Author: lba.askia

Dear Ms. Miller,

Meeting like this, where you speak and I don’t respond, then I speak and you don’t respond… we become well acquainted—simply through word, simply through silence. 

It’s strange still; I’d prefer to just have met you in person. Though, whatever this is brings me joy, so who’s to say?

❧ ❧ ❧

Yesterday, I was lying on my back, on my mattress, in the middle of the living room, my stomach like a blank face staring up at the fan. 

Yesterday, I was lying on my stomach holding your poetry open with my right hand, holding my right hand down with my left hand, two pillows stuffed under my chest—a strange sort of swimming. 

You write in one poem, “Turning to me forever / familiar faces of strangers.” 

Though it is a strange way to meet, it seems fitting. 

❧ ❧ ❧

On the inside cover of your book, it says you were “handicapped by cerebral palsy,” which reminds me of how sitting on a horse, you can do nothing but straighten your spine… a strange sensation. If I could just ride a horse to the bathroom… to the grocery store maybe. I wonder if people would stare at me in the checkout line. ‘Feel like my mode of travel is none of their business… I wonder if one of them would be willing to put my left foot back into the stirrup—these stirrups are not very accessible; my feet never stay in.

❧ ❧ ❧

I think by “handicapped by cerebral palsy,” someone may be implying that you have some catching up to do.

What do you think, Ms. Miller? Are you all caught up yet?

Between you and your words, between reading them, between adjusting ourselves to hear each other, we may, in fact, be catching up.

❧ ❧ ❧

Can you describe your suffering as a function of time? 

In one poem, you write, “Now I sit idle, my hands / shaping wide arcs of nothing / serving as poems.” In idleness, time is a great wave washing against the stomach (assuming you’re lying on your back, under a ceiling fan). How fast does a fan have to spin for the air to hush against the warm want of the stomach?

In between two words, there is a distance measured only in absent units. 

When I was young, my mother told me God was everywhere all at once. 

What is the distance between word and want?

(Please answer in meters/sec².)

❧ ❧ ❧

When you write, “Each moment is a thorn aflame with God,” is it because you snagged your right hand on an overgrown nail? Does the disability dissolve in its pain? Does pain belong to the disability, to the person, or to God alone?

If you look closely enough, there’s a palimpsest of tiny scars on the backs of my hands. I call it the beautiful account of my crippled activities. You call it “…Christ’s sprung grace.” 

Does God reveal Himself through pain? Does the disability belong to God? 

The Ancient Greeks had a clear answer to the latter question: exposure—in an effort to return the disabled infant to the gods. I wonder what those Ancient Greek mothers did with their hands after returning from the mountains childless.

❧ ❧ ❧

On the inside cover of the book, “cerebral palsy” is doing the “handicapping.” This is easy to hear if I say it in the active voice: “cerebral palsy handicapped Vassar Miller from birth,” where “cerebral palsy” is the subject, and “Vassar Miller” is the object, and “handicap” is still a verb that reminds one of horses and racing and betting… and making things equal.

❧ ❧ ❧

When “[you went] down where God Himself is only / the solution to a thorny equation,” were there lots of disabled people there among the green stalks, balancing the variables on their cattywampus limbs so that their disabilities became a way of finding value? 

❧ ❧ ❧

I really hope you had a chance to hug a fellow spastic. If you’re both in wheelchairs, you have to find the optimal angle… it is all in the angle, Ms. Miller.

❧ ❧ ❧

I’ve been trying to identify this thing they say we have in common called “cerebral palsy,” which we have been “handicapped by… since birth.” 

We may be touching, but only at the vibrating tangent lines of our cerebrums, only at the spasticities of our hands, never at the hands themselves. It’s not the crippledness we share, but the “…precision known / to the crippled….” 

❧ ❧ ❧

What is the distance between precision and pain, between pain and word, between word and want? 

You write, “All those comfortable words that would gather / My beloved Stranger, My strange Beloved, / To my mouth, O, that O, where my words orbit.” Still, it is strange meeting you like this, as word, as paper mouth, as paper O. 

My fan spins above me, its blades circle a fixed point in space. My stomach receives its distance as an act of cooling, as an act of listening, where the limit as word approaches want is silence. 

❧ ❧ ❧

The full sentence from the inside cover reads, “Handicapped by cerebral palsy since birth, she has overcome its disabilities with energy and courage.” 

In the above sentence, “cerebral palsy” has (many) disabilities, all of which you “[overcame]” like a horse carrying a heavy load. 

As you may well know, a horse carrying a heavy load must have “energy and courage” to compete with the other nondisabled horses.

What then is the mass of your cerebral palsy? and how much energy is required to overtake the lightest horse? 

(Please answer in kilograms and joules respectively.)

❧ ❧ ❧

“Lying here past pain and pleasure / I am heavy with my wait.” Just as you say, Ms. Miller. 

Lying on my back as the load pressing down on my mattress, the fan high above my stomach, lying on my stomach the words under my face, lying down on your word, lying across the space in between, the load as me, lying here, belly up, stomach down, in between mattress and fan, I am trying to overcome the insurmountable need to overcome. 

Wish me luck.

Yours,
Latif 

Notes

All quotes taken from If I Had Wheels or Love: Collected Poems of Vassar Miller.

I rifted on Jacques-Henri Striker’s analysis of the term “handicap” in A History of Disability (146-150).

Every once in a while, YouTube will suggest a strange new video that is so far down my alley it scares me. Its monstrous algorithm aside, as soon as I tapped on the animated short “dead end,” whose thumbnail depicted a bandaged bloody hand, I fell immediately down Victoria Vincent’s penciled-in rabbit hole, or as she named her channel, “Vewn.”

The video opens on a slot machine website. A dreamy-eyed blonde poses on the side of the slots, repeating the asterisked phrase, “The more you spend, the more you win!” The asterisk in the bottom corner of the screen reads, in tiny letters, “EXCLUSIONS APPLY.”

The perpetually losing player is a guidance counselor subjected to the ramblings of a glum, edgy high schooler in all his cliche-glory. The counselor, as dispassionate as the student, is more interested in pulling the lever and hearing the virtual hostess’s flat consolation, “Better luck next time.” Assured by the faint trace of hopelessness in her empty remark, that next time never comes. The counselor sinks deeper into his gambling addiction and alcoholism while the student is left to his own nihilistic musings. 

I found this situation intuitive and contemporary: the shared feeling of meaninglessness between a young and a grown man. But it would be foolish to discuss the deep and pressing implications in this video without addressing Vincent’s unique but consistent animation style, characterized by her sharp inexact lines, which contain a bold assortment of colors. This comes off as a crude, informal style as if the characters, objects, and backgrounds were ripped out of a sketchbook and pasted into the frame. She also uses boiling lines for characters and objects, which causes them to perpetually jitter against the still background. It’s a charming and distinct style that allows her to mess with proportions and perspective, exemplified in her distorted buildings and angled doors. It’s also well suited for many of the video’s surreal sequences and macabre twists. 

It’s sort of jarring to have such a vibrant style depict such dark subject matters, but Vincent strikes a balance in her shorts through a stunning adherence to realism. This is immediately apparent in the voice acting. At first, I couldn’t explain why, but I found the characters’ voices oddly comforting. The high schooler and counselor had the same monotonous tone that, even in frustration, maintained a sort of tenderness. It reminded me of the first time I watched The Boondocks and expected the usual melodramatics of anime voice-acting but instead got the organics and richness of the voices I recognized in people around me. The tone and diction of Huey, Riley, and Grandad sounded oddly familiar—like those of a friend. Similarly, the narrow modulation and gentleness of Vewn’s voices sound a lot more natural than the wider range most cartoons employ and is a better fit for the gravitas of the subject matter.

Vincent makes another commitment to realism in her depiction of technology, a well-established feature in many of her videos. From gambling sites to simulation devices, she includes details like the exit-, maximize-, and minimize-button on the top corner of windows; accurate file extensions, URL formats, and drop-down menus; and faithful layouts to the popular applications she’s mimicking, such as video streaming services, dating apps, and turn-based RPG’s. No wonder why the opening scene of “dead end” drew me in, the fictional site “SLOT-O-RAMA” seemed just as real as any other scammy gambling site. Thanks to this adherence to detail, it only takes a couple seconds of animation to strike up empathy for the guidance counselor—ensnared in the familiar teeth of addiction. 

Combining elements of realism with those of surrealism, she creates tension that propels the viewer through the content while slipping in her own social commentary. This commentary is most obvious in her stunning, hand-drawn backgrounds. The guidance office, for example, has signs like “DON’T LET DEPRESSION TROLL YOU,” or a picture of a beer with the caption “Drink this… if you want to die,” or the smallest but most potent poster, “STEP 1: Graduate / STEP 2: ?????? / STEP 3: Profit.” This collection of posters summarizes the pressing issue presented in the video: obtaining a degree or a job or both won’t guarantee happiness. 

I would like to believe that a high school is the ideal institution where an individual can find something beyond the incessant chase of pleasure—but in the short, the institution has failed the student, leaving him hooked on cigarettes and “[hating his] life but [hating] everyone else’s more.” Based on the signs on his walls and his advice, the counselor is in the same pinch as the student—the hamster wheel of spinning cherries and lucky number sevens, eventually halted by a declined credit card. It seems that even though the counselor has a degree, a job, and presumably some sort of shelter, there is still something profoundly tragic about him. 

To understand this, we should examine the hedonistic atmosphere in Vewn’s animated worlds. In several landscapes presented in her longest and newest video, “Twins in Paradise,” we see many of the city’s billboards advertising sex. One advertisement I found especially funny depicted a reposed half-naked woman captioned, “NEW, ELUSIVE, SEX.” These advertisements are accompanied by a plethora of liquor stores and pharmacies, reflected by the amount of liquor, pill bottles, and powdery lines Vincent manages to place in the bedrooms of her young characters.

She also sustains this theme through her masterful depictions of digital escapism. In “floatland,” we’re introduced to a girl playing video games in a messy room, filled with game cases, controllers, bottles, pills, and a filled up ashtray. The television though is usually the biggest and most attractive object in the room. On it, an avatar of our character finds herself washed up on the shores of Floatland, a virtual island with friendly NPC’s and frightening enemies such as purple feet and worm armies. As she plays, she levels up her skills in farming, cooking, and combat while developing a romantic relationship with a handsome purple-haired man named Aubury. During this bout of addictive play, she has been ignoring texts from a concerned friend who asks annoying questions like “Have u been outside lately?” 

Depicting this young lady in a state similar to the one of the counselor’s, Vincent points out the serious danger of using technology as a means to avoid the “real world.” It’s ironic how what she’s doing in the game (completing slightly varying tasks to level up so that she can have new abilities to do the tasks better—or what gamers refer to as “grinding”) is similar to the life she may be escaping from, the life of what we now call the “essential worker,” people who work to survive, or if they’re slightly better off, to buy stuff that can release them from the stress of work.

I’m sure Vincent doesn’t subscribe to the sensationalized opinion that video games and social media is pure, unadulterated evil. Like any great artist, what she is suggesting is subtle and already (at least partially) understood—that like any addictive substance, video games and social media can create serious social isolation, strengthening the user’s dependency on them. 

This issue is brought up quite blatantly in the minute-long video “find true love.” After swiping awhile on his dating app, our character matches with a red-hued lady named, quite uniquely, “star_girl02.” Our character’s Google searches progress as follows: “How to message a girl,” “How to get her to reply,” and finally, “Am i destined for a life of solitude?” Even though this progression is dramatic, it’s relatable and a little cathartic. Everyone (at some point in their lives) has that final google search running in the back of their minds and given that a heavily-liked comment in response says, “You and me both, brother,” I think it’s a fair and common thought for our generation. 

Another video titled “kittykat96” centers around a popular YouTuber who goes on a surreal and slightly disturbing journey, where she manifests her internet persona in reality, and it tries to kill her. This sensational story aside, there’s a quick shot where the background is filled with the YouTuber’s video. They include titles like “I haven’t left my house in 3 weeks,” “What to do if you have no friends,” and naturally, “Watch me eat ice cream alone in my room while crying.” Vincent’s (literal) background-commentary presents grotesque versions of reality for comedic effect, and it achieves this effect because, in these exaggerated titles, we see a pernicious truth. On real YouTube, for example, the algorithm picked up a video that now has 4.2 million views titled “21 Years Old: I Have NO Friends.”

But so what? Vewn effectively identifies the pressing issues of meaninglessness, social isolation, and addiction—but what should we do about it? What should the counselor say to the student? What should the concerned friend say to the obsessive gamer? What should the man say to his virtual crush? What videos should the YouTuber actually be posting? 

These animations don’t answer these questions. The YouTuber deletes her account, the gamer beats the game and opens the window opposite of the TV, the man closes his laptop after star_girl02 blocks him, and the student puts out his cigarette in the counselor’s coffee, steals his wallet, and skips town. 

I can’t tell you what the artist intended, and I don’t place much importance on intention. All we have to work with is the animation itself, and the ending of these shorts are similar in that they all feature a character who, out of frustration, fear, or fatigue, steps out of the cycle of immediate pleasure (the next cigarette, the next level, the next infatuation) and wonders at the possibility of the unknown: an open window, an empty room, or a taxi heading out of town.

Since I graduated my summer days have become indistinguishable. I spend them lackadaisically: looking half-heartedly for a job, checking off another must-read from the interminable list, struggling to cull meaning out of the squiggles of Arabic, watching the news as the world kamikazes into itself, and then ending the day with an hour of Seinfeld—a fitting show for this state of limbo.

I was fortunate enough to graduate right as the virus began its rampage across the West. It was strange to graduate from my bedroom, to wake up one day and not have the obligations of lectures, of papers, of remembering when I scheduled my aide to meet me at the cafeteria. This former sense of obligation was balanced out by the fact that, for the first time in my life, I was living independently and doing it successfully. I had achieved “the college experience”: the close friends, the parties, and the self-discovery allowed by a liberal arts education. Specifically, I had discovered my love of writing and language, and towards the end of university, I couldn’t wait to graduate so that I could finally “do what I want.” Unfortunately, being free at last from the shackles of whatever one thinks is holding her back, finally being flooded with that boundless sea of creativity is all bullshit. The shackles are replaced with fetters, and the boundless sea is still facilitated by an unpredictable faucet. 

It came as a surprise that my writing hadn’t increased after graduation (whether it had decreased is hard to say). It had, in my estimate, remained constant—that same rickety pace of a writer who is continuously interrupted by his survival. In my privileged case, this survival isn’t a matter of homelessness or starvation but of independence, the ability to sustain myself using all the tools society offers me, a pressing matter for someone with “unconventional” needs. The task of organizing an “unconventional” system of support on which to build the rest of one’s life is as consuming (if not, more consuming) than the task of writing a research paper on the contemporary uses of Game Design Documents or designing an assignment-posting website. The task for a disabled person to acquire a job, a house, home healthcare, and an acceptable social life isn’t difficult due to the amount of effort it requires but the ambiguity of its progress. 

Since May, I have been waiting, for the right job listing, for an employer to say “yes,” for a waiver to be approved, for a social worker to return my call, for a doctor‘s signature, for an HR person to answer my questions, for an interviewer to call me back. It seems I always lack something: not enough experience, not willing to relocate, not having this paperwork over that one, not asking the right person for the right thing. And over the phone, I’m beginning to wonder whether the slur and sudden breaks in my speech help curry my luck away from me. No matter how much effort I put in, no matter the case I present for myself, no matter how eager or uneager I am for the position, the immediate experience is a demotivating wait, which is compounded by an underlying nihilistic indifference, shared by so many of my millennial brothers and sisters, especially in this unprecedented time of uncertainty. 

It could be that I’m not as proactive as I should be, that I’m doing a lot of waiting and not a lot of doing. But the issue remains, the same issue that I thought would resolve itself after graduation, the issue of doing what I want. I don’t think I’ve carefully considered what I wanted, and it’s unrealistic that I figure that out now, but over the past four years, I’ve been consistently hung up on the same few things: programming, foreign languages, reading, and writing. In general, I’m hung up creating: creating meaningful applications, creating sentences from strange words, creating meaning from pages, creating the pages from which others can create meaning. 

I built Teranga House to ground myself as a creator, as a programmer, as an internationalist, as a perpetual student, and as a frustrated poet (a state which is required for poetry). This site is a direct lifeline to my work, available to whomever it intrigues. 

The word teranga is a reminder of a trip I took to Dakar, where in my family’s house as I stood in the doorway, leaning desperately on my older brother, my cousin (around eight years old at the time) rushed to take off my shoes. I never met this child before, and he had never met me; we were strangers by everything except blood, but he—without any words, without any knowledge of or apprehension towards my strangeness—interpreted what I was looking for and provided it without any expectation. I was told much later that there was a word for that, a word that describes that unique warmth and openness: teranga, which is Wolof for “hospitality.”

I hope to recreate a place like that house in Dakar, home to many, who lounge in the open courtyard, sitting on ornate rugs as chicken sizzles in oil and old fingers grasp at beads. I hope to create a place where anyone can come devour things made by humble hands and dance to things uttered by careful tongues.