Wheelin': Lookin' fierce and proud

[mdlbear]

When I wrote "With her lover right behind her lookin' fierce and proud" in the last verse of Wheelin', I wasn't just trying to fit the rhyme and meter, and I wasn't just trying to describe cflute, either. Not only does the world look different from a wheelchair, it looks rather different from behind a wheelchair, too. It was a little surprising.

I'd expected to be feeling a fair amount of resentment at spending my time pushing Colleen's chair, just as I occasionally feel a twinge of resentment at doing an extra chore at home when Colleen isn't up to it. It will probably happen occasionally, but so far the dominant emotions have been happiness and pride at doing something useful for someone I love. Happiness, too, at being with her instead of forging ahead at my own pace, or trudging along beside her feeling resentful at having to walk at a pace that's nearly as bad for my back as standing still. And I'm not complaining about the workout, either.

I feel a little bit fierce, too. Protective, and even a little aggressive. Normally, trying to get through a crowd of people, I'll stand still and silently wait for an opening unless I'm in a real hurry. Even then I feel diffident about asking. Pushing a wheelchair, though? Sorry, buddy, I have the right-of-way. And, line or not, I'm not at all shy about walking past it to the handicap counter in the airport and asking, politely but without hesitation, for assistance.

I see the terrain differently. Small slopes suddenly become important. I plan ahead: is that ramp steep enough that I'll have to go down backwards? Will I be able to get back up? I look for the curb cuts. Learn to go over door jambs backwards, or diagonally, rather than jamming both front wheels against the bump and getting stuck. It becomes a contest: me and the chair against gravity and geometry. Sometimes gravity wins; that's awkward.

There's no use complaining; that's just the way life is sometimes. What still surprises me was how little I find to complain about.

Comments

[jeffreycornish.livejournal.com]

In the few times I've had to wheel a friend or loved one around, when I'm at the handle bars (or better, the helm), I am Captain of a vessel, and the one seated before me is the Master. At the tiller, the wind is at my back, and I only need my Masters direction. Charts and compass out we skirt the shoals of the not-terribly-wide door and the rough currents of the sloped parking lot.

[mdlbear]

Yup; a lot like that. Though sometimes she's more passenger than Master; depends on where we are and how she's feeling.

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

Bear, you have brought tears to my eyes.

[mdlbear]

Thanks!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Bravo to you, half-brother-in-name!

[mdlbear]

Thanks!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I use my own very low-grade Perl script, song2web.pl, to webify songs from text files, and I wanted to see yours. Light-years ahead of me, from what I can see. I followed the link from the song page through flktran.html to your TeX directory index, and there I was partially stymied. The links to flktran.pl and index.pl both return 500 and say "Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

[mdlbear]

Sorry about that -- I switched hosting services about a year ago, and the new one seems to think that .pl is a perfectly acceptable suffix for a CGI script. Silly Apache 2.x.

The solution turns out to be:

AddType text/plain .pl .pm .sh .lsp .tex .sty
AddHandler default-handler .pl .pm .sh .lsp

Note that the tools only work if you're using my oddball set of LaTeX macros for typesetting, but they work pretty well if you do (though I still run into the occasional glitch; I really need to spend a week and proofread every damned one of my generated .html files).

You'll also want to check out album.make and TrackInfo.pl, as well as the Makefile in the Lyrics directory, which are where all the magic really happens. About the only thing cooler than dependency-solving in GNU make is the fact that you can apparently solve sudoku puzzles with apt-get's conflict resolver.

My perl is ugly, but servicable, with many layers of historical crud. The whole thing is badly in need of an overhaul.