MISS HAYLEY AT SPRINGHAVEN LODGE

This is a strong country. The great rocks push up out of the earth, rounded and hard and powerful, made smooth by moss and lichens, they are like the muscles of the earth, like the core of the planet, pushed up out of the ground. Sun comes hard off the water, cutting diamond shapes on the waves, flaring off to get caught in the smokey dark barbs of the trees, dropping like shards down into the deep tangles of the bush.


The wind comes hard into this part of the Canadian Shield. It comes from out of the immense expanse of Lake Huron, ripping into the Georgian Bay, funneling into the bays and inlets and channels that punctuate the ancient grammar of this land. It is a hard wind, often cold, and it touches you, you feel the vastness of it, like it leaves its origin in your hair and on your face; a scent of snow and open water, even in the summer.


The trees bend against the wind, curving but not breaking, carrying their strength in their shapes, the branches blown back by the wind but still growing, still stretching out into the huge, overpowering sky.

Only three hours away from Toronto, the Georgian Bay seems another world sometimes. You can breathe here, feel that great wind and you can stand up on high on a rock or on a dock or in a canoe and you can hear .... The wind in the trees, brushing the pine needles like a conversation; the sussurus of waves on the sand beach; the call of loons that vibrates up your spine like an electrical current; the lapping of waves against a wooden dock, a gentle sound that seems so loud, as loud as music, as quiet as the movement of blood under your skin.

Springhaven Lodge, in Pointe au Baril Ontario, is a very special place for my family unit. This is Collette's home. Her father started the lodge 40 odd years ago and his sons run it to this day. This is where Collette grew up; a little blond haired kid and her yellow lab pretty much living in the water.

This is also a special place for Miss Hayley. She has been coming here her entire life. Playing in the water, racing through the bush, discovering snails on the beach, racing up to the road to Uncle Dennis' house for some goodies from Aunt Kay in her kitchen. I've cut a little video compilation of some of Miss Hayley's early moments at the lodge. This video spans a couple of years; you can see the progress of her coat as she ages.

Things have changed at the Lodge, our lives have changed but it will always be a special place for us and no matter what the future brings we will have the memory of this land and when we need to, we will be able to close our eyes and feel the great wind against our face.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE FRIENDS WITH MY DOG

This started out to be a post the sole purpose of which was to show my latest Hayley video. Some more of the old footage I recently re-discovered and am editing together into some short clips. I also wanted to test out the video sharing site called Vimeo as an alternative to YouCrap. The video is here, its down at the bottom of this page; for rabid Miss Hayley fans you can scoot on down and take a gander and avoid the meanderings that follow. I'm curious to know what people think of the quality of this clip, I tend to like the compression that Vimeo offers; if you want to leave a comment on that it would be much appreciated. You can, you know, comment on this form and even keep it anonymous if you so desire.

The title of the video is Hayley and Friends and features Miss Thang playing with a couple of her old doggie buddies, Kier Bob and Max. Yes, her buddies, her friends. Miss Hayley has accumulated a lot of doggie friends over the years. At least, that is how we typify it. Her friends. Er, wait a second, is that possible?

If you've been reading along you know that Hayley recently turned ten. On that day in a park I met John, a fellow border collie owner (his border is also called Hayley so we often debate who is the "good" Hayley and who is the "bad" Hayley, so far I think Miss Thang is is ahead on points but it may come down to a split decision). John is a dog trainer for whom I have a great deal of respect. I told John "Its Hayley's birthday" and he gave her a cookie and he said "You know, they really don't have birthdays" I said, they don't age and he said, of course they do but "birthday" in an entirely human concept.

This is not an original idea of course. We are constantly applying human parameters to our pets. People call their dogs their kids; I don't call her my child but Hayley's name for us are Mom and Dad; she didn't come with that on her own, we taught it to her. I think if Hayley could choose names for us it would be Keeper of the Cookies or Holder of the Blanket or perhaps Open the Damn Door I Have To Pee.

People go to extremes humanizing their dogs. Giving them hair cuts, knitting them mini skirts, making them eggs Benedict, custom engineering them paw controls so they can drive their new Porches ... ok, so I made that last one up but you get my point.

All of us give our dogs names; this in itself could be said to be humanizing but hey, you have to call them something and it has to be something unique. You can't be in the middle of a dog park and shout "Dog" or "Mutt" or "Pork Rind Breath" and expect your dog to be the only one to respond ... what, isn't Pork Rind Breath a common euphemism for a dog? Ok, maybe its just me. So naming your dog is a practicality, there is a pragmatic reason behind it. But often the mere fact of giving them a name, and in our case a very human name, imparts a sense of personality, a sense of humanity.

We often view dog behaviour through human eyes. People think their dogs get sad, get mad, get depressed, get overly focused on career goals and putting the need to be the in the corner office ahead of together time .. ok, so I made the last one up, you see the pattern here. Well, dogs certainly have emotions, or at least they do feel things beyond the simple demands of food, thirst, shelter, horniness. Dogs feel fear, that is survival instinct. Dogs are social animals, pack animals and they feel separation anxiety ... that's why, when you leave them alone without exercise they eat your floppy disks, your eye glasses and your new Italian leather pumps (back in college I knew a woman who had an English bulldog who did all of those things) Do they feel sadness? Well, again they feel something, and maybe we interpret the anxiety of being separated from the pack as being sadness. I'm pretty sure Miss Hayley often feels a desperate sense of disappointment that she is not graced with parents as intelligent as she ... "Hey doofus, why are you asking me if I want to go outside, I'm standing in front of the frigging door, what the hell else would I want?" rolling eyes and flipping ears.





So lets get to the point of this missive (yes, yes sometimes I actually do aspire to make a point, stop sniggering) Does a dog have friends? I have a feeling that my dog trainer buddy John would not say that a dog has "friends" as we think of it. Dogs are social, they want to be around each other but there is a lot of work going on here, a lot of establishing and reinforcing of roles, of sniffing out who the strong is, who the weak is, who the sexually receptive is ... well shit that sounds like Saturday night in a lot of bars I used to frequent. Dogs recognize each other, they remember individual dogs, probably based on smell and the wagging of tails .. yeh, this really is like that long ago bar ...





But does a dog have friends. Hayley certainly has other dogs that she prefers to play with; you could probably call these dogs "sheep" cause usually they are the ones that don't seem to mind being herded as they chase their ball. But Hayley also has other dogs that are not sheep, that do not run or wrestle or fetch and I know she affords them a special status. I know she does this because she has this special cry, a high pitched, ululating, more typically border collie kind of cry that she uses only for certain dogs and certain humans as well. We call this her "pack" cry, reserved for those creatures four legged or two legged who she thinks belongs to her pack. Are these her friends? She seems excited to see them; the special cry, tail going in circles, butt all wiggling ... yeh, you know I miss that bar .. um, sorry, digressing ...





We miss our friends. I don't think Hayley does. I don't entirely believe that dogs live only in the moment, I believe that they have memories or at least associations (Hayley dislikes going to the vet, she dislikes it cause upon her very first visit the vet pinched her with the needle, she would not dislike it if she had no memory of that) but I don't think dogs "pine" for creatures absent .. with the exception of the pack leaders. But I think Hayley has friends. I think she is excited to see these dogs not only because they allow her to terrorize them ... sorry Hayley, I mean train them .. but because she has some special connection them. She knows lots of dogs and she meets lots of dogs on a regular basis but there are a select few who she seems to have made a part of her pack. These dogs don't live with us but they are in Hayley's pack. For a dog, I suppose, that is friendship.





So, here we go, Hayley playing with a couple of old friends. She has not seen KierBob or Max in many years but I have no doubt that when she does, there will be much crying and salivating and bum wiggling involved ... that's it for now, I have to go to the bar.


Hayley & Friends from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

A TALE OF TWO MOTHERS

I still miss her. Every day.

She was a small woman. And I think she looked old as long as I could remember. Face and hands etched by a hard life; a life hard, it seemed, before it had much chance to be soft. I didn't know that, then, back when I was a kid. The idea that she could even had a life outside my perimeter of existence was an alien idea.

She may have been small but she was a strong woman. Certainly, physically strong. I have a memory of picking up a refrigerator and moving it by herself. That memory may be flawed but there was not doubt she was strong in that way; people with that kind of life, that kind of past, develop personal strength.

She was strong in other ways. The kind of strength I never appreciated as a kid but came to respect as an adult; I admire it to this day. Strength of commitment. Not readily apparent but she must of had that. To raise eight children by yourself, to deny yourself companionship and freedom, that is strength of commitment. Strength of individuality; hell yeah, she had that in spades. Everyone in my home town knew the weird little woman with the dark glasses and the big hat and the flags and the red outfits. Drink a bottle of beer in a cup ... I mean, take a bottle of beer and place it in a cup and drink from the bottle ... tell me that isn't weird. Read a newspaper cover to cover everyday even with a grade 4 education and perhaps dyslexia ... she was strong.

Strength to be yourself. I struggle with that myself, sometimes. When I look back at the times I have been least happy with myself, it was when I was trying to be something and someone I was not; even when for perfectly viable reasons, like career and or to please somebody else, I am never happy when denying whatever it is that I am. I look back at her, with all her superstitions and bizarre speech patterns (she could never pronounce peoples' names, she called Collette "Clodette" the whole time she knew her) and odd clothing choices and I see her smile and say Fuck it, if she could be happy with herself so can I. She gave that to me. I thank her for it every day.

Perhaps it was her sense of individuality that gave me what creativity I have. She supported that even when she could never really understand it. She always supported my writing though I doubt she "got" much of it; but she was proud of me and knew that it made me happy. I don't think she got the video thing either but, again, she supported me wholly, right or wrong. When my first student video won an award, at the gala that evening (we both sported our sunglasses all night long) they came to collect the big trophy to put in a case; my mother almost clocked the poor girl saying "Hey, that's my son's" with that small, powerful fist balled up. That was strength too; crazy strength perhaps but that's the kind I love the most.

I think of myself as a storyteller and Ma was certainly that. She would tell her life story to total strangers, all in one go, meandering and wandering and including famous people in it somehow. I used to think that Ma's stories were incoherent but now I would like to think of them as surreal .. or magic realism, or something. She taught me this: You don't really need a linear plot to have a good story.

She also taught me to love music, movies, chicken fried rice and my family.

So here is a little Mothers Day video of Ma, cobbled together from some old pics and videos. Its silly, out of date, non linear and doesn't make any sense at all. I think its fitting

But this post is a Tale of Two Mothers. The other one was small too. And twinkly and Irish and mischievous. And she had hidden strength as well. Strength to leave her home and her family and travel to strange new lands to support the man she loved. Strength to work her fanny off, raise her kids and .. later in life .. speak her mind in a frank and sometimes brutally obvious fashion. Collette's mother Marg passed away just this year. Here is the slide show I created for her memorial.

We both miss our mothers every day. We miss their laughter and their strength and their commitment and their goofiness. I hope they are together someplace. And know that we think about them, even when it isn't Mothers Day.

THIS BLOG'S ALL OVER THE PLACE: WELCOME TO MY BRAIN

Inspired by a recent comment: "You have posts about your dog, posts about movies, posts about disability, this blog's all over the place!"



Well, duh. This blog is just my brain. An expression of my mind. And yeh, my mind is all over the place. I am not linear. Hell, my video editing software is non linear so why should my mind be the same? I mean, I know how to get linear, I understand that as a goal. Whether writing fiction, writing a script or editing someone else's production, I think of myself as a storyteller. An old fashioned story teller. Beginning, middle end .. even if the end is often the beginning or the beginning changes the end once you get there, I believe in a storytelling line. The line may curve, hell the line may do a figure eight, but there is a line and I believe in tracking it.



How I get to that line is another matter. Video editing is storytelling but it really is about assembling stuff. Back in the days of tape to tape editing "assemble" edit was a technical term, basically going shot to shot down the tape. When you assemble edited you took everything from your camera tape, the video and the audio, and cut it into your edited master, what we now call the timeline. You built the story, shot by shot. Later, you could go back and "insert" stuff, be it video, narration, music, titles, over the existing assembled track. The assembled track, without the inserts, before the music and the titles and the animation was called the offline, it was the basic story elements, assembled to create the linear timeline; the inserting is onlining, putting in the finishing touches that complement the story without necessarily taking it in a new direction.



My mind is both linear and non linear. As I bump along thru my world information just funnels in, often without me being entirely aware of what it is, and its all assembled on a timeline somewhere, waiting for the offline.



So, I have posts about Hayley playing in the dogpark. While we are there I am observing the main action, my crazy border collie playing with her mates, maybe I am even shooting video footage. But other things are happening too. I'm observing the fact that too many people in the park seem to want to roll thru it rather than observe it; I'm hearing "Its A Kind Of Magic" in my head which drifts up from when Collette and I saw We Will Rock You; I'm watching a father spending "quality time" with his son and dog which means he is walking ten paces ahead cutting a deal on the cellphone while the kid and the dog are moping along by himself; I'm replaying a movie scene in my head, specifically the final duel from Sanjuro, where Toshiro Mifune and his opponent are facing each other down, hands on swords but not moving, not budging, so quiet it could be a still shot but its not, it is a scene replete with contained energy, energy restrained and ready to explode and although nothing happens for a long time the tension makes my chest tight and when the single, fatal blow is struck it is almost with relief ... That is all rolling through my head.



It all goes in and eventually, it will all come out. Years ago I wrote a little short story called Composting For The Mind and it basically explained my "creative" process, of letting everything filter in, drop down in the mental soil and just percolate till I need it. That applies to more than creative ideas. That is just how my mind works. There is an old brainstorming technique called "webbing" where you stand at a white board and people just fire out ideas and you write every single one of them, all of them without editing, and put it in a bubble and you just go on like that till the ideas stop coming. Your place all the bubbles in a big circle around the board. You leave one empty space in the middle and in there you put down the project on which you are working. Then you go and try to draw lines, or webs from all those random ideas down to your project title, if you can't make a connection, you take that bubble off. Hopefully, by the end, you have a few salient bubbles connected to your project, proven salient by the fact their webs have survived that editing process.



So I guess this blog is my web. Or maybe my offline edit. Definitely compost (I have a lid for the compost bin but hey, its old like me, there may be some holes so sometimes, something stinky may seep out .. sorry, suck it up). Blogger gives you all these tips about creating your site and one of them is "make your blog be about something" Well, this is a Jerry Sienfeld blog, it was never really meant to be about anything. Its about my life and my life, like most lives I suspect, is definitely non linear. Being an editer and a storyteller, I am compelled to try to online this sucker, to make it linear. That is the big final edit, all these posts are simply the assembled raw footage.



So yeh, this blog is all over the place. Its going to be about Hayley, and movies, and Collette's journey to her epic 60K walk in the fall, its going to be about ability and music and my family and all the ways on the net people try to connect to one another. There will be funny stuff, and profane stuff and sad stuff and insightful stuff and just plain goofy stuff; I think I call that life.



There's a lot of stuff in my mind but there is always room for people to share and hang out and take the journey with me. Have a seat.

WHY MY DOG DOESN'T PEE IN MY SHOES

Another post reflecting on Hayley's tenth birthday, ten years of living with the Queen Terror of the Dog Parks. If you want to skip right to the fun stuff, there is a video at the bottom of this post. This is itty baby Hayley, right after we got her, just a girl having fun, before she realized she was a working dog.

There is no doubt that Hayley means the world to me, and Collette as well, but I really wonder why that is. What is this connection between dog and human and human and dog ... that may be part of it right there. I feel a connection to Hayley and I'm pretty sure she feels a connection to me. Yes, and beyond the obvious "Hey dude, you feed me and if you stop that I would die or at least scrounge for bagels and lox and since I can't leave the house I'd still die" situation. In my last post I mentioned how Hayley seemed to bond with us so quickly. I took her away from her her mother, her litter mates and her farm yet very quickly she seemed to accept her new situation, her new role, her new pack.

Is that it? Humans are family creatures, certainly Collette and I are. Four siblings for her, seven siblings for me and for me, if memory serves me correctly, life at home with the fam could certainly qualify as being a "pack." Collete and I have had a dog since the first year we lived together and I am pretty sure we have had our cat Gypsy since the days dinosaurs ruled the earth and spam was a luncheon meat ... well, he's been alive that long at any rate.

Gigs was a great dog, we had him a long time and I regret none of the time we spent with him. But Hayley is different. Our connection with her is different. There is something there, something intangible and relevant and unquantifiable and demonstrable that you would have to call it love. When Hayley is just laying around, either on the couch with us or on the floor at our feet, she always wants to touch us. When we were visiting Collette's parents up north, her mom was laying on the bed with Hayley. Hayley kept moving towards her and Marg kept moving away till she was on the edge of the bed. "She doesn't want to share," Marg said. No, she does want to share, she wants to share you. She wants to be with you. To feel safe? To have warmth? To know your smell? Hell, that would be love .. only without the roses.

Hayley has been the easiest dog I've ever trained. Why is that? Is it my awesome dog whispery dog training skills? Um ... no. Is it the border collie's inherent intelligence, omnipotence and overall mastery of the universe as we know it? (OK, Hayley dictated that last line .. see, she's just freaking smart.) I once heard an Irish shepherd (and who would know more about a border collie) state that it really wasn't the breed's intelligence that distinguishes them (Hayley, stop frowning and growling at me, its unbecoming a girl your age) but rather it was their loyalty. That's why they are easy to train. They want to please you, they want to work with you, they want to connect.

Its a mutual thing of course. I don't think you can force a dog to any anything. You certainly can't use force on a dog. Any dog. And brother, you can't do that with a border collie. Hayley is trained, when on lead, to walk on your right. Sometimes we need her to switch sides. Yanking on that lead is not the way to perform the correction; saying "other side" or "over" is going to get the job done quickly. That is my part of the bargain. I am going to treat her with love, with respect and she's going to do her job. Not that she's never had a spanking but now just the word "spank" will make the bum drop and the border collie snap to. Its mutual. I don't scream at her, and she doesn't pee in my Reboks.

So yes, there is a very real connection between Hayley and us. But where does this connection come from? Well humans and dogs have been doing this dance for thousands of years and they've done it in pretty much every culture. We made these guys. Sure, there's still wolf in every dog. I've read that border collies actually have a lot of wolf in them; watch a working collie coming up onto the sheep, low to the ground, head flat, ears up, moving slow, shoulders bunched ... you can clearly see the predator stalking its prey. But Hayley, as much as she loves to stalk inert tennis balls, is no wolf. She is a dog. A dog bred to work, to be loyal, to hunt the prey down but right before that oh so juicy moment of pure canine fantasy ... give up the prey to the alpha dog. And not even get a succulent piece of mutton in return. Get a pat on the head, or a cookie, or some slow cat to chase. If we made them, do they belong to us, on some genetic level? Maybe.

But just having the baseline "genetic" connection is not enough. We've all seen dogs and humans where the connection is not present, its almost like there are two entirely different species in the room ... Ok, I put that in there just to see if Hayley is paying attention. "Different? What is this different you speak of kimo sabe?" The connection we have with Hayley is more than that. It is different, it is deeper, it is more personal, I truly believe that. Others have pointed that out to us. When Collette shows Hayley the nail clippers, our dog rolls onto her back and sticks her paws in the air. Hayley trusts Collette. And perhaps that's it. Trust. When Hayley was the puppy you will see in the video I was chasing her in the yard and accidental kicked her in the head. She ran yelping into a bush and would not come to me for a long time. Now, if something like happens, she comes right to me and wiggles and wiggles and touches my hand as if saying "you hurt me but I know it was an accident wasn't it?" Trust. Loyalty. A cold nose on a warm hand. That's a connection.

You can over rationalize this connection (gee, Vic, isn't that what you've been doing for a whole page?) and I enjoy thinking about but, really, that ain't so important. The connection is there, the bond is strong and as Hayley enters into her eleventh year it just grows stronger every day. Where it will lead us? I don't really know, but some times, when we are quiet and laying together in the hammock or on the couch and I look into Hayley's and see that is looking back at me .. really looking back, right into my eyes in that border collie way .. I have a feeling that even if I don't know, she certainly does.

MISS HAYLEY IS TEN

Yup, its a milestone alright. Our Little Girl recently turned ten. Time flies when you are herding pretend sheep in the park.

Sometimes it seems like Hayley has been part of our lives forever. Sometimes it seems like just yesterday that Collette opened a cat carrier on the lawn of our house and out popped this tiny black and white blob, all shy yet inquisitive asking "Are you gonna be my Mom?" For sure, it was love at first sight.

Collette and I often talk about the almost instant bond we made with this little dog. The first night we had her (before we were smart enough to know that the border collie sleeps on the bed) we had Hayley on the floor. She made a small whimper, Collette put her hand down so Hayley could sniff it and that was it, she was part of the pack.

Hayley has gone through three moves with us and never has shown any issue with adapting; as long as we are there, as long as there is a park nearby, all is good in her world. Collette and I have both worked out of the house, Collette has summers off then goes back to work, I am now working at home, we've had roomates, none of that seems to matter: This is Hayley's world and we just live int it ... that goes for you too.

Hayley was definitely an adorable, energetic puppy but I have loved how she has grown into this smart, centered, confident .. and still energetic.. adult dog. Is she as fast as she was five years ago? No, but she still eagerly assaults each new day in the park and stares down the distance for a new victim... er .. I mean playmate.

I am currently working on a video project, going back and editing some of the old video footage I have of Hayley, bringing it up to the current time. In the meantime I cut this little video of Hayley doing her thing in our local park; she is still nine year, this is from about a month ago. Just goes to show, she ain't gettin older, she's gettin ... um .. border collier.

AM I DISABLED?

A simple question isn't it? A yes/no kind of deal. You are, or you are not disabled.

I've been thinking of this lately. National Disabled Blogging Day has come and gone and while I had no intention of participating it got me to thinking. Also, reading blogs like and Screw Bronze and The Mouth On Wheels have had me pondering this question. But note, the question is not "what is being disabled" it is "am I disabled" Yes, there is a personal component here.

Several years ago I did something stupid. I fell sixteen feet down from a tree and landed directly on my left ankle. Crack. Ouch. Mutherfucker. Yeh, like that. I shattered basically all the bones in my ankle. Shattered, not broke. Not a break but pieces, lots of little pieces. So this means that I now have two, eight inch steel plates in the ankle, bound together buy seven screws and eight pins ... or it may be eight pins and seven screws. Or it could be paper clips and baling wire, it really doesn't matter. Its metal. Lots of steel, so much so that ankle is noticeably thicker than the other ... damn, there goes my shot at being a world famous ...er .. um. .. sock model (or something). So it was surgery, a couple days in the hospital, three months in a non weight bearing cast and a couple months of physio.

So where does that leave me? Well, I am self employed. At the time I was still working exclusively for Videopulse Studios but I did not draw a salary, I was paid per project on a freelance basis. Which means no health care whatsoever. Now, Collette works for the Toronto Board of Ed and I am covered under her policy. Still, any day lost work meant no money for me. All the time in that cast I could not drive and although I came to be pretty proficient with the crutches, I certainly was limited. Here's the good part. I'm a video editor. I work with computers. I work on my bum. We brought the edit suite to the house and I was working within a couple of days. Lucky I do the job I do; if I was still cooking or in some other occupation I would not be able to work. If I was a freelance camerman I would have been screwed.

Time went on, the cast(s) came off, physio terrorism was endured. Where am I now? Am I abled, disabled? I can walk; sometimes I have a limp and the walking is limited. Most times you would notice nothing. If I'm wearing sandals you can see the scars and the distorted ankle but just walking around, I am fine. I can walk for long distances on pavement or other firm surfaces; Hayley and I still do our two hour walks on the weekends. I can go and down stairs. If the stairs are steep I would need a rail but no big issue. Walking long long distances on soft surfaces is an issue; I went golfing with my brother in law (something I've never done before) and my ankle was wrecked halfway thru. Wrecked. Swollen, very painful and I was just not feeling good. My balance is shot. I was never a big athlete but I always had a great sense of balance; I did gymnastics as a kid and a little bit of fencing. I taught myself to skate at age 40 and while the Olympics would never call me, I could pass. Skating is down now, both for the balance and for the fact that the ankle is still weak, no matter what I do. Running is out. I was a jogger for a period of my life and although I had fallen out of that habit, it is never coming back. I don't run, I basically do a fast hobble. Its not pretty, turn away.

So, am I disabled? I can't do all the things I used to do. I am certainly limited in some ways. But I function and I function nicely. Again, I sit on bum for a living so that has not changed. The amount of camera work I do is not affected; I could never be a full time camera op anyways because of a bad back. So, professionally, it really has not affected me. I can drive now, no issues, get on subways, buses etc. I am quite mobile. I could probably ride a bike but that is another thing I stopped doing in this city. So, limited, yes; disabled?

Well, here we go, this is what we come down to: How do we define disability. Governments have their definitions, insurance companies do, medical communities do. Often, it seems, these definitions are self serving and self defining and may have little to do with any individual. As I began asking this question I started to realize that I had my own definition of disability: Limitation. Scroll up (I'll wait) its right there. I may not feel disabled because I don't feel "limited". I think a lot of society shares this definition; he can't walk, she can't see, they can't hear ... they "can't" do things and this makes them limited. We look at what people "can't" instead of what people "can."

He can't walk but if we give him a wheelchair, he is mobile. She can't see but if we give her a dog and braille and audio transcribing technology, she can be mobile and read and use a computer. They can't hear but if we teach the sign language they can communicate. Are they limited? Sure, in some ways, no doubt. Are they able? Part of my defining myself was if I could work, well I could with no adaptation; what if I had those other jobs? Could I find a way to cook, to be a full time camera op? Probably. Maybe I would need some assistance, but I could do it.

If can be productive but need some form of assistance are you limited? Are you able? I am a work oriented guy so if you can work or pursue your passion, no matter how, you are able. But what of other disabilities like chronic pain or respiratory issues or neurological disorders; there are ways to aid these situations but some, unfortunately, are still limited. Are they disabled? They may be limited but with help, with aid, with medicine, with support .. almost anyone can be able.

What do we do about that? People battle with insurance companies (companies they pay, thank you very much) to get the tools they need, like the right kind of wheelchair or Dragon Speak, tools that would clearly make them more able. People fight with our governments to provide them with the healthcare, the medicine, the homecare (again, we are paying for this) that could change their lives and lift some of their limitations.

Too often "disabled" people struggle to get the aid they need to make them more "able". For too many people I know there is no magic bullet but there is always something that can be done to make some kind of change, and even a small change, some small measure of relief can affect a life in a meaningful way. Just being pain free for a period of time can turn a brain back on and return some one's energy. They could become more able; denying them this certainly disables them. Not considering the needs of people, the needs of all people, all the needs of all people maybe a disability of our society.

So, here we are, back to the question of the moment. Am I, Victor Kellar, disabled? Fuck no. I am able. I have my spouse, my dog, my family, my job, my passions. Am I limited? Hell yes. But everyone is, to some degree or another. The question should be Am I disabled, the question should be Am I able? Able to live, to love, to work, to feel, to think. That is what I need to look at, and it is what society needs to look at. Don't think about what is disabled. Think about what we are able to do, and how we go about that.