A SERIOUSLY HIP DUDE

AND HIS HIP SEND-OFF 

 By Heidi Johnson-Wright

Thirty-five years ago, I had both of my hips replaced. It was a couple months before my 16th birthday. While my friends were getting their drivers’ licenses, I got new hips.

It wasn't exactly a fun way to spend a summer, but my arthritis left me no choice. My hips had completely disintegrated. The bones were grinding against each other, sounding like my mom's 1968 Mustang when my sister first learned to drive stick shift. The pain that went with it stopped me dead in my tracks. Life was put on hold until my surgeon readied his bone saw -- along with other nasty implements -- and replaced what Mother Nature gave me with stainless steel and Teflon.

I don't know precisely what happened to my natural hip joints. But I'm guessing their fate and Jimmy Hoffa's were substantially similar. Ashes to ashes, and all that stuff.

I never got a chance to say goodbye to my hips. Not sure what I would have said, exactly. Perhaps "it's not you, it's me" or "let’s try again after I get my head together" or "don't let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you."

Because of my experience, I've always been curious how other folks deal with having parts of them torn asunder. Recently I stumbled upon an online article about Norwegian artist Alexander Selvik Wengshoel, who gave his own hip an interesting send-off.

A wheelchair user since childhood, Wengshoel had his hip replaced when he was 21. The performance artist wanted to take home the detached joint as a souvenir. He woke up after the procedure to find a vacuum plastic bag containing the hip, and a good-luck note from his surgeon attached to it.

But Wengshoel’s story doesn’t end there. He cooked the hip and dined on the meat, along with a side dish of potatoes au gratin and a glass of wine.

When I read this, I was stunned. The first thing that came to mind was "white or red?"

But then I saw Wengshoel's comment:

"It had this flavor of wild sheep, if you take a sheep that goes in the mountains and eats mushrooms."

That answered my question. Had to be a robust red. Perhaps Rocca Delle Macìe Riserva Chianti Classico 2008, from Tuscany, or Beronia Reserva 2008 from Rioja, Spain. Gotta love the way those aromas of succulent black fruit, earth, violets and spice complement meat.

Since I've already told you Wengshoel is a performance artist, you probably know what's next, and you would be right. He documented the entire cannibalistic feast in an exhibition that was featured at the Tromso Academy of Contemporary Art in Norway.

I was inclined to dismiss Wengshoel as a nut job, a kook driven mad by Scandinavian seasonal affect disorder.

But then he elaborated further.

"It had been so hard to have it in my body, and when I took it out, it turned into something else, something romantic. It was a natural process I felt I had to do to move on. I just work with my own body, that is my canvas.”

I sort of envy Wengshoel. At least he got the chance to emotionally work through such an experience.

As for me, I would like to have taken my hips home in a Big Lots bag, but I would have stopped short of ingesting them.

Perhaps I would have turned them into a flower vase.

To display rose hips in bone meal, of course.

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A TRIBUTE TO STELLA YOUNG

 
earthBOUNDtomBOY

by HEIDI JOHNSON-wright

She was slight of stature and made her way through life on wheels, but she was a force to be reckoned with.

Stella Young was a feminist, disability activist, comedian, writer, atheist, Aussie and avowed knitter. She embraced the term “crip,” turning it back on the establishment. She refused to play the role that society tried to impose on her: the cute, demure, little girl in a wheelchair.

Young once wrote: "I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilizing symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death."

Sadly, her death came all too soon. She recently passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, at age 32.

Young lived with the challenges of osteogenesis imperfecta, a condition that affected her connective tissue and made her bones vulnerable to fractures. But that was hardly the thing that defined her.

She didn’t shy away from and the truths she knew needed to be told.

Young often spoke out against "the soft bigotry of low expectations" people with disabilities encounter.

"It speaks to this kind of assumption that people with disabilities are 'brave' because our lives are horrible and that's not true at all," said Young.

In a TED talk, Young referred to the trite phrases -- such as "your excuse is invalid" and "don't quit, try" – that accompany photos of disabled people online. She found them annoying, labeling them “inspiration porn.”

"The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, 'Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.'"

In her TED talk, Young expressed disgust for the bromide, "The only disability in life is a bad attitude:"

"No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshelf and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into Braille."

But Young didn’t lambaste only greeting card-worthy clichés. In an open letter that she wrote to her future 80-year old self, she spoke of her struggle with disability identity and self-acceptance. 

“Remember those days back before you came out as a disabled woman? You used to spend a lot of energy on 'passing'. Pretending you were just like everyone else, that you didn't need any 'special treatment', that your life experience didn't mean anything in particular. It certainly didn't make you different from other people. Difference, as you knew it then, was a terrible thing. I used to think of myself in terms of who I'd be if I didn't have this pesky old disability.”

Thank you, Stella, for reaching out to disabled people struggling with the shame we’ve internalized from society’s devaluation of us. Thanks for your fearless advocacy. For not pulling punches with your words.

Stella is the Latin word for “star.” Although Stella Young has died, her ideas will burn brightly for eternity.  

http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-tribute-to-stella-young.html