Monday-- Sleeping on an Island

I was reading more Abbey last night, more about the Utah desert as it was before the Industrial Tourism engineers got
a hold of maps of it and turned it into paved roads leading out into the wilds. His words made sleep a very long
time coming. I laid up there in the bed next to the man who can sleep through anything, pondering the irony of read
ing about the desert in the middle of an island surrounded by the salt water of Casco Bay.

I have always wanted to sleep on an island. The islands that I had in mind are surrounded by lakes in the
Adirondacks. One of the islands in the middle of Cranberry Lake would do nicely. One of the ones surrounded by
Pharoah Lake with a view of the most holy Split Rock better yet. Perhaps it is not too late and I will still get my
chance.

This morning though I contented myself with sitting on the fractured rocks along Fisherman's Beach with views of the
tiny uninhabited islands dotting the bay. There are bigger islands which are owned by the Industrialists (a nod to
Abbey for it is his word and not my own) and which have some sort of tourist trade. One has a church and offers
retreats. A couple others are not really islands-- for roads and bridges connect them to the mainland-- but have
become bastardized in their attempt to pry some of the money out of the soft hands of those who come to Maine to
escape the city. They are incapable of leaving the city behind. They come in their gas guzzlers up 91 or 95 with
their fancy clothes and their fancy dogs and their kids who have never known the joy of true silence. They come to
rent out the quaint little houses or stay in the fancier hotels. They eat out at the restaurants where no locals
can be found enjoying the fare. A few of the locals are stuck in the hot kitchens and a few more are waitressing.
But none are customers.

At the end of Harpswell Neck (just past one of the uninhabited little islands in view of Fisherman's Beach) there is
a store called Land's End. I have been there. We've gone by car several times. Several roads and a couple hours
it takes to get there. We rolled through sleepy and not so sleepy little towns, inhaled the exhaust of other cars on
the not-free-freeway, been casually tempted by the overpriced little antique shops along the way. Alas, inflated
prices for not so antique treasures. Land's End is three floors of kitch. Yup. From spiney dried out blow-up
fishies on nylon string to witch balls which have never been handled by a witch to Christmas balls and sweatshirts.
Land's End is not a place for the weary or the broke. Here I must confess that I myself have hunted for baubles
and shiney objects in the lie that is Land's End. Better I should have spent my time on the little beach outside,
studying the lapping of the gentle waves meeting rocky sand. But no. I too am a mere mortal, a consumer of frantic
factory-produced goods. I too am invested in the Lie which is the heart and soul of Amerika. The truth and the lie
can both be unpalatable and rotten as they hit the gastric juices.

It is to Portland that we shall venture toward the end of this week. Portland with its' Old Port and yes, some diners
and small restaurants where the locals can indeed be found as customers. There is a Starbucks there-- or Starpukes
as I like to render it. A comics store, toy stores, a few hippie shops, a travel agency. Cobblestone streets, public
transit buses, a park. Bookstores, art galleries, tall buildings where those who have made it work and rush out to
the local bistro during lunch hours. The bead and yarn store further away from the crowds, coin shops, lighthouses,
a private community, a ghetto where honest homey faces and twisted bodies wait on line for the soup kitchen to open
up.

Everyone needs a hobby I guess. I had an acquaintance back home whose hobby was to eat at a local soup kitchen. She
was not starving, had never really known physical hunger. She would donate money for her meal and talk about how
a soup kitchen meets the needs of the poor for socialization. I went with her once. This was not a hobby that I
found to be palatable.

Within the past half-decade, I myself have gone from finally having arrived with a fancy-enough middle management
position to the ranks of the disabled. The original plan, formulated by the nice neuropysch in another county was
that VESID would job coach me in a position cobbled together for me at my old place of employ given my new limitations
and problems heaped up upon my old ones. This was not to be. VESID took its time "accepting" me. Once accepted, I
was horrified to learn that the "counselor" assigned to me was someone that had been a co-worker years ago with whom
I had shared more than one joint and more than one beer. The employment officer from the brain injury hospital in
the other county whose job it really wasn't to help me out of the kindness of her own heart came up to my county to
meet with VESID and me. The second VESID counselor was notable for being a man and for having a handshake like a
slimey fish. The third put my case on hold for a year because I refused to get a return to work order from the doctor
after a routine for me vertigo attack. "What work?" I asked her the last time she had deigned to call me on the
telephone. The RCIL got the three thousand bucks for me that year anyways. (I had gone to the other "choice" I had
for job services but that agency was an outgrowth of the sheltered workshop in town. During that interview, it
became rapidly apparent that their sole idea for my employ was factory work. "How do you know you can't manage
factory work?" one particular professional would-be helper person full of idiocy had demanded of me, "Have you been
tested for it?" Geesh. "I have a traumatic brain injury," I told him hotly. "That means No Open Machinery. No
Factory Work."). The fourth VESID counselor and the second job developer and I had met once this year, no explanation
offered of why my "case" had been put on hold without notification or of why I am suddenly judged to be healthy enough
to put up with their bullshit in spite of a lack of certification that I am indeed healthy enough to do so. No doctor's
note will be gotten from me.

The second job developer calls me once a month to nag me about giving her my resume so she can "advocate" for me and
also "needs" to meet with me. Well, I don't need to meet with her. I've quite frankly had enough of advocacy. And
no, I am no advocate. The two of them decided-- the second job handler and the fourth VESID counselor-- that I am
an advocate. But I am not an advocate. I am an investigator. That is who I am and that is what I wish to do. I do
not want to (nor am I physically capable of) become a companion to other disabled people via the agency within RCIL.
I am not willing to settle. If I cannot get a job that is meaningful TO ME, then VESID can go fuck itself and shove
the monies it is acquiring for dealing with my "case" up its crappy elongated rectal tunnel. Because VESID has not
helped me. I should not have to explain traumatic brain injury to these people whose middle names are all moron. I
should not have to point out that these things are in my records which they are so fond of keeping in notebooks. I
should not have to be ignored when I inquire about the possibility of taking a few courses at a community college (that
they would PAY FOR) in order to at least have a possibility of getting MEANINGFUL TO ME employment.

And so once again, or as always, I am in charge of my own rehabilitation. The system was set up to keep us down, not
to help us up and out. VESID in particular-- and my county is one of the worst for this-- cannot see beyond the
labels and the limitations to the investigating, idea-generating, individual that makes up the essence of who I am.
Contrary to the "individualized employment plan" that was drawn up in my name, it is not my limitations that I must
familiarize myself with. I am intimately acquainted with my limitations-- every blasted one of them. I have been
living with them, working around them when possible, sleeping, breathing, eating and moving them for the past five
and a half years. I need to focus on what I can do, not learn again and be swallowed by the things that I can't do.
And just in case my feelings are not clear here, a big fuck you goes out to VESID and all the help that is designed
not to help. For VESID sucks. Probably just as much as Abbey's Industrial Tourism sucks and my incipient consumerism
sucks. VESID sucks.

VESID counselors are fond of saying-- when excusing the slave labor that is sheltered workshops-- "Well, it's better
than sitting at home." No, it isn't. Yes I am a woman with disabilities. Yes, VESID has pigeon-holed me into the
category of multiply-disabled, severely disabled. True, my body does not bend. Yes, I have to go through mental
gymnastics in order to force my brain to think logically more times than I care to admit. True, I can only manage
ten minutes of housework at a time before I have to take a break. And yeah, the world is in constant motion. The
vision-induced vertigo ensures that my environment lurches around me counter-clockwise. To the left. The room I
am in, the landscape I find myself in, it all spins to my left. When I fall, I fall to my right. Yet I do not find
the wrongness that is inherent in the words "sitting at home." I have had plenty of time to do exactly that. And
from my perch on the back deck or the front porch or the side steps or the living room easy chair I have embraced
my time at home. I ponder these words. I turn them over in my brain-- still brilliant but slightly sideways-- Briella
is my brain's name now. I squeeze them, suck the juicy pulp out of them. And I the observer, the investigator, the fearsome
interrogator cannot find the fatality embedded in the words "sitting at home." I love my home. And I love my own
company. I am comfortable within my own skin, even with the stiffness, pain, limitations and so forth. Sitting at
home is not a leporous condition. It is not a disease or a dis-ease.

The place where I find my true self is away from the distractions of consumerism and the idle chatter. I have no fear
of myself. Like the queer poet Walt Whitman, I too celebrate myself. As a pagan and an atheist, I can do nothing
less. A sheltered workshop is a form of soul death. A sheltered workshop does not benefit us the Disabled by saving
us from facing ourselves. A sheltered workshop, just like VESID, benefits the folks at the top who run it, who draw
their salaries off our bloodied and hunched over backs.

When I was finally well enough to not need to sleep twenty two hours a day, I cultivated this new way of life. There
is a dog that requires walking and training and love, cats that desire my attention, elderly relatives who listen to
me and in turn I listen to them. There are still trees and woods and trails and water and air and sunlight and rain
in my life. I have bird feeders and a deck and tea to drink. I can take myself to a bookstore, out to eat with a
friend in places where locals go, run a load of laundry. I have blogs to write, art to create, a whole world to live
in and be conscious of and interconnect with. And there are books to read, places to explore. Several years ago, I
went off alone cross-country to places I'd never been before to retrieve pieces of my soul that had gotten lost. Deep
down within me, I feel another trip coming on. More dreams to dream. More silence to embrace. New places and people
to study and be in and with. I do not know where I shall go this time, nor how I shall afford to get there. I only
know that I am ready again for a journey to places that will at first be strange to me but then quickly also become
home. For like the snails that dot the little rocky places here by Casco Bay, I too carry my home on my back. My
place is everywhere and beyond.