Dyscalculia

Just finished reading “The Thirteenth Winter
– A Memoir” by Samantha Abeel, published by
Sholastic Inc. 2004 - author suffering from
dyscalculia, a learning disability affecting her
capacity to learn skills based on sequential
processing such as math, music, spelling
and grammar

Dealt with her disability exactly the same way
I dealt with mine, falling prey to anxiety and
sleeping and eating disorders - she was
diagnosed and received special help for
the disabled, published books and did
public speaking, while I simply forged
on until I broke down

The author describes the way I experienced
and processed the concomitant depression
exactly the way it was; except that I had a
twin sister and two older brothers behind
whom I could hide; as well as a granny
to help me cope until I fell ill

Learning how another human being dealt with
the same shame, suffering and humiliation, I do
not feel so bad any more, realising my perfor-
mance can never be up to standard; instead
of it being a shame, it is a miracle that I have
managed to work hard and hold a job
for all this time!

Thank you to all who helped me for so long and
are still helping me with polishing my writing as
I just cannot force my mind to master sequential
skills which I do not naturally possess

Happy Consequence (Revised)

Forgotten the happy consequence of losing
self-confidence – while drooling, squinting,
hands shrivelling into claws, back hunching
more and more, I can reassure all concerned
their strategy is working

Spirit broken, knowing sitting uncomfortably
in the wrong position was a sure-fire way of
making me see failure, an overimaginative
translator with the misfortune of being a
disastrous poetaster and limerickster

A quick-step smiling court jester turning
somersaults in passages, grovelling before
supervisors at work, kissing floors, attending
language classes; luckily grown completely
deaf, cannot hear or understand a word

Frozen in shock at depth of inadequacy, lost
hearing and thinking capacity, pain is numbing
my brain, cannot concentrate; this is excellent, I
am as dumb as I’m told I am, and what is even
more gratifying, I feel like dying

Knowing my best isn’t good enough and never
will be, no use trying, after giving my all I am
sent away as an ugly sinner, a low-life under-
achiever expected to die of shame and guess
what – I do feel dead, so ashamed, I am sure

Death’s too good for me, hoped for crucifixion,
strangulation, execution by military fusillade, I
cannot wait to die ignominious death, cannot
contain my impatience to say my farewells to a
world in which I have failed

What release this is, a world cleansed of me, an
evil person, what rejoicing as my lack of work
ethics and moral principles are allayed – how
overjoyed they who worked hard to kill my false
self-esteem, reveal my lack of character

I am happy they’ve succeeded so all can know
how far below par my attempts at posing as a
human being have been while underneath I’m
Machiavellian, a parasite on society, not deserving
life and daylight, only worthy of early death

Oh, what joy to be released from the task of
imitating my honourable colleagues while underneath
I was nothing but a mean and weak impostor
who should have been erased on the day
of birth!

What a Privilege (Revised)

Underachiever that I am, I went into shock
realizing the depth of my manifest failings,
with my allergy always at work as an oxygen-
thief I fail to concentrate on routine things

The i’s are not always dotted and t’s crossed,
spaces and full stops not filled in correctly, my
administration a sin, migraine taking up valuable
space sitting in my Troglodyte chair

Three dislodged discs in my neck abetting my
failure to love perfect diction in rendering letters
by disgruntled members of the public in perfect
English for an obscure secretary of the President,

Not careful enough about one-eyed Cyclopian Troll
Interpol messages hunting criminals all over the
world, not word-perfect translating Arabic script into
workman English, not meeting with any requests

I see how I underachieve, how my example in
feeling ill at work and filling forms incorrectly
creates bad impressions, how lacking
accomplishment means I deserve punishment

The shock received is SO good for me, they need
ever so much better people in bureaucracy, people
who can serve with one hundred and seventies
intelligence quotient – I shall quietly assimilate

label of underachiever, my intelligence just
fell by a hundred degrees since that appellation,
being in shock means I am frozen in pain of
devastation, of guilt and sinful, awful things

Therefore I toil in misery, sweat clouding brow,
knowing now that I shall never be good enough
for our scintillating bureaucracy - but privileged
to serve in my lacklustre way!

************************************8

Isn't it wonderful how fast we become dumb
when labels are hung around our necks - losing
the little ability we had - so now we have none?
I thank everybody who took pains to make me
see the error of my ways and by labelling me
an underachiever, making sure I turn into
a gibbering idiot overnight, I can happily
assure you the therapy is working, I am
growing dumber by the moment!


[ANONYMOUS COMMENT:

We all underachieve, and we also over-achieve; the
perspective that matters however isn’t exactly ours
to chose.

In the workplace mania for ‘ranking’ as you express
it exceeds all rational derivations of utility. It
ceases to be an incentive for behaviour modification
and therefore is actually useless.

In that respect I see what your poem defines as
your own devaluation.]

Though It Hurts

I always think I am inured to nobody listening when
I speak - nobody caring what I think – until the day I
feel the need to explain my ideas – and you grin, it
does not matter, I shall pop back after all, always
did before

I try to put it in writing only to discover it cannot be
done, suddenly realize my soap bubble of friendship
- so-called – is bust; the words Walt Disney put in the
mouth of Alice – ‘I always give myself some very
good advice, but I very seldom follow it’

Appear in my mind to taunt me – I do the same,
advising myself, go there, do this, say that – do
NOT reveal the agony or its source - yet after
trying I could not do it, told you about my
sorrows – and you laughed

This is as it should be, though it hurts…

Façade Of Quosimodo

Behind the mask and façade of Quosimodo -
eyes squinting, back bent, hands transformed
into claws, Alice followed her duty, forcing her
hunchback into her chair under Madame La
Pompadour’s watchful eye, frame upright,
neck on fire

Ears conveying no sense, not an intelligent
syllable, IQ falling - - in a world of enforced
calculation there is no space for an Alice,
without Douglas Adams’ Bistromatics and
Terry Pratchett’s Hubert with his Glooper,
an Analogy Machine

solving problems, not as numerical exercises
but by duplicating them in a form people can
manipulate - water flowing through a glass –
now THIS Alice understands, crystals and
coloured water, an Igor storing lighting in
a jar - while a confirmed criminal

Takes over the banking system, lending money
at huge interest only to those who do not need
it; paying as little as possible profit to clients;
even Gadafi’s insistence that his Libyan
people love him - make more sense to
Alice (he has his personal universe)

Than saving dying languages which keep
their speakers in an iron grip of isolation,
making communication with the outside
world impossible; though linguists want
to preserve all extinct languages as a
curiosity - evidence of the variety

Of human cultural creation...

“Making Money” - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday
2007, quoted from p. 62

Glooper Image at: www.algodoo.com/doobox/details/22598

After Class

Le cancre dans la classe – c’est moi, I am
learning to be humble again, now I know
why we must forget, halt consciousness;
cannot stand this awareness of sorrowful
stupidity without plummeting to new
depths of sad existence

Why forge ahead when all I do is expose my
lack of intelligence, how long must I eat humble
pie and swallow my words; forced to admit that
I am good at nothing? Like Ecclesiastes, I should
have been drowned or strangled at birth, like the
author of Lamentations

I should never have seen the light of this earth –
my life is a blight upon the sacred pathways of
inspiration followed by the self-righteous while
my being is an abomination, please stone me,
get this over and done with; I am never going
to get used to feeling

Like the most disfigured and horrible creature
ever created, the most unendowed simpleton
who ever gave itself airs of accomplishment,
fact is – I have none and will never acquire
some, even if I live a hundred years - we
all need only die once

Please let me die instead of dying over and
over as my stupid pretensions are unmasked
one by one – or let me scrub floors and
wash pots for the rest of my life…

3 March 2011

Troglodian Dementor Fighter

Murder and mayhem, mysterious maiming
and death bells tolling the midnight hour –
sounds perfect to me - sincere condolences
on having to grapple with a medical system

While I am waging a desperate war on my
Troglodyte chair in which I am drowning
and which tries to suck all joie de vivre
from me in true Dementor style

My knees being higher than the rest of me
I keep sinking into the dudgeons of despair
I never knew a chair could be a Dementor
in Disguise…

Kind, though weakening, regards
Marilese - the Decrepit Intrepid
Troglodian Dementor Fighter