁️ eyes with the dude in the car next to me. I spring into action, this is the moment I've been waiting for.
Now, something you must know about me is I drive around with several small plastic 🦀crabs 🦀 on my dashboard, One: for the whimsy of it all and two: on the off chance i encounter another driver who i think could benefit from witnessing them.
This young gentleman was one such someone.
As i pull up, as previously stated, our eyes lock and I hold up
one☝️ finger☝️
Perplexed by my unprompted gesticulation, the young man rolls down his window, "what the devil could this perfect stranger be about to tell me?" he might have been thinking.
I present a singular dashboard crab, green and brown, homely but not without its charm.
I study his reaction, grinning encouragingly. He's nodding, obviously intrigued by my plasticine crustacean.
I wag my finger and shake my head, removing the crab from view. Confusion again, but he leans forward, invested. I have him now.
I grab my second dashboard crab, a rotund white and brown crab, easily the most beautiful of my crabs as it sports large discernible claws of an attractive size and silhouette.
✌️ TWO ✌️ i tell him.
He's cheering now, and rightly so, as these are delightful little beasts that anyone would be happy to encounter. But now comes the clincher, time to seal the deal.
My finger wags once more. He's awestruck, I have him completely enraptured. If a car had come and smeared us both into the pavement we would not have noticed, so wrapped up in my display were we.
I bring out my showstopper: a bright pink spider crab with delicately long legs the likes of which had never before nor since been seen in mid afternoon traffic.
As emphatically as i can express, I display all three of my dashboard crabs to this man, three fingers pressed triumphantly to the glass.
the guy is losing it in his car, mouth wide in what i assume to be a primal shout of crab derived excitement. His arms are pumping so vigorously its shaking his stationary vehicle.
We sit there, sharing in a moment of mutual jubilation, and then the light changes, and we move forward in line. He drives off, honking his horn in rapturous exultation,
and we part ways, exactly the same perhaps but changed nonetheless.
🦀
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Just realized that if only Poseidon went straight to Ithaca and asked for Odysseus, Penelope could do the biggest gamble of them all and get one of the suitors in SUCH DEEP SHIT.
Poseidon: "Odysseus of Ithaca! Tell me this instant where is this mortal who dared to hurt my son and try to lie about his name!
Penelope: ...
Suitors: ....
Penelope: *stops weaving*
Penelope: *pointing right at Antonius* There he is! This one is Odysseus, my husband and king of Ithaca! Please don't sink us, almighty god of the sea!
Antonius: What? I'm not Odysseus, I--
Penelope: Of course he would say that! He's a liar!
Poseidon: *has no reason to not believe her, wipes him out effortlessly*
Then Odysseus comes back like "It's me, Penelope! Your husband!"
Penelope: "No, you're not. From now on your name is Agamemnon the Greater and the new lover I marry to make king."
Odysseus: *grumbling* why after Agamemnon though...
AND HOW WOULD POSEIDON EVER KNOW?!
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i think what pisses me off the most is that last year, nobody had trouble going against russia. companies dropped everything so they could keep russians off their sites, to block them from their news articles and to sanction in other ways. eurovision kicked it out. even steam, discord, any fucking western apps or websites have been so willing to perform in ‘activism’. musicians and celebrities speaking out and country-blocking their work, and so much more. but now what? where is all of that now for israel? where are all the brands leaving the country to ‘protest’? where is anything? what pisses me off the most is that none of them have actually really cared about ukraine, ever, and none of them care about palestine now.
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.
three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.
two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.
their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.
one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.
i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.
i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.
and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?
you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.
a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.
someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.
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