I HAVE FALLEN 3 TIMES
I have fallen 3 times
once while Barry Manilow sang It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve.
once on a welcome mat.
once while sweeping.
I am in physical therapy for the last fall.
Just recently I stopped the crutches and the knee immobilizer.
I noticed people were nicer to me when I was on crutches, nicer than usual.
I mean strangers.
Being a bit of a wild-haired, hippie-looking; pin-wearing, hat-headed women,
I tend to stick out.
Total strangers asked me how I was doing with the crutches under my arms.
Young hip kids didn’t stick their tongues out at me.
It seemed people could relate to an injury
even if they couldn’t relate to my Free Peltier pin.
People could relate to a hobbling hippie better than a room full of anarchists
and purple wallpaper.
I wonder how it would have been if I had been in a wheelchair.
People can see themselves easily on crutches.
Not as commonly can they see themselves unable to stand up.
People are frightened by what they can’t see as ever happening to them.
Fear turns to hatred almost simultaneously.
People hate seeing what exists and is possible.
People do many things to cover up their vision, refusing to see.
During a recent war, people whispered right in front of me about my pins.
The pins were not specifically about a particular war.
They were political pins I wear all the time.
I don’t know how well the people could read the pins.
They stood in their corner clucking their prejudice at me,
their right wing stained with blood, talking about the merits of body bags.
They saw me as a threat to their comfort zone.
I was a symbol of a circus.
I was rope burns of a trapeze artist.
What if everyone actually is a one person pied piper?
They didn’t like the taste of the air after my song.
During the war I felt people almost decide to punch me.
I brought out extremes in people.
This was a day a hermit cried on my shoulder and said didn’t Nietzsche say
whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger?
He was playing frisbee with his dog but instead of frisbees,
they threw records
The dog caught Highway 61 Revisited.
The man caught Déjà Vu.
I saw a stack of Joni Mitchell records.
Some Leonard Cohen.
Some Jack Kerouac.
He said it’s good karma to fill the air with music.
Music not missiles is my motto.
Think it’ll catch?
I said it makes more sense than crystals.
He said the war gets to me.
I used a record needle to shoot up.
Now I realize I was just trying to breathe chords of joy again.
I thought injecting songs would make me happy.
All I had to do was be aware of the music and I became music.
Pretty trippy, huh?
He said outrun the liars.
They are so bent on mind control.
They are banning War and Peace.
They claim there never was a war.
I spent a day plastering flyers and shouting through a megaphone,
“Don’t feed the Pentagon!”
When people treat each other without compassion, we are adding to the military build-up.
There are no shortages of wars.
The war against the fat woman is a war that’s been waged by a diverse army,
from the idiot to the should have known better.
I say the war against the fat woman because this society
has different agendas for different genders.
The fat man has a beer belly which shows he has the luxury to sit in front of the TV
watching football games.
Acceptable American behavior.
The fat woman has no self control.
How can she expect to catch a man looking like that?
How could she let herself go that way.
Many times I have been teased for my looks or my weight or anything
and everything by men void of conventionality themselves.
They were looking for an easy scapegoat.
They needed to seem taller by stepping on someone.
Whether we like it or not,
Psychology spins insight in a collision course with our minds.
And sure I understand the doctor, the corporation, and the government are in cahoots
as they hand me a weight chart and say “Ellyn, you are ruining
the economy and the landscape cause you refuse to be like everybody else.”
What percentage of fat is destructive to health?
What percentage of teasing and hating is destructive to health?
Just what is normal?
I once read a book so great everyone should read it.
Shadow on a Tightrope edited by Lisa Schoenfielder and Barb Weiser.
It’s how fat separates humans.
It’s how fat brings people together.
It’s in finally seeing with your heart.
I once read a book so fantastic called In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen.
It’s how race separates humans.
It’s how race brings people together.
It’s in finally seeing with your heart.
I once read a book called Nice Jewish Girls edited by Evelyn Torton Beck.
It’s how sexual preference separates humans.
It’s how sexual preference brings people together.
It’s in finally seeing with your heart.
Hey I’ll spare you:
I’ve read a lot of books.
I hope people realize painful as my falls have been, they don’t come close
to the falls I’ve experienced when being knocked down by others.
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