• Exploring a Writing Tutor’s Magic

    This article appeared in the National College Learning Center Association (NCLCA) Summer 2014 newsletter under the section, The Tutor’s Voice.

    *  *  *

    The lobby of our campus tutoring center resembles a doctor’s office. Students occupy moderately comfortable chairs, waiting to hear their names from the friendly voice from the writing room. A writing tutor steps forward, calls the student’s name, and leads her into our small space. I am the only tutor who performs this ritual with a white cane in hand.

    I imagine that some students are perplexed to see that their tutor is blind. My questioned competence hangs in the air, but “Will she be able to read my paper?” changes quickly to “How will she read my paper?” Students want to know how I will judge them – their ability to write. Their competence, not mine, becomes the central question.

    I begin with brisk instructions: “I’m Emily and I’ll be helping you today. What are you working on?” The student offers a nursing paper, a teaching portfolio, a literature essay. Whether a student brings a digital or paper copy of her assignment, I ask her to read it aloud. My request inspires several insecurities; students are self-conscious about their voices, affected by accent or infrequent practice. I insist that they won’t be the worst reader I’ve ever heard; everyone feels awkward when reading aloud.

    As we read, I get used to the students’ voices. Some are slow and meticulous, correcting every slip of the tongue, while others read so quickly I can barely catch each word. I ask them to slow down, helping them laugh at their occasional spoken errors. The moment of pure triumph comes when they recognize that the out-loud process catches issues glossed over in silent reading. When the student becomes adept at hearing her mistakes, I’m an audience the student needs because she can’t imagine reading to an empty room. I am her writer’s training wheels.

    To bridge diffidence and triumph, I emphasize the inherent power of writing: I shamelessly craft a persona of grammar mystic and blind magician. I love the revelation of audible punctuation.

    A student reads a sentence aloud, and I ask her to stop: “Do you have a comma there?”

    “Yes, how did you know?”

    I meet this question with a silent smile.

    “You heard it?”

    “Of course.”
    Other grammar magicians and linguistic wizards will not be surprised by this apparent talent of mine; punctuation wants to be heard. But students unfamiliar with descriptive grammar are dazzled. My ability to hear punctuation initiates them into the craft of writing. Using examples from their work, I transfer the gift – making them aware that they, too, can hear the place of punctuation. Though I use the rhetoric of revelation, I am only helping students discover what they already know. So much of writing is remembering – pulling disparate pieces of experience and knowledge together – and it is not a student’s voice that matters: it is her willingness to search for that voice. Schools frame this search as standardized obligation, but writers know the working truth. We find linguistic power from a place of dreams and fantasy.

    Author bio: Emily K. Michael is a writing instructor and tutor at the University of North Florida. Her work has been published in Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, and Artemis Journal.

  • Traffic in Trust: Guide Dog Training Part 3

    In the second week of training, we are working routes in Bradenton. We board the bus at the main campus, watch our pups cuddle during the 20-minute bus ride, and disembark at the Downtown Training Center. Once inside, we find seats in the comfortable waiting area – a large square room with tables, chairs, and couches. Then our trainers tell us in what order we’ll go on routes.

    My trainer informs me that I’ll be going first. I take York out for a busy break and some water before giving the command, “Harness on.” I exit the building and meet my trainer on the other side of the door, a few feet away from two stairs that lead to a sidewalk. Before we move forward, my trainer explains the first few features of the route: “You’ll go down the steps and take a left. Remember that he should stop at all curbs, including grass lines. This will be a pretty simple route.”

    I nod and pick up York’s harness handle, resting in a now-familiar spot along his back. I give the command, “Forward!” and he takes a few steps before stopping. I search out with my right foot and find the top stair. I praise York and say, “Forward down.” He takes me down the two stairs and we make our left.

    As we approach our first curb,  I feel myself easing into the pace York and I prefer – a brisk stroll. The morning is quiet and humid with minimal distractions: no people, cats, or lawn equipment. Once York has found the first curb, I praise him and say, “Forward.” Keeping my right foot on the curb, I wait for him to move.

    He remains poised in the same spot, his body in a determined halt. I reach down to give a forward correction with the leash – and feel a sudden breeze as a car slides out in front of us. I see a faint glint of sunlight on paint and hear the pavement crunching beneath the almost silent wheels.

    “That’s called a traffic check,” my trainer says. “And he aced it. Praise him.”

    I heartily form the words,”Good boy” before turning to my trainer. “I didn’t even hear that car!”

    She explains that the car is a Prius, used in training because of its deadly silence. I take a few deep breaths – I seem to be doing a lot of that in this training process – and give York a quick pat on the head. My cane would not have stopped me for that car.

    When the street is clear, my trainer tells me to cross. I command, “Forward straight, find the curb,” and York obliges, leading me safely to the other side. Once on the sidewalk, we continue in a straight line. My trainer reminds me that I have quite a way to go before I reach the second street crossing.

    I encourage York forward and we set off, passing grassy yards on either side. Stretches of the sidewalk offer obstacles like signs, posts, or soft overhanging plants. York expertly guides me around these. About halfway between the two streets, I feel a change in the swaying harness handle: York has come to another abrupt stop, his body alert. I halt mid-step, listening hard.

    The Prius pulls into the driveway inches ahead of us. I can see its pale outline against the overcast morning. The trainer remarks, “Another perfect traffic check.”

    Throughout our route, York completes several traffic checks – coming to an abrupt no-nonsense stop seconds before I can see or hear the Prius. This exercise demonstrates Intelligent Disobedience, the skill that allows York to disobey one of my commands when our safety is in question. Each time he disobeys my “forward” command by performing this firm stop, I am amazed by his ability to detect the car and disobey me.

    After two weeks, I am beginning to recognize the differences in the handle that indicate York’s actions. When he’s sniffing, the handle tips forward. When he’s looking left and right, the handle dips left or right. And when he performs this abrupt, focused stop, the handle becomes totally motionless. I feel the stock-still handle and know that an alert pup is waiting beneath it, his body posture telling me to watch, listen, or feel for the cause of his disobedience. Whether it’s a defined curb, an abrupt drop in the sidewalk, or a nearly silent car cruising across our path, he knows something I don’t, and his sudden stillness commands me to pay attention.

  • Four Paws for Keeps: Guide Dog Training Part 2

    Exactly one week after our first route in harness, York and I are walking the aisles at Super Target. Practicing the “follow” command, York guides me a few paces behind my trainer as she turns down aisles, stops abruptly, and veers left or right. On our outside walks, York encounters many distractions: cats, people, and the ever-alluring grass. In Target, however, he proves to be a focused shopping companion – undeterred by the food smells or the small children crying “Doggie doggie!” from their carts. He earns praise for executing precise turns and avoiding the pile of crumbled Cheez-its in the grocery section. Even on the dog food aisle, York doesn’t stop to sniff a single bag!

    This day of shopping marks the midpoint in our second week of training – and the firs time we’ve taken our guide dogs on an indoor errand in public. So far, York and I have learned several routes on Southeastern’s main campus in Palmetto, FL, and we’ve traveled intersections at the Downtown Training Center in Bradenton. York has demonstrated his ability to find curbs, posts, chairs, gates, and doors. In addition to the basics of obedience, like “sit,” “down,” “stay,” “heel,” and “no,” he knows the “right-about” command, a 180-degree turn used to rework areas where we made a mistake. At doorways that open on the right, he knows to “switch,” moving from my left to my right so I can open the door. On walks, I’ve learned that too much “Good boy, good York” works like a gas pedal, so I use the “easy” command to slow his pace. If York doesn’t listen when I command him the first time, I give a low-pitched bark-like “No,” use a leash correction, and repeat the command.

    We return from shopping to a lavish Cuban lunch, a selection of foods our chef calls the “Taste of Tampa.” We are each served a pressed Cuban sandwich, a bowl of blackbeans and yellow rice, and a 1905 salad of mixed greens, olives, ham, swiss, and olive oil dressing. To our surprise and delight, we have the afternoon off, so we can rest up for a late-night obedience class and a night walk.

    If it’s not too hot, the classes take place on an outdoor patio called Obedience Alley. If the pavement is already too hot for our pups, we practice obedience in the Day Room. In obedience class, we normally practice the basics while our trainers add levels of distraction. Some trainers walk by with yo-yos, tennis balls, or small toys, and others pretend to be nosy or intrusive strangers. One trainer demonstrates her acting skills by using an especially high-pitched voice, the “puppy talk” our dogs love: “Ooh what a beautiful puppy! Can I pet him? I have a dog just like him at home! Hi puppy puppy!”

    Tonight we all meet in the Day Room at 8PM, and our three trainers reveal that we’ll be doing something called a “long recall.” One trainer explains: “We’ll take you and your dog to the hallway off the dining room, you’ll remove your dog’s leash and leave him in a sit-stay with another trainer, and the third trainer will lead you down another hallway. While the rest of us wait in the Day Room, you will call your dog.” She pauses, then adds, “If you’re seated, please have a firm grip of your dog’s leash. The loose dog is going to come tearing through here.”

    My hands clench around York’s leather leash, and I ask, “What if the dog doesn’t come?”

    One trainer answers with his usual ambiguous optimism: “Wait and see. I promise you’re gonna like this.”

    An older student offers to go first. He leads his dog to the designated hallway around the corner and leaves him there. Then he walks off with a trainer. We can no longer hear his footsteps, and his dog cannot see the turns he has made. We grip our leashes and give our dogs a hushed “Stay!”

    The trainer reiterates that we need to be quiet so the dog can hear its call. The student calls his dog, his voice lengthening and echoing along the tiled hallways. Instantly the dog bounds down the hall, a black blur tearing past without any consideration for the other dogs and people in the Day Room. We hear the sounds of a happy reunion, and the team returns to the room.

    Next up is a female student who, like me, is working with her first guide dog. She leaves him with an emphatic “Stay!” and disappears from view. When she calls her pup, her girlish voice sounds even more childlike – the little girl who has lost her puppy in every heartwarming family movie. As she repeats the call using cutesy nicknames, her boy tears off down the hallway, first checking the place where she sat and then finding her at the end of the corridor.

    When they join the group, my trainer looks at me: “Emily, you’re next.”

    I stand up, and York stands with me, eager to get moving. We walk to the hallway, and I unclip his leash. I tell him to sit and stay and take the other trainer’s arm. He leads me down the hall, around a sharp left, and toward the end of another hallway. When everyone in the Day Room is quiet, he says, “Alright, call your dog.”

    Remembering how the hallway alters voices, I sing out “Yo-ork!” I wait, nervous that I’m not loud enough, that he won’t come to me. As I call again,I  hear a burst of sound – paws skidding and sliding on tile, quiet joyful noises from the Day Room, and the jingle of York’s training collar. I barely distinguish a black blur trailing down the hallway as York runs past our corridor to my bedroom. Realizing his mistake, he changes direction, and my trainer murmurs, “Here he comes.”

    Barreling toward me, York transforms into a huge incongruous black shape. He is panting and running, and I can see a paw, an ear, a tail as he hurtles toward me. The trainer catches him before he leaps on top of me, and I tell him to sit so I can clip my leash to his collar. He dances in front of me, his tail wagging, his tongue licking my hands.

    When we return to the Day Room, everyone informs me that York began to whine the moment I was out of sight. I reclaim my seat, and York flops on top of my feet. I reach down to stroke his soft black head and feathery ears.

    At the end of our first week, my trainer asked me, “How do you feel about working with York? Do you want to keep him?” After that week of firsts – our first meeting, our first walk in harness, our first street crossing – I knew I wanted to keep working with this boy. Now, as I write and he lies beside me, singing his hungry song, I remember him turning the corner of the long hallway and galloping toward me. I can’t believe how this week has changed us.

  • Working for Love: Guide Dog Training Part 1

    On my first day as a student at Southeastern Guide Dogs, my trainer hands me a new leather leash: “Your invisible dog is attached to the end of this leash. Keep it with you whenever you leave the room.” She shows me how to drape the leash across my body so it won’t get in the way as I unpack my suitcases. It’s Monday afternoon, and I won’t meet my pup until tomorrow. I attempt to handle the waiting by meeting my classmates, learning my way around the building, eating some fabulous food, and getting used to the constant presence of my invisible dog.

    Tuesday, I’m up at 6AM, steeling myself; the next four weeks will demand this early morning routine. I change clothes, put up my hair, apply sunscreen and bug spray, and head to the dining room for breakfast and a big coffee. We won’t find out our dog’s name, gender, and breed until after lunch. I would be obsessively checking my watch, but I forgot it at home.

    My seven classmates and I pass the morning with various activities: walks with trainers, walks with dogs in training, lectures. Every time an employee strolls past the common area with a puppy, I tense up – willing to fall in love. I feel like a starving person gazing through the window of a famous bakery, my view of the croissants blocked by a forbidding sign: CLOSED UNTIL 2PM.

    Just after lunch, we gather in the Day Room, a large living room where we’ll hold lectures and indoor obedience classes. I choose a seat in a deep leather couch, nervously twisting my fingers as I wait for my name to be called. Finally, after an eternity of 15 minutes, my trainer says, “Emily, you will be getting a black lab male named York.”

    York, York, I try the name in my mind. It sounds promising. Kind of literary and not obnoxious. I was afraid I’d have a Princess or a Snuffles. I can handle York.

    Once each student has been told about their dog, we go to our own rooms. The trainers tell us to turn on all the lights, since animals aren’t crazy about shadows. Sit in your desk chair facing the door. When your dog is brought in, call it and clip your leash onto its collar.

    I walk down the hall and easily find my room – Room 3, last on the right. I flip on all the lights, even taking off my sunglasses. I want York to see my face unobscured. I take my position in the desk chair and wait, checking the time on my phone. 1:15. Deep breath. 1:22. Hands folded in lap, unclenching fingers. Another deep breath. 1.34. I can’t stand the silence – I send a text to Mom. I feel like I have a version of wedding jitters. Puppy jitters? I keep my breathing slow.

    I hear a commotion in the hallway, a door opening and high-pitched voices. A few doors down, a classmate is meeting his dog. Everyone sounds happy, a trainer says, “Oh she’s wagging her tail, call her.” A joyful meeting. I’m on pins and needles.

    Now I hear more introductions – opening doors, jingling dog collars. The sounds are coming closer. Finally, I hear the student across the hall meet his girl, and the neighbor on my left meets his. I know I’m next.

    Someone knocks loudly at my door, and I can hear quiet voices and a jingling training collar. I call, “Come in!”

    The door is opened and I hear an unfamiliar female voice, a handler I’ve never met. “Emily? I’ve got your main man.”

    I fight to keep myself seated. She instructs me to call him in a happy voice, and I say, “York, come!”

    He approaches hesitantly. The dark shape at the doorway resolves into a shiny black dog, much bigger than my 20-pound cairn terrier at home. With long legs and an inquisitive nose, he comes towards me. The handler holds him still so I can clip my leash to his collar and attempt to pet him. She leaves us alone for the anticipated moment: bonding time.

    York curled into a ball, looking very puppy-like.
    Whatever I imagined this moment would be, it defies my dreams. York wants nothing to do with me. He quickly runs to the end of his leash and whines, sniffing towards the door, where the familiar handler has left the room. After several minutes of pacing and sniffing, resisting my cheerful calls, he finally sinks to the floor, head and tail down – the picture of misery and disinterest. My heart is broken and my thoughts are racing. He doesn’t like me. He doesn’t want to come near me. How can I get him to love me?

    I don’t push. I don’t intrude. If York wanders near me, I reach out a hand to touch him, to let him sniff me. He sniffs but does not lick. Pushing my hands away with his nose, he won’t let me pet him.

    But his apathy won’t alter our schedule. A few minutes later, trainers come by to lead us outside to the relief area where the dogs can get water and “busy busy” (do their business). York drinks water but doesn’t busy. Then it’s into the Day Room for a lecture. The trainers have told us that we should concentrate on bonding with our dogs: give them lots of love and attention but try not to correct them as much in these early hours.

    During the lecture, York rolls on the floor and whines, trying to get other dogs to play. At least he seems happy – however embarrassed I might be. Clearly he’s a class clown, and he manages to get other dogs riled up. Our side of the room quickly earns a reputation for rowdy boys.

    The pups accompany us to dinner, where we try to keep them lying or sitting out of the way. This is a challenge, and our dinner conversation quickly degenerates into “No, sit! Stay! Down! Down! No, stay! STAY! Down, good boy, good girl. Down. Sit! Stay, stay. Good boy.”

    Back in my room, I try one last attempt to get York’s attention. After my shower, I sit on the floor, braiding my wet hair. York is on a short leash, the end of his leash tucked under my leg. Without much room to roam, he walks slow investigatory circles around me. I pretend to ignore him. He sniffs my ear, my neck, my face. No licks yet. I hold my breath. He walks around me, and I feel something grabbing my hair. York has my braid in his mouth, and he gives it one gentle tug. When he circles back around, he allows me to pet him. Still no licks, but things are improving!

    In the next days, York and I work in harness, traveling across nature trails, intersections, and obstacle courses. We do traffic checks, night walks, and long recalls. We work our way through obedience classes, completing routines of puppy push-ups and long-leash stays. In our room, he licks the back of my legs or lies under my desk, using my feet as a pillow.

    He played hard to get at first, but his love is worth working for.

  • Essay: Expecting the Invisible

    In Sept. 2014, this essay was published in I Am Subject Stories: Women Awakening, an anthology of women’s writing. I received permission to post it here.

    *  *  *

    On Monday afternoon, I am standing outside my classroom door, a large blue bag over my shoulder and a white cane in my hand. I’m wearing black pants, a red blouse with white cuffs and collar, and dark sunglasses. My hair is pulled into a high bun.

    I step to the side to avoid colliding with exiting students. Some students linger, asking the instructor questions. A guy walks out of the room and leans against the door: “Hey, are you waiting for this room?”

    “Yes, I have a class at 3. I’m a few minutes early.”

    “What’s the class?”

    “It’s an introductory writing course.”

    He glances into the classroom and turns back to me. “Would you like help finding a seat?”

    “No thanks, I’ll be using the teacher’s desk.”

    Once the remaining students have left, I enter the classroom. The teacher’s desk is a narrow table, close to the whiteboard. I set down my bag and begin to unpack. The professor stands at the computer, putting away student papers. “Can I help you find a seat, hun?”

    “No, I’m the instructor.”

    “Oh!” Like the student who held the door, she cannot hide her surprise.

    Despite several semesters of teaching English at the same university, I’ve encountered this reaction countless times. Students, staff, and faculty don’t expect me to be the teacher – even when I start handing out syllabi. There is always a moment of hesitation, a “Really?” hanging in the air.

    I attribute this disbelief to my visible identity: I’m a short 26-year-old blind woman. I walk with a white cane and wear dark glasses. Observers – who sometimes assume that the cane helps me with fainting spells – can’t miss these signs of physical difference.

    Early in my teaching career, I had to accept that I would be a “first” for most students who have never even had a blind acquaintance. On rare occasions, students shyly approach my desk to share their brushes with disability: a grandmother who lost her vision, the time they volunteered with cognitively impaired teens, or “the blind guy at our church who reads a braille Bible.” I understand that my writing courses are indirect courses in the larger human experience – disability.

    During the first class of each semester, I explain that I’ll be recognizing voices, not faces. I discourage hand-raising, because I can’t see raised hands. I ask students to identify themselves by name when they speak, to print their papers in 18-pt font, to tell me when I’m writing near the whiteboard’s edge.

    “How will you grade our essays?” one student asks.

    I reply with my most serious face: “Very harshly.”

    By semester’s end, most students learn to discard their initial reservations. They have watched me diagram sentences and guide class discussions. They’ve received papers with extensive feedback and attended voluntary conferences in my office. They drop off their final papers and utter the highest compliment, “I recommended your class to my friends.”

    But the path from incredulity to confidence offers many detours. How I manage each class meeting can encourage or dismantle a student’s growing belief in my abilities.

    I recognize these daily tests of my teacher’s authority. The first test comes on Day 1 when I disclose my blindness and its effects on our classroom procedures. I resist my habitual full disclosure – the urge to tell students exactly what I can and cannot see. In the face-to-face classroom, where I choose the role of grammar magician and writing coach, I find such full disclosure irrelevant, even cumbersome. Detailing every aspect of my blindness places me in an overly medical context. On the darker side of disclosure, I feel that my students will find ways to take advantage of my low vision if they understand it fully. I’d rather direct their attention to the course concepts, and away from me.

    There are many factors I cannot control in the classroom, where I emphasize discussion in a technology-free environment. I must accept that I cannot tell when a student is silently texting. If students in the back are whispering, I won’t be able to identify their voices. If students have their laptops open, I may not see them.

    Even when I can see an open laptop, I can’t find a productive way to address it. If I announce to the room, “Whoever’s using that MacBook should put it away,” I will open a discussion of my precise visual circumstances (“How could she possibly see that laptop when she can’t read size 12?”).

    I neutralize disruptive behaviors by redirecting attention to the task at hand. Using my cane, I walk around the room, stopping near the whisperers – whose identities are still a mystery. Sometimes, I casually write snippets of whispered conversations on the board, and students often take several minutes to recognize their private dialogue in our grammar exercise. I want my students to manage their own behavior, to realize that they alone decide how their in-class attitude will affect their learning.

    My comfortable classroom dynamic shifts entirely when I teach with Oliver, a nondisabled colleague. We deliver a series of intensive grammar workshops, and my current students are often in attendance. At each workshop, Oliver and I trade duties every few minutes. When I stand to explain a complex linguistic concept, Oliver writes examples on the board.

    After our most recent session, Oliver tells me how he silently disciplined some students. “While you were talking, two of your students were passing notes,” he says. “I knew you couldn’t see them, but I could.” He explains how he gestured at the students, pointed to his own eyes, and shook his head – letting them know that their behavior was unacceptable.

    Oliver’s revelation awakens an old grief. I feel suddenly inept, insensible. Next to a sighted teacher like Oliver, who can visually manage the class, my own inventive pedagogy seems a cheap substitute. I begrudge Oliver’s intervention because he wields an authority I can never have. Tall, bearded, and broad-shouldered, Oliver easily commands the students’ attention. He towers over me and looks the part of the English professor. No one ever assumes that he’s a student.

    When I vent to friends and colleagues, they tell me that I have a different teaching presence. “You’re accessible,” they say. “Friendly. The students like you.” A colleague in his sixties says, “Enjoy being a young teacher. You have a unique kind of influence now.” But I’m tired of “friendly” and “young.” I long for “formidable.”

    Others can appreciate my teaching abilities while I am stalled, seeing myself as the inferior model. It’s easy to believe in my passion and pedagogy when I’m the only teacher in the room, but in collaborating with a “more able” teacher, I recognize the ephemeral texture of my confidence.

    I notice how swiftly the figure of my colleague is transformed by a cherished teacher’s mythology. For me, Oliver doesn’t embody a typical teacher with unique expertise. The myth casts him as an ideal being whose right to teach is never doubted. Beside him, I am incomplete, unfinished.

    I can accept these terms only when I remember the writing I teach. A writer talks on paper until she has nothing more to say. Then she calls the work “final” and gives it to a reader, who completes it in her own head. No writer can operate unquestioned, shaping the text with mythic authority. Immeasurable collaboration between writer and reader, student and teacher, makes all my work unfinished.

  • Sweet Response

    May is turning out to be a literary month for me. I’ve created an account on Goodreads to keep numerical track of how many books I’m currently reading. So far, Goodreads says I’m reading 13. As I’ve listed several collections of poetry in this category – collections I read a few poems at a time – my sense of accomplishment hasn’t plummeted too dramatically. Also according to Goodreads, the number of books I want to read exceeds the number of books I’ve read. Seeing a larger pile of books in my future than the pile in my past seems like a sign that I am living a full and promising life.

    Books from the past never really stay in the past. I remember many vivid books from earlier years. When I was in elementary school, I favored American Girl and Sweet Valley Twins books. Around fourth grade, an elderly aunt introduced me to Jane Austen. Then came the memorable and gloomy books of adolescent summer reading lists: A Bridge to Terabithia, Shiloh, Jacob Have I Loved, The Outsiders.

    Perhaps to combat the melancholia of the assigned middle school texts, I discovered a love for fantasy and witty retellings of fairy tales. I adored Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted (which is superior to the movie in every way) and Karen Cushman’s Catherine, Called Birdy, the sassy diary of a thirteenth-century teenager. I graduated to Harry Potter, and while I was waiting for the next magical installment, I traveled slowly and carefully through The Lord of the Rings. In high school, I was in love with two men: Tolkien and Thoreau. I am still in love with them now.

    This month, I’ve just finished two books, and I found them delightful. The first was Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, read on Audible by the author. The second was Anne LaMott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I listened to the audiobook, not read by the author, and followed along in the print text – I underlined meaningful and relevant passages on nearly every page. This audio-visual approach is my favorite way to read a text, but I don’t always have time for it. I made time for LaMott, and she was worth it!

    So now I’m at the bookstore with Katie, looking for something new. Yes, Goodreads says I’m currently reading in the double digits, but the numbers really don’t matter. I’ve finished two books; I need to start at least one more. This is what bibliophilia really means: constant dedication to the reading life.

    Katie and I begin with a brief stroll around the classics table, where stacks of gorgeous hardcover books teeter and nestle against each other. The rows of overhead lights glint off their gold-edged pages. I have several of these beautiful books on a special shelf at home. But I never curl up with them, annotate them. They’re trophy books.

    Next we travel to our favorite section, Poetry.  Here, we willingly take all the abuse this section has to offer: three tall rows of shelves with the same slightly battered editions. With each visit, the No Fear Shakespeare volumes edge a little closer to our favorite poets, or the copies of Dante and Homer proliferate, crowding the more obscure (and doubtlessly more wonderful) authors.

    I shudder as my fingers brush against thin volumes of Mary Oliver and T.S. Elliot; somehow The Wasteland and Other Poems is always hanging out beside A Poetry Handbook. But most of the books on these shelves make me happy, even when I already own them. Katie and I both sigh over the various books by Rainer Maria Rilke – “We have all these,” she says. We greet Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rumi, and the French poets with the same quiet enthusiasm: it’s encouraging to see old friends.

    On a shelf with an unnecessary number of books by Billy Collins, I find a new arrival: Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Though I haven’t read much Creeley, I met him in college through a jazz-major-turned-English-major friend. The same friend introduced me to this poem, by Ron Padgett –

    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.

    Katie and I pour over the Creeley, admiring the straightforward free verse, the clear font, the new smell, the bendiness of the pages. She flips it over:

    “Thirty dollars.”

    Depressed, we trudge away from the poetry section, ask a few questions at the service desk, and begin perusing the magazines. A writer friend has advised me to pick up a few poetry magazines so that I can see what kind of poetry they publish. Katie hands me a copy of The New Yorker and another of Poets & Writers Magazine. The Poets & Writers logo is large, difficult to miss. An elderly man walking past asks, “Oh, are you writers? Are either of you ladies writing books?”

    I answer as Katie hands me two more magazines: “I write poetry and creative nonfiction.”

    “Oh Lord!” he exclaims. He continues to walk away.

    Feeling snubbed, I stare at Katie, who smiles encouragingly. I know she would stop to talk with a poet.

    We end our shopping with coffee. I slide my writing magazines across the counter and ask the barrista if she has any seasonal flavors. She rattles off a list of options – espresso-flavored whipped cream, crumbled cookies, mocha-something – all available in icy blended drinks. Nothing sounds good to me. When poetry is slighted, hot coffee alone will soothe the sting.

    So I invent a drink – a French vanilla latte with a hint of caramel. It’s warm and foamy, no whipped cream. I will call it the Rejected Poet.

  • Immortal Welcome

    In my freshman composition courses, the students read a variety of scholarly articles, poems, short stories, style guides, and essays. During our discussion of the writer-reader relationship, I like to work in a chapter from Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. I choose the chapter “Communion: Nobody to Nobody,” in which Atwood attempts to answer three questions: 1) For whom does the writer write? 2) What is the book’s function or duty? and 3) Where is the writer when the reader is reading?

    This chapter opens with a series of epigraphs about the nature of reading, writing, and stories. Introducing her guiding questions early on, Atwood takes the reader on a narrative meander throughout the text, stopping to smell the roses of several detailed examples before finishing with a personal anecdote about her first writer-reader relationship.

    Atwood first suggests that writer and reader are both “nobodies,” each created by the other’s perceptions and expectations. The writer dreams of an ideal reader, the reader searches for clues about the elusive writer, and both communicate through the written text. With literary exploration and personal experience, Atwood arrives at the idea that writer and reader are, in fact, specific people with unique perceptions and motivations.

    Though most students find the theory of Atwood’s chapter to be accessible, they are put off by its structure. Used to the solo lecturing voice of a thesis-driven essay, they become derailed by Atwood’s flowering examples and hefty epigraphs. They do not expect to find so many voices in one document, and they feel like strangers meeting strangers in the textual space.

    I recognize the feature that alienates my students from Atwood’s writing as the one I treasure. The piece is an energetic, gloriously detailed conversation, the kind of talk I’d have with colleagues at a gathering for graduate students or the celebration of a poet’s birthday. Atwood’s piece accomplishes what all wholehearted English majors strive for; it creates a conversation space for the living and the dead. Her text is an endless party — the English major’s life-work in microcosm.

    As an English major, I’ve never earned a reputation for wildness. I like to spend hours  with kindred spirits in musty used bookstores, fighting over the editions with the best old book smell. I wile away entire afternoons listening to grammar books with my assistive devices, annotating as I follow along in the print version. I write poems and share them with friends; we schedule revision dates where we read each other’s work and revise it line-by-line. I get excited about authors’ birthdays, especially Jane Austen’s in December. And now that I’m not taking classes, I beg my student-friends to tell me about the books they’re reading, the papers they’re writing. I want to hear fellow English majors describe their process of discovery – the in-class epiphany that stalls the note-taking pen, the sudden insight that interrupts the at-home reading, the excitement that accompanies a familiar pattern in a new context. I want to relive the moments of delight when I witnessed resonance on the page – when I discovered a contemporary theme in an ancient text.

    In an essay from his book, Why Teach?: In Defence of a Real Education, Mark Edmundson describes the ideal English major as a person “unfinished,” constantly seeking transformation and “reincarnation” through the texts she reads. I see the work of the English major – if we even need to call it “work” – as an unfinished conversation, the determination to reanimate old or forgotten voices alongside the remembered ones. The desire to throw a good party across time and language.

    Neither art nor the artist can make someone immortal; immortality belongs to the reader, the one who decides to welcome another’s work. By continuing to read, the English major bestows immortality on voices that have long since lost the need for breath. The attentive reader invites others to speak, to share her mind and body. While she lends her mind to another writer’s words, she recognizes who she is. No writer can ever overtake her because she is part of the conversation; her perspective expands, accommodates.

    I’ve seen the same guests at my party for years – Austen, Tolkien, Woolf, Thoreau – but, like a good hostess, I try to expand my social circle. Recent partygoers include Vita Sackville-West, Amy Hempel, Laurie Colwin, E. M. Forster, and Jeanette Winterson—and they will definitely be invited again. Others, like Joseph Conrad or Daniel Defoe, will not.

    Each of these authors has enriched me as a poet, an observer, a communicator. Still delighted and surprised by the timeless empathy of certain writers, I apply snatches of this ongoing conversation to my music or teaching. As writer and reader, I welcome the animating connection, the splendid life of texts.

  • Defying Sense

    Some years ago at an outdoor art festival, I sought shade inside a booth that sold blown-glass jewelry. The artist, a kind woman in her late sixties, encouraged me to touch each of her creations and welcomed my tactile perspective. She placed earrings in my outstretched palm with a detailed description: “These are small rose quartz, almost translucent…Now these are larger, blue-green Swarovski crystal—like the ocean really—and surprisingly light when you wear them.” She understood that I came to know each earring by its weight in my palm, its texture beneath my fingers.

    Though she didn’t doubt my ability to appreciate her pieces, she was surprised and pleased when I called her jewelry “pretty.” To her, “pretty” was reserved for instances of visual pleasure. When I used “pretty” to describe the silky-smooth texture of round crystal beads or the subtle ridges of blown-glass shapes, she embraced my view as novel and exciting. But she couldn’t shake the strangeness of hearing me use her visual words in nonvisual ways, a strangeness emphasized by our environment. The booths around us overflowed with paintings, delicate glass sculptures, tapestries—all created by artists who discouraged touching. This festival celebrated vision’s undisputed claims on the beautiful.

    Relegating beauty to the eye of the beholder sets blind people at a disadvantage. Some of us are unable to appreciate the visual pleasure of sunrises, starry nights, flawless diamonds, double rainbows, and exotic orchids. To the sighted individual reveling in daily encounters with visual wonder, our world must seem a dark and barren place.  Vision is a greedy sense that claims a central position in our culture: it demands control over all beautiful things. So where do the blind find beauty?

    You will encounter a significant number who think that blind or visually impaired people cannot find beauty at all. This fear of a beautiless life veils blindness in tragedy. To live without seeing sunsets, the faces of your children, the sparkling waves lapping at the beach’s edge is to be cheated by beauty just out of reach. When the canvas of your world is wiped blank by vision loss, especially later in life, you forget that the world continues to exist.

    Others may prefer the mystical conception of blindness, in which the blind are compensated for their loss by the gift of spiritual guidance—the ability to understand beauty in anything: a crust of bread, an empty can, a puddle of rainwater. In this view, the beauty we find in birdsong or the smell of impending rain is elevated to a saintly epiphany—a miraculous gem we find only because of our physical deficit. Our blindness shields us from worldly cares and wrenches our minds open—transforming us into vessels for the extraordinary and the divine. Every phrase we utter is a mantra to be treasured and practiced; every struggle we experience is justified as part of our sanctifying pilgrimage.

    Whether you see blindness as eternal banishment from beauty or  fortifying holy laurel, both views enforce the same ostracism: they command you to draw a line that blind people cannot cross. I cannot say what occurs on your side of the line, but I can describe the activity on mine.

    I don’t see the line (did you see that coming?), so I will venture my thoughts on what beauty is.

    Beauty cannot be confined to one sense, one organ; it resides in the being of the beholder. To experience beauty, you have to be, to exist—mind and body aware.  Even the most glorious sunset must be placed within the context of our human experience. We cannot separate ourselves from our perceptions.

    Nor can we claim to be only our sensory observations. You do not see the beauty in a sunset by virtue of your eyes; it is your mind, soul, spirit that translates beauty. Just as lively piano music speaks to your hands, your ears, your heart, even your feet,  the smell of jasmine or freshly baked bread reaches beyond your nose. Your senses don’t monopolize pleasure; they convey it.

    The eyes, like the purveyors of the other senses, are only one way for beauty to enter into your body and mind: they are not the best way. But there is no best way. This is why the blind person is no more saintly for finding beauty through the other senses. If a room has five doors, you choose one. If a room has four doors, you cannot choose a fifth—unless you create it. But creating that extra door is a lot of work. It’s far easier to choose one of the portals already provided.

    The sense-door is a clunky metaphor. I doubt whether each of our senses corresponds to one door only. I often “see” with my fingers, understanding the beauty of an object first by touching it and then seeing it. With my hands, I understand dimensions and geography much more quickly. I run my fingers all over a thing and, suddenly, I know where to look to appreciate its color, its brightness, its contrasts. In this way, my hands and my eyes help create knowledge: neither is independent, I use two doors at once.

    Nonvisual beauty is not the domain of only blind saints and sages. What stops the average sighted person from exploring the tactile, the olfactory, the auditory, is a preoccupation with the eyes. We have much more body in the world. Why not put it to work seeking beauty?

    Another problem lies in the cliché itself: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The “beholder” transmits an image of someone looking outward, only capable of seeing herself with a mirror. So throw away the mirror and the need to “see” yourself. Look, if you must use that word, look inward. Perceive inward. Explore yourself, starting with the spirit and the soul. We’ve all heard that mirrors lie. Be guided by your feelings and not your eyes.

    It is much easier to be the spectator looking on than to make yourself the spectacle of your own hungry vision. Foremost among the senses, vision exists to create “safe distance”: we see imminent danger and avoid it. We can “look away” when situations become too painful. We “see” others as different from ourselves by not seeing ourselves as we really are.

    To smell, to hear, to feel, to taste requires closeness, immersion, the chance to run our senses all over the thing we want to know. Couple this closeness with vision and we have a propensity for immeasurable beauty. Without vision, we still have that propensity. To find beauty, you must use your whole self, even if you don’t think that self is whole.

  • Total Revision: Conversations in the Red

    This semester, I am living out one of my long-cherished dreams: teaching a series of intensive grammar workshops for multilingual learners and struggling student writers. On Friday afternoons, my colleague and I face a group of students who willingly admit their bad relationship with grammar. So far, we’ve had four sessions, teaching anywhere from 2 to 16 students each time.

    In our first class, I introduced the difference between grammar and style—a distinction often conflated even by literature teachers. The principles of grammar describe the inherent structure of a language; they explain how a language behaves and help speakers and listeners understand the text. Style encompasses how we use the language in a given situation—whether we dress it up or dress it down. Where grammar entails certain rules—though not as many as most people think—style is created through a person’s choices.

    A few weeks ago, a student came for writing tutoring to improve her grammar. Handing me her essay, she explained, “My professor says my grammar is terrible.” As I looked over her work, I noticed a handful of grammatical mistakes: one issue with pronouns, a forgotten apostrophe, and a typo that Spell Check wouldn’t catch. However, her writing was far from appropriate for the formal assignment; she frequently slipped into second person, using lots of “you” and “your,” and she chose informal words, like “kids,” “guys,” or “great.” I noted, too, that she used contractions, which are usually discouraged in formal academic writing. Her writing displayed stylistic issues, not grammatical mishaps: her paper was trying to wear a bathing suit to the opera.

    Because this student was writing for a sociology professor, I was unsurprised by the misinformation she received. I don’t expect instructors beyond the realm of composition or linguistics to handle writing feedback with such nerdy precision. Still, I am irritated by this mix-up. I cringe when I hear about comments that are critical and erroneous; I know how damaging professors’ feedback can be. As a writing tutor, I often hear students say, “I’m an awful writer” or “My teacher says I have the worst grammar,” and I hear similar sentiments from my own students.

    Even positive feedback reveals students’ lack of confidence: after I praised one of my students for her excellent summary assignment, she said, “I’m just so glad you don’t think I’m dumb!” This student emails me with questions, comes to my office, tries her best on all assignments, but, like countless others, she has been labelled a bad writer. Her years of teacher-centered education have taught her one prevailing lesson: the teacher-authority will always judge you more accurately than you judge yourself. If she believes in herself but her grades don’t confirm this belief, then she defers to the grades. She lets the letters and numbers assess her gifts and learns not to trust herself. Thus, even though she claims to enjoy creative writing and journaling, she insists, “I’ve always been a bad writer.”

    Of course, “bad writer” is an umbrella term that catches all kinds of writing struggles: grammatical confusion, misinterpreted assignment instructions, late-night drafting, learning disabilities, the influence of other languages, procrastination from serious writer’s block, lack of coherent grammar instruction. Some of these issues can be handled directly in the classroom while others require special one-on-one attention. In my courses, I address process issues like writer’s block by devoting an entire class session to planning for an upcoming paper. Students claim that they don’t know what to write about, so I design activities that help them gather quotes from their text. Once students have collected enough evidence, they feel empowered to write the essay.

    Too many students are intimidated by the challenge of producing “good” writing, so I encourage students to think of grammar and style as “final draft concerns.”* Because of my passion for grammar, I can’t easily suspend my grammatical awareness when drafting. However, I recognize that my best work comes when I have a clear idea of where I want to go—even if all the components of a piece are drifting lazily through my conscious mind like the globules in a lava lamp.

    It takes a long time for my students to understand that grammar and style are not priorities of the planning stage. I suspect that their undue apprehensions about these features stem from previous classes, where their grammar errors earned them the label of “bad writer” or “careless student.” I’ve heard of nefarious practices that colleagues use to assess students’ grammar: some calculate individual deductions for every error while others remark on the quality of the grammar without offering advice. These techniques only intensify grammar’s reputation as a fearsome and mysterious power—flaunted by instructors and withheld from students.

    I do believe in grammar as a kind of magic. In classical and medieval education, understanding the grammar of an object meant that you could have power over it: if you wanted to fix a broken horseshoe, you had to know the grammar of iron. My students think I’m stretching the truth here, but the etymologies of grammar and glamor are connected.** Therefore, understanding English grammar gives people the ability to weave magic with words—to have an influence. Effective texts can breed empathy and awareness: miracles worthy of sincere faith.

    When I think of grammar as a kind of magic, I realize that my expectations change. I don’t expect everyone who picks up a violin to become a world-famous musician. I don’t expect everyone who can walk to have a masterful or confident gait. I realize that my grammatical understanding is a privilege fostered by my personal interest, solid education, and leisure time—which I fill with the reading of grammar books.

    If grammar is magical, then the study of grammar cannot be remedial. Like the mastering of any other craft, grammar skills require lifelong dedication and practice. When we free grammar from the realm of the remedial, the slow, the sloppy, we begin to understand that we can all be bad at it, and we can all be good at it. Then we lose the need to punish without empathy those who break grammatical rules—to destroy the confidence of student writers because of a dangling modifier and a misplaced comma.

    So my series of workshops are a dream come true. They offer me the chance to teach the magic of effective writing to those who want and need to learn. In these classes, deliberately placed outside courses where students focus on a grade, I can create a safe and mirthful space for exploring the structure of language.

     

    * Though I practice this advice regularly, I did not invent it; Peter Elbow and Nancy Sommers articulate higher-order concerns  in their texts on the writing process.
    ** This discussion of grammar can be found in David Crystal’s The Story of English in 100 Words.

  • Fear and Form

    As a blind woman, I do not court silence. The absence of sound in the presence of other people often makes me apprehensive. With no audible messages, I’m left to wonder what others are thinking and doing. This anxiety intensifies when I stand before my students. Are my students texting? passing notes? sleeping? While they produce no sound, I cannot judge their mood or level of attention to my class.

    But as a blind teacher, I must set aside my discomfort and learn to trust in silence, in its power to make students access their own thoughts and voices.  When I pose a question, I force myself to wait, to endure the swell of soundlessness that fills the room. I must be willing to exchange one kind of knowledge—the audible signals of my students’ activities—for the quiet in which ideas percolate. If I wait long enough, a student will speak.

    Today’s lesson will put my resolutions to the test. My students are exploring the concept of metaphor through poetry, the genre that renders them mute and uncomfortable. I have given them a packet of eight poems:

    My students rarely react positively to poetry. Intimidated, irritated, or apathetic, they resist all kinds of poems—from William Carlos Williams’s “Red Wheelbarrow” to Adrienne Rich’s “What Kind of Times Are These.” So I expect silence today; I pass out the poems, knowing that I’ll hear more groans than anything else.

    Despite their resistance, I insist on teaching poetry because poetry uses language beautifully on a budget. The poems I choose are brief, employing metaphors in memorable ways. The nine lines of Plath’s poem each contain at least one metaphor, and Heaney’s “A Drink of Water” weaves metaphorical and narrative language so closely that students have difficulty pulling the strands apart.

    In my morning class, I ask for student volunteers to read the poems aloud. We begin with Atwood’s four-line poem, in which she uses each new line to subvert the meaning of the previous one. After a student reads the work aloud, I ask, “So what is this poem about?” The predicted silence occurs, throwing the pen-clicking and paper-shuffling into high relief. I wait. I let the silence grow; I imagine that it fils every corner of the room, snaking around the desks and climbing up the walls. Eventually, a student responds—and the attitude of her comment overshadows its content. She offers half-sentences, stumbles over her words, backs up.

    As we move through the poems, I notice the same reticence in other student responses. When we read “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” a student says, “I guess it’s about a guy talking to his father…or something…because his father is dying?” The student is right—and it seems like an obvious interpretation to me—but he doesn’t feel right. Something about the text alienates him, and I suspect it’s because we call this text a poem.

    When we label these  texts as “poems,” students handle them with certain assumptions. Poems should be difficult. Poems should advance ambiguous meanings—meanings that directly oppose a student’s intuition. Convinced that some phantom authority knows “what the poem is really about,” students learn to distrust their gut reactions to poetry. And where there is no trust, there can be no love. Why should I be surprised that they don’t want to get to know these texts? They’ve been told that Poetry stands aloof: she won’t give you her number, she won’t ask you to dance, you’ll always look foolish when you approach her.

    Even if my students aren’t preoccupied with being wrong about the poems, I consider that they may be overwhelmed by the task of interpretation. So I change the plan of action for my afternoon class. I divide the project of engaging with the poem into four key tasks: 1) reading the poem aloud, 2) identifying the prominent metaphors, 3) identifying the genre conventions (what makes this poem a poem), and 4) explaining “what the poem is about. A group of 4-7 students will handle each task, and students can place themselves in the group that best suits their skills. The first three groups fill quickly, but few students want to be in the fourth, where they are most likely to display their lack of interpretive skill.

    We approach the poems in the same order, beginning with Atwood. After an eager volunteer  from Group 1 reads the poem aloud, I notice an immediate upsurge in student conversation. Group members are conferring, reacting, forgetting to be self-conscious in the presence of an instructor and an unknowable genre. We discuss Atwood’s four lines in a disorderly fashion, students from each group chiming in before I can call on them. A voice from Group 2, who should be identifying metaphors, goes for the poem’s meaning: “So, this isn’t a love poem! It’s like a hate poem! She’s irritated with this other person, right?” Other voices sound their agreement without waiting for me to verify the student’s interpretation.

    After the reading of Plath’s “Metaphors,” where the speaker describes herself as “a riddle in nine syllables…an elephant, a ponderous house,”the room falls silent. Plath’s layered metaphors can be overwhelming, cryptic. But it’s not long before a student from the read-aloud group bursts through the quiet: “She’s writing about being pregnant!” While her peers react with loud disbelief, I ask, “How do you know that?” and the student takes the class through every line of the poem, pointing to Plath’s fruit and body imagery, use of “nines” (it’s a nine-line poem, and each line has nine syllables), and creation metaphors.

    Though the group exercise does not transform all quiet students into fearless interpreters, I feel that it changes the mood of the classroom. Students are eager to complete their group’s task, to do right by their group members, and this solidarity distracts them from the habitual intimidation that poetry inspires. I hear more excitement in their observations. They are proud of locating obscure metaphors, of understanding that poems use stanzas, repetition, and unconventional word order. As they delight in fanciful interpretations, I enjoy listening to them play with poetry.

  • Travel Talk

    Thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time, my campus is covered in uneven splotches of afternoon sunlight—encouraging shade in one moment, debilitating glare in the next. I emerge from the elevator and thread my way through the oncoming dark shapes of students ambling to class or chatting with friends. I switch the relaxed sweep of my cane to quick tapping, and the students part before me, stumbling out of my way. In two places, the sunlight poses particular issues. Between Starbucks and the large sign for brown rice sushi, the sidewalk widens and sun spills over and around the library. In midmorning and mid-afternoon, this small stretch is a blazing valley for me; I step slowly, enlarging the arc of my cane and avoiding the indiscernible concrete columns that flank the narrowed walkways.The second difficulty lies on the sidewalk past the library. Again, the area opens up, with a line of columns in front of the library’s entrance. My cane catches in the sidewalk’s decorative bricks. Afternoon sunlight floods the path, washing out all its distinctive features. The columns, the bus stop, the walking students, the benches and bushes, all fade into the unpleasant brightness.

    Because it’s hard to judge distances in this open space, I listen for the metallic hiss of the library doors. The automatic glass doors are prefaced by a small metal platform that clangs as people exit and enter the building. When I hear the sound of feet on metal, I know I’m heading in the right direction. This is a good place for me to move from the right side of the path to the left, passing between the last two columns. In a few steps, I’ll approach a diagonal left turn, like a triangle stenciled in cement. Once I’m on the short leg of the triangle, I’m only a few quick turns away from my waiting vehicle.

    But getting to the triangle is tough. If I veer too early on the large path, I’ll catch my cane in the slender columns near the edge of the library building. If I complete my hard left too soon, I’ll find my cane deep in the bushes beside the library. If I pass beyond my piece of the triangle, I’ll meet a stretch of grass.

    Today I find my cane tangled in the bushes. I know I’m in the wrong place, so I extricate myself and move forward. After a few steps, I check my progress and find grass: I’ve overcompensated. I turn back, using my cane to survey the space. I blink—I think I can see the sidewalk I want, but I still have to get to it. I feel grass under my feet, and I hear a woman’s voice behind me.

    “A little to your left.”

    I call a thank-you and shift my feet, landing on the sidewalk I want. Sure of my place, I begin to  move more quickly.

    “You’re welcome,” she continues, following me. “You’re very brave.”

    “I don’t know about that.” I laugh. “My problem is the sun. On an overcast day, I wouldn’t have any trouble.”

    She laughs with me, walks past me. “You’re braver than I am. And it’s supposed to be overcast tomorrow.”

    “Perfect!”

    I hear her chuckling as her footsteps fade. And I think to myself, here’s another social interaction on this sun-bleached spot. First it was the young student who stopped to ask me how I learned to travel, only to explain that his grandmother had lost her vision and was in deep denial. Then it was the man who told me, “You do that pretty well,” obviously convinced that walking and blindness are mutually exclusive. Once, it was the man handing out pocket Bibles: assuming his text was much too small for my use, he gave me a hearty, “Good afternoon” instead. Most of my interactions on the triangle have been pleasant—inquisitive strangers asking me how I do what I do.

    For me, mobility seems to include an inescapable social component. Doors swing open, people approach, someone stops to give me a piece of advice—”Just so you know, there’s a golf cart parked ahead!”—and I feel compelled to make these small moments sociable and pleasant. I came to this realization after today’s mysterious helper was much farther down the sidewalk. I realize that I needed to make her laugh, wanted to say more than “Thank you.” I wanted to give her a piece of my story.

    Contemporary culture and education put a premium on the ability to tell a story, to chat freely with strangers, to work cooperatively with others. In classrooms where participation is measured by how often a student speaks, extroverts have an undeniable advantage, backed by scientists who argue that humans are designed to be social. In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain collects the research that establishes the value of introversion. Cain argues against the stereotype of introverts as socially inept or defective, instead calling the reader’s attention to their thoughtfulness, desire for less stimulation, and creative problem-solving. As I read, I can’t help but notice the various ways in which my blindness has encouraged me to think like an introvert and talk like an extrovert.*

    I’m the most extroverted in academic settings. As a student, I spoke readily in class. To help professors remember my accommodations, I learned to be vocal: my professors were liable to forget me if I was a quiet blind girl, sitting in the back of the room and rarely venturing comments.

    But I find that my extroversion doesn’t stop at the classroom. In most scenarios where I need assistance, I use my voice—not with the soft inflections preferred by some introverts but with a tone that defies others to ignore me. I don’t know where I learned to be loud, but I don’t ever remember being quiet.

    If I had to choose a situation for quiet thought, it would be my travel time. I often find it challenging to maintain deep personal conversations when I’m walking. The friends who call to me while I’m traveling can attest that I take a minute to realize who wants my attention: I’m concentrating on the world around me, attuned to the feel of my cane on the ground, the intensity of the air, the sounds of passersby, the smells of the weather and the surrounding buildings. It’s a lot to think about, and it’s time I’d rather spend as an introvert.

    In his TED Talk, “Design with the Blind in Mind,” architect Chris Downey presents a different perspective of this social mobility. As a newly blind man, Downey acknowledges the increase in social attention he receives from strangers on his walks through different cities. But Downey doesn’t think of this attention as pitying or intrusive; he sees the well wishes, the blessings, and the sometimes-erroneous advice from strangers as proof of our common humanity. Downey admits that he never received such positive attention as a sighted person.

    So while I want to be an introvert on the move, undisturbed by the questions and comments of strangers, I have to respect the force that motivates people to approach me. I acknowledge that the kindness of strangers has often helped me correct a misstep, and I admire the courage that helps strangers reach out to those living beyond their own experiences.

    * According to Cain’s book, I’d technically be an “ambivert”—somewhere in the middle. For a brief and engaging summary of Cain’s work, watch her TED Talk, “The Power of Introverts.”

  • Unpacking Attraction

    What’s the sexiest item in your closet? A short black evening dress? A pair of strappy red heels? A dark tailored blazer? Or maybe it’s an expensive designer ensemble that you only wear for special occasions.

    The hottest item I own isn’t hanging in my closet; it’s folded in a drawer, resting between a stack of jeans and a pile of heavy winter pullovers. I am talking about an argyle sweater.

    I own five argyle sweaters, each featuring a different color scheme: gray on black, gray and white on red, cream and light blue on navy, gray on purple, and purple on gray. And they are collectively my favorite attire. I regularly combine them with different dress pants and shoes to create what I consider to be a very empowering set of outfits.

    Most of the sweaters pair well with black pants and black heeled ankle boots. However, the red argyle demands red shoes—not strappy heels but bright red pumps. I sweep my long hair into a bun either at the nape of my neck or in the traditional “librarian” spot, and I accessorize with small, handmade earrings. If it’s cold, I choose a solid scarf in a coordinating color. If it’s really cold, I pull on my dark purple wool coat with its high collar. If it’s miserably cold, I choose a heavy black peacoat.

    By now, you’ve probably guessed that I’m not prepping for a glamorous night out—although I wear this outfit to as many places as I can. I choose my most attractive, my most empowering attire for work, not for play. So what makes it sexy?

    As a visually impaired person. I’m not about to praise the power of visual impressions. But I can’t escape the reassuring reality that people take me seriously in this outfit. I don’t know if it’s the bun or the argyle or the brisk, no-nonsense pace I adopt in the sensible heels, but this ensemble does what we hope all our efforts at attraction will do: it gets me attention. And it does what many endeavors at attractiveness don’t do: it gets me respect.

    Wrapped in argyle and carrying a white cane, I am marketing myself as a threefold entity: Academic Blind Woman. I recognize, with pride, that this is not the preferred image for cosmetics commercials, designed to market a specific version of “sexy” to consumers. The women who appear onscreen to sell longer-lasting hair color and pore-hiding mineral powder are measuring their attractiveness with different units, and I doubt whether my preferred wardrobe merits a conversion table.

    According to commercials,  a sexy woman rarely wears her hair up—unless she plans to take it down and display its shine, volume, and texture with a flirtatious head toss. She never appears in argyle, but she occasionally gives a nod to business professionals with a tailored suit. And she doesn’t carry a white cane unless she’s in a trailer for a Lifetime movie or a diversity training video. She’s slender, but miraculously curvaceous, with a mid-range voice. Despite its tousled quality, her hair behaves. Her teeth flash, her eyes sparkle. (Needless to say, one eye does not drift to the left.)

    In addition to her studio-perfect beauty, the sexy woman projects some admirable qualities. She’s carefree, confident, and fun. She knows what to say. She doesn’t get pushed around. She’s independent.

    Of course, commercials aren’t selling the product; they’re selling the woman. They’re selling confidence, attractiveness, freedom from stress. These atributes, not the hair color, are what’s being advertised. The hair color, the loose powder, the dessert-flavored-yogurt-that’s-just-as-good-as-real-dessert, they’re all a means to an end.

    In my commercial, a neatly dressed woman stands at a desk before a pile of opened books. She holds a dry-erase marker in one hand and gestures with the other. The camera pans around the room, catching the enthusiastic faces of attentive students. Text at the bottom of the screen reads: “Dress yourself in dreams.” A scene switch shows our leading lady back in her office, opening a large envelope and drawing out a copy of a glossy peer-reviewed publication. She flips to the table of contents, finds her name, and marks the pages of her essay. A final scene shows her leaving her office, chatting with students, conferring with colleagues. The image fades and the screen flashes a final message: “Let your dreams dress your life.”

    When I’m dressing for the part I’ve always wanted to play, I’ll set my confidence against any commercially created product. Nothing can make me feel more attractive than knowing I’m about to begin another day of teaching. Wearing my practical, efficient, coordinated uniform, I feel like my most authentic self. I can’t imagine a feeling more sexy than that.

  • A Brighter World

    I’m celebrating the last week of winter break with some mother-daughter time. Today Mom and I are honoring a yearly ritual: back-to-back appointments at the eye doctor. We arrive at the office, sign ourselves in, chat with the receptionists, and take seats in the first row of uniform waiting room chairs.

    On the mounted television, two QVC women banter and beam about fashionable lighting accessories. Praising the colors in an elaborate Tiffany floor lamp, one says, “It’s got shades of red and honey, and some turquoise from the stones at the top. I can even see purple—is that purple?—Yes, and some smoky gray there in the middle.” Before I can contemplate the idea of such an intense array of colors on one product, the inner office door opens and a woman calls our names. We gather our things and head down the familiar hallway.

    “You can go first,” Mom says as we enter the examining room. I deposit my purse, cane, and scarf in a chair along the wall and aim for the seat of honor: a tall, high-backed leather perch with thin, rigid arms and a metal footrest. I take the seat and remove my glasses, making the room bright and blurry.

    Both Mom and I surrender our glasses to the woman who escorted us to our room. She disappears for a few minutes, then returns with the glasses. She updates our medical information in the computer and then begins to examine me.

    First, she hands me a dark plastic circle on a stick and asks me to cover one eye. I cover the left, the weaker eye, and she flips off the lights. At the far end of the room, a small square screen flares to life. She asks if I can distinguish any letters on the screen.

    “I see an E…and nothing else.” The high-contrast capital E appears, right-side-up, bold against the pale screen. In theory, other letters float below the large E, but I’ve never been able to see them. I only know they exist because I’ve heard Mom and my siblings reading them aloud.

    I use the plastic eyepatch to obscure my right eye, the good eye, the reader. Now I struggle to focus my left eye on the screen. I can still see the E but it’s less bold, more blurry. Nevertheless, I convey my success, and my examiner makes a note.

    She then flips on the lights and hands me a small card with rows of numbers in a font I don’t recognize. It’s an ugly font, sans serifs—chosen, I suspect, for its squashy, difficult appearance. The lines of numbers decrease in size down the length of the card. She asks, “How far down the card can you read?”

    I examine the card carefully, knowing my answer will change as my eyes gradually understand the card’s organization and font. “The third line—No, the fourth. No…” I wait and adjust the card, bringing it close to my eyes, then holding it farther away. I use my bifocals. “With my bifocals, I can read this line here.” I point to a line near the bottom of the card.

    “Good.” She makes a note. “Switch.”

    I repeat the procedure with the left eye and, unsurprisingly, can only read the second or third line of text. I know the numbers are there, but they’re fuzzy, hard to follow. I explain that I rarely read with my left eye: “It just keeps me in three dimensions.”

    The woman laughs and takes my plastic eyepatch. “Time for dilation and pressures,” she announces, her voice calm and professional.  Lowering the  overhead lights again, she treats my sensitive pupils to rapid, cursory flashes from a bright handheld light. Then she offers me a tissue and orders, “Take off your glasses.”

    I obey and lean my head back, steeling myself for the discomfort of numbing drops. I open my eyes as wide as I can, resisting the urge to squint and blink when the large, shining droplets fall against my lashes. The numbing drops land wetly in my eyes and immediately begin to work. My eyeballs sting and tingle; I blink a few times and blot them with the tissue.

    To measure my eye pressures, I rest my face against a huge machine on wheels. My chin and forehead slide neatly into the machine’s accommodating spaces. Once I’m in position, I see a bright light coming toward me; the light skirts my central vision and dances around the periphery, replaced by a dull blue circle. Seemingly lit from within, the circle comes closer and closer until it blots out everything else. Something brushes against my eye, but I don’t feel it: the nearness alone tells me I’ve been touched. This time, my right eye is uncooperative; able to clearly see the approaching machine, my eye dances around, fidgets. The left eye awaits the touch of the dull blue light with sagely nonchalance.

    My examiner notes my pressures—well within the normal range—and wheels away the large machine, parking it beside the sink on the right wall. She returns to me, administers the dilating drops to my tingly eyeballs, and tells me to trade places with Mom. Mom takes my vacated seat, and the preliminary exams repeat: the only notable difference being that Mom can read several rows of letters on the chart.

    Once Mom’s dilating drops are in, we are directed down the hall to a small dim room, the “dilating dungeon.” We remain there for half an hour, waiting as our drops take effect. My drops work quickly, transforming my vision. My surroundings are bright, shiny as if colored in high contrast. Up close reading is impossible because the dilating drops blur my vision. I can’t read the time on my phone or the book in my purse—Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness. I shouldn’t have brought such a tempting choice to this place of temporary illiteracy.

    Pupils now wide and occupied with the absorption of excess light, Mom and I enter another examining room. This time, the doctor comes to see us, her long western skirt swirling as she moves toward me. My eyes catch the glint of her wide studded belt in the dim room. After a little small talk, she begins the most unpleasant part of her examination.

    This doctor has been shining small bright lights in my eyes since I was two months old, and she knows how much I dislike it. She promises to make her exam quick as she aims her “mean little light” into my eyes. Because her small examining light casts such strong glare, I’m barely able to track her hand moving back and forth. I track a single finger, and she seems satisfied.

    My dilated pupils can only handle so much light in this brief appointment. Soon, I feel like I’m living inside a lava lamp; bright splotches of color move lazily up and down in front of me. Doc gives me a few minutes to rest before starting the final portion of my exam: “Look up, now up and left, now left, now down and left, now straight down. Down and right, now straight to the right, now up and right. Now look at my light—I’m sorry, I know you don’t like it.”

    Finally, she finishes the exam, declaring that all is well, and I can retreat to a dark corner of the room to nurse my funky vision. The next few hours will be a struggle as I navigate this new bright world with unfamiliar eyes. Luckily, Mom and I are heading to our favorite sushi place for lunch: I’ve memorized the menu and won’t have to do any reading.

  • An Unlikely Pair

    This semester, I teach my three courses in two different classrooms, located on a back hallway crowded with benches, recycling recepticles, and lounging students. I enter the building, veer left, and travel down a long, wide hallway—dodging drinkers bending over the water fountain and near-invisible columns guarding arbitrary places. Just where the hallway begins to expand into a windowed sitting area, I take a left. Now traveling this narrower space, I keep to the right, listening for the sounds of shuffling papers, sloshing drinks, and zipping backpacks that indicate the presence of students.

    Between the doors along the hallway, people sit with their legs stretched out. Students sitting on opposite sides will find themselves locked in games of inadvertent footsie; the hallway’s width won’t accommodate two pairs of outstretched legs. As I move closer to my classrooms, my cane tapping and sliding scratchily along the carpet, I hear pairs of legs retract—students attempting to slide themselves out of my way. Occasionally, when a student fails to move, I must say, “Excuse me,” in a voice of battlefield cheerfulness. My volume and inflection rouse the absent-minded, and the legs draw up quickly.

    Occasionally I piece together an unconventional narrative from the sounds I hear on the hallway. As I walk, I notice the sound of fabric sliding on carpet: students are yanking their feet out of my way. Today I travel along the hallway, which is only half-occupied with students. As I near a girl whose legs seem longer than average, I don’t feel like saying, “Excuse me.” She should be able to hear my approach, but she doesn’t move her legs. My cane taps lightly against something hard—her leg? her foot? I have no way of knowing. I move beyond her and approach my classroom. While I reach for the classroom doorknob, a guy on the opposite side of the hallway addresses her:

    “Did that hurt?”

    A mumbled response renders no words. Ambivalence on the part of the afflicted.

    The guy continues, “Yeah. She’s hit me before.”

    I stand maybe two or three feet away from the conversation, easily within earshot.

    What is my problem with this brief exchange? I will bring my literary training to bear.

    Let’s examine the structure of the guy’s claim: “She’s  hit me before.” This sentence is a prime example of active voice, the grammatical pattern that sets up an “X does Y” relationship. In English, active voice is our storytelling voice. It’s the voice we use for quick-and-dirty explanations: “Rain falls in the afternoon,” “I go to college,” “Marcelle baked a cake.” This pattern assigns clear agency—the X is active, a doer with intentions.

    In humanities courses, students are encouraged to write in active voice, rather than passive voice. Passive voice is the syntactical pattern used for scientific research. It follows the formula “Y is done by X,” and the “by X” is often omitted. There are several passive sentences in this paragraph. Passive voice finds its usefulness when someone wants to avoid blame: “Mistakes were made,” “A vase was broken,” “The data was collected.” We don’t know who the X, the agent, is, so there can be no agency.

    So our hallway guy chose active voice, and with his active sentence comes an unconscious demonstration of preferences—he prefers the story to the study. But his story bothers me.

    In his story, I am the attacker, the one who hits deliberately. He offers his sentence to the girl leaning against the opposite wall as a cocktail of bravado and consolation: “Don’t worry, girlfriend, I’ve been hit too. I am tough, but I understand your irritation. I’ve been there. We’ve both gone through something together.“

    How do I know that all of this emotion was packed into just one sentence? Because he had to say it then and there—The blind girl hit me too! There was no humor, no wry smile, no “Isn’t that the worst? Well, what can you do?” There was a desperate reaching out, an utterance powered by empathy and a need to unite in the face of adverse circumstances.

    Solidarity at the expense of civility.

    I wonder if I’ll ever hear someone defend me during one of these exchanges.  Will I ever move a few feet away and overhear someone say, “Yes, she’s hit me before, too. But that’s what the cane is for. I don’t think she can see us.” At this stage in my experience, I doubt if I’ll encounter such perfect responses in the real world.

    People are more likely to say, “No, she travels so well—I bet she isn’t even blind. She is just faking it.”

    If we achieve human connection at the expense of others, what have we really achieved? How can we create a space for civil stories and inclusive explanations?

  • Novel Interactions

    I am lucky to be surrounded by dedicated and diverse friends. Some accompany me to the symphony. Others sing near me on the risers. A few teach in the office beside mine. And most read a lot of books. Like all relationships, my friendships intensify when my friends and I share novel experiences. We discover an unknown author, an exotic restaurant, a place for nature walks and reading aloud, and we lose ourselves in conversation.

    As we share interests, we experience moments when my vision changes the circumstances of a social interaction. Some friends have never been close to a disabled person before—they don’t have disabled relatives or classmates, they never volunteered with disabled kids, they’ve never even seen a blind person. New friends learn to verbalize important information, become adept sighted guides, and begin to join me in the lifelong process of laughing at those who are still baffled by my disability. To be clear, people who can’t bring themselves to utter, “See you later!” don’t make it past the acquaintance level. I make no apologies for this prerequisite to my friendship. I’m confident that I can offer a warm and accepting friendship to someone, so I expect the same in return.

    Old and new friends witness the many servers who won’t hand me a menu, the symphony ushers who don’t ask if I’d like a program, and the strangers who offer – usually without tact – to pray for my healing. Sometimes, I’ll turn to a new friend and say, “Let’s see if the waitress gives me the braille menu.” My companion will hiss, “I wonder if she expects me to order for you. Joke’s on her, you’re ordering for me!”

    In the unofficial tally of new and awkward situations, Crystal and I are in the lead. On any given day of errand-running, we experience a volley of unsolicited, misplaced, or inept assistance from strangers who fail to – in Crystal’s words – “treat you like a person.”

    Amused by these encounters, we spend our travel time plotting ways to get revenge. One of my mentors, a good friend and devoted disability educator, often uses the mantra, “Educate, don’t retaliate.” In our fantasies, Crystal and I educate so precisely that the offending parties see the error of their ways and we all have a good story to tell. In real time, however, we can rarely enact these far-reaching civic maneuvers. It’s all we can do to hold in our laughter until we’re out of the shop and in the car.

    Let’s begin at the bank.

    Crystal and I have stopped at the bank so I can deposit some birthday money. We emerge from the car, and she makes one of her many “summoning noises”: bird calls, tongue clicks, and shouts of “Closer! Closer!” that tell me where she is and where to go. I take her elbow and we enter the bank, threading our way through the unsophisticated mess of ribbon that creates the lines. I mutter something about accessibility and irritation. I can’t imagine that anyone using a wheelchair or scooter digs these cramped rope lines with their abrupt corners. When we reach the counter, I present my debit card and my ID, striking up a conversation with the cheerful bank teller. She instructs me to swipe my card and enter my pin. I do so, enjoying the large, distinctive buttons on the pin pad.

    “Wow, that’s impressive! You entered your pin.” There is a lot of smile in her voice as she watches my competent movements.

    “You think that’s good? Wait till you see me buy something!”

    As the teller turns away, Crystal hands me a lollipop from the small bucket on the counter. “For you, superstar.” She grins.

    When I take Crystal’s arm to leave the bank, the teller calls a bit of encouragement: “Don’t worry, I run into walls all the time, too!”

    A few hours later, we find ourselves at the nail salon, where I am having my eyebrows waxed. Real friends don’t let their blind friends pluck their own eyebrows. When the waxing is complete, I take Crystal’s arm and we stop at the counter to pay. The young Asian man prints my receipt and addresses Crystal:

    “What happen?”

    Crystal’s silence tells me that she is confused. “What?”

    The man repeats his question, and Crystal replies, “What happened to what?”

    In a hushed voice, he elaborates, “Her eye.”

    “Oh um…”

    Crystal’s voice fades, and I jump in. “I have low vision,” I explain. “I’ve had it since I was born.” I sign my receipt and return my card to my wallet.

    “Ohhhhh.” The man takes his copy of my receipt and files it away. “My friend like that. My best friend.”

    Later, when we pay for our groceries, we encounter the bank teller’s spiritual cousin, a surly cashier whose only comment comes when I successfully pay for my food and get cash back. After the brief series of beeps that signals the machine’s reception of my pin, she shouts, “GIRL THATS SO GOOD SHE CAN PUT IN HER OWN PIN!” This is her first, but not her final, comment to us. She places my receipt and the cash I’ve requested into my outstretched hand. Energized by my heroic act—the indomitable barrier I’ve overcome—she wishes us a good day.

    Though most cashiers are more friendly than this notable example, few actually place the receipt and cash in my hand. Some never look at me, so they don’t see the cane and dark glasses. This means that my outstretched hand will remain empty as the cashier offers my receipt to a nonspecific place in the air. Other times, the cashier will hand my receipt and cash to the person I’m with, though I completed the entire transaction. Here, Crystal and I entertain devious fantasies: “One day, Em, when they hand me your cash, I’m just going to run away and leave you. ”

    “I’ll stand here and look forlorn.”

    Instead of implementing this particular fantasy, we’ve devised two strategies for dealing with unpleasant cashiers. In the first, Crystal simply steps away or feigns deafness and blindness when a cashier tries to hand her my things. Eventually the cashier gets the message and places the items in my outstretched hand. In the other scenario—when the cashier wordlessly offers my receipt to the empty air—Crystal announces in a very loud, serious monotone, “SHE’S HANDING YOU YOUR CARD.” This utterance helps the cashier to realize the miraculous effects of a verbal cue. After a sheepish apology, the employee places the stuff in my hand, and we can leave the store, knowing that we’ve helped carry one more grain of sand away from Ignorance Mountain.

    For me, the best part of these interactions comes during the ride home, when we’re rehashing the day’s experiences. Though I do my best to be plucky and self-reliant, the sheer frequency of these situations can leave me feeling undervalued and ignored. These strangers who believe that I can’t complete the simplest tasks, who insist that my life is some kind of modern tragedy, who refuse to speak to me directly—they don’t know about my degrees, my publications, my performances. By their calculations, I’m not much of anything.

    Here, Crystal enacts a vital role of friendship: she reminds me of my own worth, and the proper way to measure it. When I remember to calculate my value from her loyalty and understanding, we can turn these unfortunate encounters into good stories.

Emily K. Michael

Emily K. Michael is a blind poet, musician, and writing instructor. She serves as the poetry editor for Wordgathering at Syracuse University. She is also a poetry mentor in AWP’s Writer to Writer program. Her work focuses on music, embodiment, teaching, and ecology. Emily is passionate about birds, medieval history, singing, and guide dogs.

Pre-order My New Book

Purchase Neoteny

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to On the Blink and receive new posts by email.

Watch my TEDx Talk!

Recent Posts

Find posts about…

accessibility activism barbershop blindness Blindness Awareness Month book review braille cane chorus coffee disability education embodiment faith Finishing Line Press food grammar guide dog history interview language learning literature mobility Mosaics Anthology music National Poetry Month nature Neoteny: Poems new release Poetry print reading review shopping singing Southeastern Guide Dogs spirituality teaching touch Tudors voice walking Wordgathering writing

What I’m Reading