Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

Image description: The words "Writer's Block," with 'Writer's' smashing into a lengthened ascender of the 'k,' as though into a wall.

So: in revisiting Monster's Legacy, I've decided to rearrange the chapter order. From the beginning, I'd been working on the assumption that I'd start with the autobiographical poems in vaguely chronological order, and putting the poems based on "fables and fairy tales" somewhere near the end (like, maybe the penultimate chapter, before I close it up with more personal poems again).

I've now decided that the fairy tale poems should come first, because: 1) that's how people already categorize monsters, so the first (cognitive) step is less of a doozy, and 2) it will set up the context I want for my primary argument that: "Mainstream anxieties about disability are as just as rational as anxieties over the bogeyman."

And because this fables chapter will be my foundation, I've also realized it has to be broader and more substantial than it is now; it currently contains four poems, one of which I'm going to throw out,* one of which is based on a mostly unknown story (in America),** and a third which is based on an unfamiliar version of an 'old favorite'.***

That means: I have more poems to write! ... A-a-and part of me is wondering if this is a legitimate decision, or just a delaying tactic so I can put off finishing the thing, and face up to the risk and terror of actually publishing and selling it. I'm not sure which side of that argument is being voiced by brain weasels, either.


There's the "decision" half of my writer's block.

The "frustration" half comes from not finding the source material I want to link back to for a few of those new poems -- especially the poem I want to write about Hephaestus (yeah -- yet another relatively obscure character, but it'll involve name-dropping the really famous gods). I could swear (By Hermes, naturally) that, back in early 2011, I read that Plato argued that artists should not make images of Hephaestus, because people might take depictions of his physical disability as literally true, rather than a metaphor, and that would tarnish the idea of gods as perfect, and thus, would be blasphemous (This is what inspired me to title my brief folklore blog: "Plato's Nightmare/Aesop's Dream"). Only, now, no matter what keywords I put into search engines, I can't find anything even close to that.

Other stories I want to write (about), and now cannot find anywhere: An e-text of the 14th C. romance of Aesop, which spells out how he was physically disabled black African ex-slave (I can buy a book of the translation from Amazon, but I want to have an online version, durnit!), and the story about the "real" Mother Goose was Charlemagne's grandmother, and how she had one enormous, deformed, (goose-like) foot, and walked with a crutch.****

So I am now appealing to my circles for help with Google-fu. Halp?! Any ideas?

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*The one about the fable my mother told about Disability, adaptation, and trying to appease 'expert' authorities. She mistakenly attributed it to Aesop, but I figured out in 2011(ish) that she'd actually made it up on her own, probably based on her experience with doctors, therapists, and me. Writing a poetic version of an 'ancient' story, and trying to tell the story about how that first story never really existed, but was forgotten and then invented (all in the same piece) is just too meta- to fit into a chapter of "Story Time."

**Hans-my-Hedgehog, which is great, but infuriating when read as a disability metaphor. I could not bring myself to retell it straight -- my poem is a fix-it fic. Here's a link to an English translation of the original: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm108.html

***The Frog King, which, yeah, is famous. But in the version I'm telling, the princess actually tries to kill the frog, which is what breaks the spell. And then, the now-human king sleeps in the bed with her while she's portrayed as a child, and he's implied to be maturely adult (Though not "old," he's a full-fledged king, who is returning to the responsibilities of the throne, and she's the youngest princess-- still young enough to weep bitterly over the loss of a favorite toy). Yup, a whole lot darker and more sexualized than the bowdlerized, Victorian, version everyone knows. And here's a link to an English translation of that story: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm001.html

****Neither of these stories have any solid link to actual history, by the way (which is probably why, if they were online once. they are no longer -- such is our current culture's fear of ambiguous "truth"). But frankly, I really do not care at all about that -- for me, what's important is that these stories were told in the first place, and in the telling both illustrate and reinforce attitudes toward disability and other otherness.