#FWF – What Would Be Your Verse?

Published on by gotmeghan

1512675_233702603473075_941071849_nIt is almost two in the morning and apparently finding any sleep when you can’t breathe out of your nose and your right leg is acting really weird, I might as well get an early start to my post for Free Write Friday. And Kellie has picked a very interesting prompt for us this week. The funny thing is, everytime I go to do one of these kinds of posts, nobody usually reads them. Did I just jinx myself? Anyways, she gave us a very interesting prompt from a commercial she saw while she was in the middle of shows, (sounds like me, but I usually just skim past them with my awesome DVR) but she is having us use what was said in the commercial. And I’m hoping I didn’t do it wrong. Here is the prompt she gave us:

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?” — John Keating (Robin Williams) Dead Poets Society

What would be my verse?

I am the one that people stare at while in the stores. It’s never been about what kind of pants, tops, jewelry I’m wearing; it’s the wheelchair and my controller at my feet they see first. If you were raised to not stare at strangers then how come you still do it? I’ve been alive for many, many years and I’ve seen a lot of older people, like probably in their 50s just walk on by and watch me drive away down the aisle. I love when I’m in the music department or just looking at some shirt and there will be some little kid, either inside a cart or running around by its mother; somehow I have the power to stop them dead in the tracks. And they don’t just stare at you, they have to come up close to you. You can’t help but smile at them because they’re curious of their surroundings. I am one of a kind, or so I’ve been told. A lot of children and older adults have never seen somebody who can drive with their feet. Could you imagine if I had a table and never-ending supply of notebooks and wrote with my feet in one setting at your favorite store? I mean, honestly would you come over and watch me in wonder like the rest? 

I was born with these disease that basically locks all of my joints. I cannot move my arms like you can, nor my fingers. I can’t grasp things or put my hand in a fist. I wasn’t really taught how to walk, because of my feet. They’re a little different from most, but all of the things I describe what your hands can do, I do them all with my feet. I can grasp a pencil, pen, marker, etc with two of my toes and wrote as neatly as I possibly can. I can make two little awkward fists with my feet as well. I have also been told that I have a pretty nice grip too.  God forbid, if you lost the use of your hands I believe with a little practice you could be able to do everything you did with your hands with your feet. I just wouldn’t try to use a knife around a fairly large group of people, you might scare a few of them off. Just a suggestion! I did try to do the walking thing, but it never gave me the same feeling I was hoping to get whenever I dreamt about it at night growing up. Once I decided to give it up, I never looked back on it. Which is interesting because I always second guess myself and regret later on in life, but that hasn’t happened for me with this subject.

So with all of this being said and back to my original question at the bottom of the first paragraph. If I had a table and was placed in the middle of the department store, would you really ignore me? Would you tell you kids it’s not polite to stare? Honestly staring isn’t bad unless you don’t come up and learn more about me. I haven’t looked back on life and saw giving up being able to walk in a walker, without asking myself questions about my decision. Would you regret not asking me a question? Saying that you admire me is one thing that I’ve been used to hearing, even though I’ve heard it a lot. I want to be asked questions. I always have, mainly because I have the same amount of questions trapped inside of me. I am not this person that minds a good question, rather you are five years old to your sixties. It doesn’t really matter to me. As long as you ask it. I wouldn’t mind answering it.

20 thoughts on “#FWF – What Would Be Your Verse?”

    1. That’s okay.

      Yes, I use my feet to do these blogs. I keep my laptop on the floor right by my bed and doing it that way is a lot easier for me because of the fact if I have it up on the bed, my feet and legs have a tendecy of falling asleep on me. When I was in school, the computers were always higher than me and I basically had them lower down a tad so I wouldn’t pull a leg out of socket. Lol

      Do you have any more? 🙂

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  2. aloha Meghan. yes. you are read. or. at least i read this post. ha. we all have that question.

    to answer one of your other questions: for me, i’m not sure i’d have a question right away. i might watch. most likely i would observe (but heck if i know what i’ll do before i do it). i’m reasonably sure if i watched it would be because of the uniqueness of what you have described. of course all life is unique (as i see it). so my watching, observing, may be prelude to pondering. a combination of thinking about my life and what i might imagine about yours. do i need more than that? maybe. and if i had a question. or one rose up in me. yeah, i might ask. i’m not good at asking intelligent questions tho. most of the time the questions that come up in me are things i might be able to answer myself. yes, i believe we can teach ourself to do almost anything. i think about the lost of my sight. or hearing. i’m losing some things as my body wears down. what i know is, that if i try, i can just keep going on until i stop. it seems to me if i saw you at that table writing, i’d simply be seeing a confirmation of my belief. thank you for that. and how would i tell you that? regardless of how you do it. do it on. and have fun too. aloha. r.

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  3. I have a lot of questions. Like what is your daily life like? Do you live alone? Do you have friends? Do you travel? What are your passions? These queries would be popping into my head if I saw you at a table in a department store! It would be easy just to make the simplest assumptions about your life just by looking and not truly seeing the whole person.

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    1. And I can easily answer all of those questions for you. Um, daily life is pretty boring. I don’t live, sadly I can never live alone. It’s been hard to process over the years, but sometimes I think of it as a good thing. It’s rare, but I do. I do have friends, not a lot. I haven’t actually hung out with a friend in probably two or three years. I would love to travel past the states I’ve been so many times. Lol and my passions, I mean I like writing, music, food, art, etc. If you were to ask me these questions in person, I wouldn’t be this fast answering them back. 🙂

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  4. There would always be questions, but I would be to shy to ask. Especially in person. Most of them were already asked here. Mostly I would have a huge amount of respect for the obstacles you have had to overcome that we all take for granted and the strength needed to do that.

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    1. Yeah I completely understand about being shy and asking questions in person, but you should always take a risk. Luckily, this wouldn’t be that big of a risk. Lol 🙂

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  5. A conversation for sure.. But what are you writing, fiction, non fiction, genre, the moments in note form? Yes, questions about stories, their narratives, characters, and the sounds, the music you listen to while bringing them to life. Did you, or a character manage to discover, create something new for the day, the week, the month? What are some of your favourite firsts, and which ones now border on possible addiction?

    Have met a lot of different people, incredible humans over the last four decades (my wife works with a lot of incredible people with disabilities, as resource developer to aid with what each individual wants pursue, achieve, learn, and more), each have their own stories, opinions, and perspectives to being alive, living their tale, or yarn, day and evening, the many moments. So above, at the top would be the questions I’d find of interest first, apart from marking introductions… For part of today I spent six hours doing static GPS readings for seven survey control stations, and then the new thing for the day, I wrote the words at the end after seeing a friend’s photo, the watering of a garden in the last hour sunlight (the water spray and golden hues). By the way, I’m Sean, and I fell out of a tree in a small place called Dingo sometime back, it’s in the highlands of a vast little country amongst the South-west Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Pleased to meet you.
    ______________________________
    Just becoming lost in – magical water light, falling through the sun somewhere near the edge before night. Up somewhere in the near west high country, where the eucalypts turn the rising sandstone mountains blue. A world turning gold as each moment fades, each degree in temperature, to wither in time’s shifting longitude. As if to be set, rain upon a forest garden, at peace in the golden hour, these few moments before the inky blue to night, finally seeps through the last bones to day. See if you might see it too.

    If you think the above is too much, that’s okay, I was just in one of those writing conversation places at the time, I think they’re rare.

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    1. No it’s fine. You might’ve just helped me do a section for a my mini story I’m working on. I don’t know if this goes together or not, but I always feel like whenever I go to write about different characters I can never make one disabled. I always see them able to walk and run. I’m the type of person who would to see this world change for people with disabilities but when it comes to writing, I just can’t do it. Is that weird?

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      1. Sometimes when we write fiction, it is as good as dreaming. We fill the lines with what we see tumbling before us as the words cut their edge across the page. So I suppose, we write our worlds with what we envisage, and wrap them with what we want to find there.

        It’s not weird, as there are so many ways to reveal, or mask a character within a story between their physicality, capabilities, and flaws. I’d almost say, that it is also most probable to write a story about a character with a disability in a handcrafted way, create an illusion, and not reveal it until the last line, or not at all, have the reader speculating the whole time. Anything is possible.

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  6. Thank you for opening up and sharing your life with us for fwf. You are amazing. And I am so pleased at the response you are getting. Really great people in this community. I am happy to know each of you.
    My love and well wishes to you, Meghan.

    ♥ Kellie

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    1. Thank you so much Kellie! Yes, everybody has been amazing with their comments. It’s been fun and interesting to read their responses and answering their questions too. 🙂

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