People have asked me for twenty years now, because yes I am that old, why on earth I became a sign language interpreter. "I picked it out of a hat", is the answer I give. If the conversation continues and I am in the mood, I go one layer deeper, which is that there was nothing else in the hat*. I wanted to learn ASL and hang out with Deaf people and I had no idea where I would go with that. This is true, but idealized to make my whole life seem off the cuff. Ironically, it was and continued to be throughout the true formative years, high school through and past grad school. But really there is more to that single sentence.
The reason I don't say more about my motives and inspiration is because it is embarrassingly weak! My entire life's blood, sweat and tears; not only a career choice, but wrapping my brain around a second language and culture and social network that includes a completely deaf boyfriend of eight years was based on five personal life events** and a monumental event in deaf history.
Note: * there really was nothing else in the hat. a high school senior, I'd fortunately been a clean slate where I excelled at nothing and had no advising pressures from school or family. I chose my own major without contention.
**minor life events! they may as well have been free toys at the bottom of boxes of cereal.
One.
Someone gave me one of those 'learn sign language' fold-out pamphlets. I was 12 or 13. It was goldenrod paper. The alphabet, numbers 1-10, a few words, and a smiley face cover. That's it.
Two.
I watched a Hallmark made-for-TV movie called "Love is Never Silent". At this point, the only connection to this movie I have is the aforementioned pamphlet. Hardly qualifies me as linguistically competent. Yet I remember watching this movie as though I had a personal connection. I was already on the way.
Three.
I buy myself the book that everyone unfortunately started out with. If you know American Sign Language you know what I am talking about. The Joy of Signing. I do not recall what prompted me to buy it when I did. I started to teach myself sign this way. There are two problems with this method. The Joy is not real ASL. It is close, it is Signed English. You can read more about this somewhere else. The bigger problem is that I didn't know any deaf people. And flat, hand drawn pictures of hands with arrows pointing clockwise or left-to-right is no way to learn a visual and spatial 3-Dimensional language. Yet something compelled me to do so.
Four.
And then it happened. "Children of a Lesser God". The movie that gave a young actress named Marlee Matlin the first Oscar awarded to a Deaf actor. By the time it was shown on TV, I was 16. I know now that I, like many teenagers, thought I was the only hearing girl in the world to be somehow moved by a Hollywood movie glamorizing deafness as isolation and isolation as deafness. William Hurt learns sign language for the film where he works as a speech teacher at a high school for the deaf. Add dramatic instrumental music to underscore the point, and you got a whole generation of kids like me who thought they had found their calling. Looking back, I think I wanted to be Marlee and William, not really sure where the being deaf started and the being a hearing person who could sign ended. Which is ironically now as I type this, kind of where I am now, living with a deaf man.
Five.
Four and Five may be reversed but not really important. This has to do with dance. This has to do with the inspiration. My high school friend was a real ballet dancer, the lead in The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. Amy Goodelle. She invited me to see a modern dance performance at Hamilton College. You remember how it felt to go to a college event while in high school? Check it out - I had never seen a dance performance ever. I mentioned the ballet, I finally saw her in one of those the following year.
I cried when I saw the first piece. I cried the tears of beauty and grace, of amazement and embarrassment for not knowing, and for shit I didn't even know. I still don't. To this day, I cry at least once during any dance performance. I tear up just remembering a performance to 'Amazing Grace' by the Gallaudet Dance Company. And then. One girl came on and started to dance. There was no music. Direction coursed through me. I could teach dance to deaf people! I left on a cloud of determination.
Well of course it never occurred to me that one would have to know dance to teach it. By then I had already decided that I would be a speech teacher for the deaf. But even more than a movie and a dance and a pamphlet handed to me came yet another completely random event. However this event was not mine. It belonged to deaf people around the world.
Event.
In 1988, when I was a junior in high school, Gallaudet University shut down the entire campus and landed on the cover of Time Magazine with 'Deaf President Now'. Yet again, something happening which had nothing to do with me in even some kind of 6 Degrees of Separation pyramid scheme way hammered the final nail on my college major and life choices which I could relate to only because I had seen a movie about (fictitious) deaf people and could relate to rebellion because I was a teenager. I found out that the Gallaudet University protest, which really was a milestone according to most for deaf people around the world, was the inspiration for many of my generation to learn ASL and meet and somehow join the Deaf community.
Join.
Hat.
I majored in Speech and Language Pathology and took ASL 1 and 2. But I wanted to go to Gallaudet for graduate school, indeed planned to go nowhere else, and I did. I enjoyed and graduated from that major, but decided to go to graduate school for Parent-Infant Deaf Education because I learned that being a speech therapist wasn't going to get me in the deaf community. In fact, it would have the opposite effect. I wanted to be fluent in ASL and hang out with deaf people. I had no idea why.
I still don't. Realistically, I wanted to go to Gallaudet for all the wrong reasons. As a senior in college, I still hadn't socialized with too many deaf people. Gallaudet is the place to do it, but I was too nervous and obsessive when I got there. I did do it. I went from OK to really good, and from there took a long time with lots of breaks to get to fluent.
I have met hundreds of guys and girls just like me. Deaf wannabees. I still meet young versions of me. We just keep coming year after year. At least some people have better reasons. They grew up with a deaf neighbor. They work with a deaf person. I had an absurd xeroxed pamphlet, a book, two movies and a movement I wasn't part of.
I'm going for comedy here. the fact is that I love my life. I LOVE being an ASL Interpreter, which was the right career choice for me after all and I don't regret the extra degrees and years teaching to end up here. Deaf people shared their language and culture with me and they don't fucking have to, for all of us who came the same way that I came. And my partner of almost eight years is deaf as a rock. I sign at work and I sign at home, too. The novelty has worn off and now, honestly, I ask myself sometimes if I can spend the rest of my life with a deaf guy. To add the final bit of complexity, and ironically I am not alone but conventional in even this as well, that a lot of interpreters are really into music and play and perform in bands. For me, music was as strong a part of my life needs as ASL and the deaf community was. And now, I have given that up. What does this say about me and the direction I am headed?
There was nothing else in the hat. This sentence is true. And that's what I tell folks who ask me why I became an interpreter.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
skin is deep forget the beauty
Until I ended up with second degree burns on my wrist and arm I never have given the physiology of skin much thought. It was only a second or two on the radiator pole, but maybe because my skin was soaking wet and still standing in the shower? Dumb move on my part. I didn't notice the burn at first. No blood. As though the thin layers of skin had melted clean off, which I suppose they did.
At first it didn't seem to heal and every movement hurt. There was an inch long canyon of open skin that started to close after 4 days and that's when I took a photo. Nine days later we were telling our party guests about it since I was on the mend. Eleven days and I stopped bandaging the burn and now 3 weeks later there are still 2 scars as testament of the healing activity.
Until this burn I had never thought about how skin works. The expression beauty is only skin deep is misleading. I thought of skin starting at the most visible later of epidermis and that's it. I never realized skin works from the inside out. I wish I had put my arm under a 24-hour webcam. The skin closed up slowly and when I wasn't looking. It was a fascinating process I am sorry I didn't chart more closely.
At first it didn't seem to heal and every movement hurt. There was an inch long canyon of open skin that started to close after 4 days and that's when I took a photo. Nine days later we were telling our party guests about it since I was on the mend. Eleven days and I stopped bandaging the burn and now 3 weeks later there are still 2 scars as testament of the healing activity.
Until this burn I had never thought about how skin works. The expression beauty is only skin deep is misleading. I thought of skin starting at the most visible later of epidermis and that's it. I never realized skin works from the inside out. I wish I had put my arm under a 24-hour webcam. The skin closed up slowly and when I wasn't looking. It was a fascinating process I am sorry I didn't chart more closely.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
how I learned to play the flute
my story and experiences are not unique and my heart is hardened to pound out references to my naivete trailing like comet tails. these have kept me from writing the chapters of my story. tonight i may be in the mood to write. i will see what comes.
music became part of my life in 5th grade. i don't know why I chose flute. they passed around the slips of paper asking if you wanted to sign up for music lessons, the free ones, in school and what instrument did you want to choose. i don't remember the conversation or choosing flute. i had no knowledge of music of any sort before this time. perhaps my parents chose the instrument they thought would sound the least butchered being practiced in the house.
we were taught to play it first only on the mouthpiece. after a week or two we tried holding and blowing with the entire flute assembled. mr. DiMeo always smelled of stale coffee and if he demonstrated on youro flute then that smelled of stale coffee, too. the first song I learned to play, in the beginner flute book, because it is 3 notes, was Mary Had a Little Lamb. I remember mastering it and playing it for my parents, in my pajamas, in front of the bathroom mirror. I would come to always enjoy practicing in the bathroom. good acoustics. after just a few months, my teacher told my parents I should take private lessons because I was good. I had no knowledge of this. I know that I was able to learn songs by ear and from memory. i kept a list of the notes that I knew, how to write them in notation and the songs that I had figured out (in some cases I didn't know the names of them, like the opening bit of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons). I wrote these in a gold pen in my free Hello Kitty notebook. some times with stickers. Privately I thought I was hot shit for this reason, not for my flute playing. THe songs I knew mostly were TV theme songs like fucking 'Dynasty'.
We were renting this flute from the local store. My parents thought were were leasing it which meant your payments added up to purchasing it. After one year when we didn't rent it during the summer vacation months the store considered it a break in agreement and cancelled the renting total. THis pissed my father off, so when fall rolled around he did not rent me a flute. Apparanetly this was the end of my musical hobby.
I should note at this point that I didn't have any extra curricular activities. Though I would have liked ice skating lessons which, who knows, could have brought me into the fold of popularity on at least a sub-level, my parents didn't go that way. I enjoyed playing the flute but now it was about money. I don't remember caring much about it but perhaps I did complain. My father was into auctions at that time, was going every week and would buy shit and stuff the garage and basement with his purchases to hopefully turn a profit in a future garage sale. He bought me a small organ. Of course I couldn't play this in school band I protested but I could still satisfy my talent for figurng out songs by ear by memory. After a few months longer still without a flute, my father told me if I really wanted one I could buy one with my own money. I placed an ad in the local pennysaver (if you even know what one of those are, a newspaper version of Craigslist) which I still remember: "WANTED: new or used flute in good condition". I paid $100 for this flute. I have no idea where I got the money from. It is possible that my parents paid for it after all but knowing my dad how I do, I doubt it, so maybe I did have it saved or something. I remember my aunt and uncle were at the house when I returned with it. They wanted me to play something, but after 4 or 5 months I could barely remember how to use it.
It came back and I really got into it. I bought some popular sheet music for the time, it is so embarrasing now. I had the music to Phil Collin's 'Against All Odds' and Madonna's Lucky Star! I knew they weren't flute pieces but I didn't play other instrument. I went for classical music and bought hard stuff, really poured over it and made notes and practiced. Partially because I had a built-in audience which were the poker games in our basement one-two nights weekly. These were serious poker players. They could hear me practice but not see me so it was easy to build confidence without getting nervous. My dad would pass along compliments the next day because these games would go on hours past my bedtime, sometimes into the morning.
In high school I did eventually take private lessons, in the church basement, with Fran DaMico. SHe was a great person. Also in high school there were still the free school time lessons of a half-period a week. This was an easy out from class. You didn't even need a pass, you would just say you were going for your instrument lesson. Naturally I used these way more than once a week. Sometimes I just used the time to do nothing but often I did go and play.
I still had no other extra curriculars and I was never good at anything else. And in college I played all through the four years and this was where I finally branched off. I was lucky enough to be encouraged to take another instrument, so I chose the saxophone and joined jazz band immediately. I will never ever forget those days. Dr. Onofrio, the jazz band instructor, and my classmate and resident genius Ian MacDougal who taught me how to improvize. I had had no idea up to that point. This is where music began for me.
As I went from one genre to the other over the years, I would have shame and embarrassment over the genre of interest I had just left. I am still this way.
And now I don't play music at all. I have stuffed into my closet, foreign and estranged, one electric Telecaster, amp, alto sax, cheap keyboard, metal xylophone, mics, cords, and fancy high school flute.
music became part of my life in 5th grade. i don't know why I chose flute. they passed around the slips of paper asking if you wanted to sign up for music lessons, the free ones, in school and what instrument did you want to choose. i don't remember the conversation or choosing flute. i had no knowledge of music of any sort before this time. perhaps my parents chose the instrument they thought would sound the least butchered being practiced in the house.
we were taught to play it first only on the mouthpiece. after a week or two we tried holding and blowing with the entire flute assembled. mr. DiMeo always smelled of stale coffee and if he demonstrated on youro flute then that smelled of stale coffee, too. the first song I learned to play, in the beginner flute book, because it is 3 notes, was Mary Had a Little Lamb. I remember mastering it and playing it for my parents, in my pajamas, in front of the bathroom mirror. I would come to always enjoy practicing in the bathroom. good acoustics. after just a few months, my teacher told my parents I should take private lessons because I was good. I had no knowledge of this. I know that I was able to learn songs by ear and from memory. i kept a list of the notes that I knew, how to write them in notation and the songs that I had figured out (in some cases I didn't know the names of them, like the opening bit of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons). I wrote these in a gold pen in my free Hello Kitty notebook. some times with stickers. Privately I thought I was hot shit for this reason, not for my flute playing. THe songs I knew mostly were TV theme songs like fucking 'Dynasty'.
We were renting this flute from the local store. My parents thought were were leasing it which meant your payments added up to purchasing it. After one year when we didn't rent it during the summer vacation months the store considered it a break in agreement and cancelled the renting total. THis pissed my father off, so when fall rolled around he did not rent me a flute. Apparanetly this was the end of my musical hobby.
I should note at this point that I didn't have any extra curricular activities. Though I would have liked ice skating lessons which, who knows, could have brought me into the fold of popularity on at least a sub-level, my parents didn't go that way. I enjoyed playing the flute but now it was about money. I don't remember caring much about it but perhaps I did complain. My father was into auctions at that time, was going every week and would buy shit and stuff the garage and basement with his purchases to hopefully turn a profit in a future garage sale. He bought me a small organ. Of course I couldn't play this in school band I protested but I could still satisfy my talent for figurng out songs by ear by memory. After a few months longer still without a flute, my father told me if I really wanted one I could buy one with my own money. I placed an ad in the local pennysaver (if you even know what one of those are, a newspaper version of Craigslist) which I still remember: "WANTED: new or used flute in good condition". I paid $100 for this flute. I have no idea where I got the money from. It is possible that my parents paid for it after all but knowing my dad how I do, I doubt it, so maybe I did have it saved or something. I remember my aunt and uncle were at the house when I returned with it. They wanted me to play something, but after 4 or 5 months I could barely remember how to use it.
It came back and I really got into it. I bought some popular sheet music for the time, it is so embarrasing now. I had the music to Phil Collin's 'Against All Odds' and Madonna's Lucky Star! I knew they weren't flute pieces but I didn't play other instrument. I went for classical music and bought hard stuff, really poured over it and made notes and practiced. Partially because I had a built-in audience which were the poker games in our basement one-two nights weekly. These were serious poker players. They could hear me practice but not see me so it was easy to build confidence without getting nervous. My dad would pass along compliments the next day because these games would go on hours past my bedtime, sometimes into the morning.
In high school I did eventually take private lessons, in the church basement, with Fran DaMico. SHe was a great person. Also in high school there were still the free school time lessons of a half-period a week. This was an easy out from class. You didn't even need a pass, you would just say you were going for your instrument lesson. Naturally I used these way more than once a week. Sometimes I just used the time to do nothing but often I did go and play.
I still had no other extra curriculars and I was never good at anything else. And in college I played all through the four years and this was where I finally branched off. I was lucky enough to be encouraged to take another instrument, so I chose the saxophone and joined jazz band immediately. I will never ever forget those days. Dr. Onofrio, the jazz band instructor, and my classmate and resident genius Ian MacDougal who taught me how to improvize. I had had no idea up to that point. This is where music began for me.
As I went from one genre to the other over the years, I would have shame and embarrassment over the genre of interest I had just left. I am still this way.
And now I don't play music at all. I have stuffed into my closet, foreign and estranged, one electric Telecaster, amp, alto sax, cheap keyboard, metal xylophone, mics, cords, and fancy high school flute.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
WNHP5 reading tour and readiness details
Go to neverhaveparis for zine info thanks
http://neverhaveparis.blogspot.com/
http://neverhaveparis.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Monday, September 07, 2009
moving, again
a recount, (if I can)
college, plattsburgh NY to '93
summer of '93, burlington VT
grad school, gallaudet, DC, 93-94
a. dorm 1 semester
b. shared house, cheverly, MD
transfer, portland, OR 94-95
a. apt in SW with wayne
b. colleague's house for 3 weeks
SE Madison St 7/75 ? to 7/96
packed up and traveled Ireland, return to USA, more travel, 2 weeks in Astoria OR and 4 in Bellingham WA, travel, 8 months approx (let's say 3 moves here)
again Portland
a. SE 46th and Clinton 3/97 ? - few months?
b. 1222 SE Madison '97 1 year ?
c. SE Halsey and 48th? past powell, almost suburbs to 12/98
d. SE 36th and Yamhill 1/99 - 8/99
West St Oakland *** the winner! 3 years one apt! 8/99-10/02
7th and Judah, San Francisco 10/02-4/03
22nd St SF 5/03-1/04
(home) Terrace Hill Drive, New Hartford NY 2/04-8/04
Holmead Pl NW DC 8/04-8/06
W 106 St NYC 8/06-8/07
E 6th St NYC 8/07-9/09
and now, E 5th st NYC
22 moves.
college, plattsburgh NY to '93
summer of '93, burlington VT
grad school, gallaudet, DC, 93-94
a. dorm 1 semester
b. shared house, cheverly, MD
transfer, portland, OR 94-95
a. apt in SW with wayne
b. colleague's house for 3 weeks
SE Madison St 7/75 ? to 7/96
packed up and traveled Ireland, return to USA, more travel, 2 weeks in Astoria OR and 4 in Bellingham WA, travel, 8 months approx (let's say 3 moves here)
again Portland
a. SE 46th and Clinton 3/97 ? - few months?
b. 1222 SE Madison '97 1 year ?
c. SE Halsey and 48th? past powell, almost suburbs to 12/98
d. SE 36th and Yamhill 1/99 - 8/99
West St Oakland *** the winner! 3 years one apt! 8/99-10/02
7th and Judah, San Francisco 10/02-4/03
22nd St SF 5/03-1/04
(home) Terrace Hill Drive, New Hartford NY 2/04-8/04
Holmead Pl NW DC 8/04-8/06
W 106 St NYC 8/06-8/07
E 6th St NYC 8/07-9/09
and now, E 5th st NYC
22 moves.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
I am living in the future always. I am 1 step ahead. I save nothing. I put the memories away. I put myself away. everything goes away. everything is painful. yet the present is a head on a pike that I spear and wave in the face of you like flames, fanning the fire. for what, I don't know. I'm braced for the disappointment and it is there. it is always there. maybe this is the stability in my life I lack and the only thing I can count on to find and so I do.
so when I find the photo of myself from 2002 and it is another person, when I unwrap the trinket from a wedding and see that it is Kim's and not Terri's, when I un-box the wine glasses from my mother's home, when I find something I have written, it doesn't matter the format. everything is 6 feet under or another galaxy. I've made myself autistic to the present and future and once in a while I record this in words.
I put that on display and I put it away.
so when I find the photo of myself from 2002 and it is another person, when I unwrap the trinket from a wedding and see that it is Kim's and not Terri's, when I un-box the wine glasses from my mother's home, when I find something I have written, it doesn't matter the format. everything is 6 feet under or another galaxy. I've made myself autistic to the present and future and once in a while I record this in words.
I put that on display and I put it away.
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