300 words about the attached reading due in 1 hour

“Living Under Circe’s Spell” By Matthew Soyster

Newsweek

1993

“Life is brief, time’s a thief." This ribbon of pop lyricism keens from an an apartment-house radio

into the hot afternoon air. Across the street I am sprawled in the gutter behind my minivan, bits of

glass and scrap metal chewing at my knees and elbows, a cut on my hand beginning to well crimson.

There has been no assailant, no wound except to my psyche. I'm just a clumsy cripple whose legs

buckled before he reached his wheelchair. A moment ago I yanked it from my tailgate, as I've done a

thousand times. But when it spun off at a crazy angle I missed the seat and slumped to the ground.

Now the spasms start, shooting outward from the small of my back, forcing me prone, grinding my

cheek into the asphalt. What will I look like to the first casual passerby before he catches sight of the

telltale chair? A wine-soaked rummy? A hit-and-run victim? Maybe an amateur mechanic checking

the rear suspension, wrong side up.

I'm too young and vital looking to be this helpless. I shrink from the inevitable clucking and concern.

Then again, this isn't the best neighborhood. The first person to come along may simply kick me and

take my wallet. No wonder I'm ambivalent about rescue, needing but not wanting to be discovered.

With detachment I savor the hush of this deserted street, the symphony of birdsong in the treetops.

I am trying to remember Rilke's line about waiting without hope, because hope would be hope for the

wrong thing. Instead, that idiot TV commercial for the medical alarm-pager keeps ringing through

my brain: "Help me. I've fallen and I can't get up."

It was only a matter of time. I've known for months that my hair's-breadth maneuvering would

eventually fail me. For years, in fact. When I first learned that I had multiple sclerosis I was a

marathon runner and whitewater-rafting guide, a cyclist and skier, the quintessential California

golden boy. Cardiovascular fitness had long since become our state religion. I lived for and through

my legs.

But that's only the ad-slick surface of the California dream, the sunshine without the shadow. The

town I live in is also the mecca of the disabled, the home of the Independent Living Movement, the

place where broken people come to patch together their dignity and their dreams.

Yin and yang. In Berkeley, there are wheelchair users on every corner. Propped in sagging hospital-

issue chairs. Space-age sports chairs. Motor-driven dreadnoughts. When I could still walk, I crossed

the street to avoid them. What an odd tribe they seemed, with their spindly, agitated limbs, always

hurtling down the avenue on some manic errand.

How could I imagine my own swift decline? A few months or years passed. Soon I was relying on a

cane, then crutches, and finally-after many thigh-bruising falls and a numbness so intense it turned

my legs to driftwood-a wheelchair. My response to these limitations was compensation and denial. I

thought I could become a disabled Olympian: wheelchair racing, tennis, rugby. I thought I could go

on as before.

“Living Under Circe’s Spell” 2

Wrong again. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all able-bodied people are alike, but each disabled person is

crippled in his own way. MS not only played havoc with my upper-body strength and agility; it

clouded my mind and sapped my energy. I could totter a few steps supported at both wrists, but my

days in the winter surf, high peaks and desert canyons were over.

So what is it like to spend your fife forked at the waist, face-level with children? The syndrome has

been amply described. People see through me now, or over me. They don't see me at all. Or they fix

me with that plangent, aching stare: sympathy.

They offer too much assistance, scurrying to open doors, scrambling out of my way with unnecessary

apologies, or they leave me no space at all, barking their shins on my foot pedals. My spirit rallies in

the face of such humiliations; they have their comic aspect. What disturbs me most is not how others

see me, but how I've lost my vision of myself

Growing crippled is a bitch. First your body undergoes a strange enchantment. Circe's spell. Then

your identity gives way. You become someone or something other, but for a long time you're not

sure what that other is.

Along the way, I've had to give up activities and passions that define me, my safe position in society,

my very sense of manhood. In our species, the pecking order is distinctly vertical. True for women.

Doubly true for men. A man stands tall, stands firm, stands up for things. These are more than

metaphors. The very act of sitting implies demotion. Anyone who's witnessed boardroom politics

knows this much. Have a seat, barks the boss. It's not an invitation, it's an order.

All of this brings me back to the gutter, where I lie listening to birdsong. Recognizing but not

apologizing for the obstinacy that landed me here. For months my friends and family have watched

my legs grow weaker. They've prodded me relentlessly to refit my van with a wheelchair lift in order

to avoid just this disaster. But I've refused.

Twice a day at least, I've dragged my reluctant legs from beneath the steering column, hauled myself

erect beside the driver's seat, inched my way down the roof rail to the rear stowage. And removed the

chair by hand, standing.

Why have I clung to this ritual, knowing it's dangerous and futile? It's the only task I rise for anymore,

in a sitting life. For a moment in the driver's door-way, I'm in control, unreliant on technology or

assistance, upright. Or so I've told myself But that moment is so fragile, the control so illusory.

When the time comes to change, I've said, I'll know.

Now I know.

I feel the lesson, sharp as the rap of a Zen master's stick. Lying in the hot gutter, I take a deep breath

and my whole body relaxes. Tuning in to Rod Stewart's tinny wisdom from the window. Listening

for a passing car or pedestrian.

Waiting.

HOMEWORK JOURNAL #8: In a 300-word analysis, describe, in detail, the writer’s attitude about

the disabled before he, himself, became “a clumsy cripple.” (Submit to DROPBOX)