I Am No Longer Denied!

Just a quick entry here -- and jumping back to the subject of my first blog: being denied the right to vote in last month's election.

Saturday, I received a postcard from the Registrar of Voters informing me that my "case" has been decided and I am now a registered voter in Riverside County. Wow, what a mess I created by simply trying to pick up my voting material!

So, that little drama is over. More poetry posted in the next day or so!

Continuing to Fall

More of my 22 part poem, "The Fall". It's amazing that it was so long after my accident that I wrote this. It was as though I was possessed. And it felt like a huge burden had lightened when I was finished with the fevered writing.

To complete the profile -- and give you information that might explain more of why I continue to write about chronic pain -- the history of my injury:
1-I fell while skinning in Mammoth California in 1973;
2-First surgery to repair damage to my neck was in 1984;
3-Second surgery to repair more damage was in 1988;
4-Third surgery was in 2004;
5-Forth surgery is on the horizon in a few weeks, 2015;
6-Fifth surgery may be needed in the near future.

Hope you find some insight in the following parts of the larger poem... or at least enjoy the poetry! The next four parts:

FOUR: Initial Withdrawal

From fear
new life is born,
from breach
fragmented spirit
lurches to awareness.
No longer the fallen,
now the one who watched
breathes and trembles
in confused silence
as the broken shell
is brought back to life.

     Inside the familiar,
     a changeling squirms,
     adjusting the new cloth
     to its pink & wet form,
     finding its place of comfort
     in unfamiliar skin.

Healed and whole
the guise is mounted,
the task begun,
the charade set forth.

FIVE: Living It

And when the sun shines
   it smiles;
When its cold it frowns;
When hunger calls
   it whimpers...
   fine imitation of life.

It's skin tastes of harshness,
It's tears smell of fear,
It's voice goes unanswered,
It's needs unheard.

And when it smiles it
   feels nothing;
When pain calls it hides;
When questioned it
   flashes intelligence
   in frightened, shuttered eyes.

It's days taste of horror,
It's nights smell of ice,
It's heart is emptied,
It's mind focused grace.

It's numb in vacuum now,
It's days finely honed,
It's faults black-edged patches,
It's intent obscured by stone.

SIX: Disbelief

Animation of limbs
by pulleys and gears
creaking and grinding
in mechanical response.
Prescision tuned
to jup and spin,
balanced for normalcy;
programmed intelligence
shines in diode-eyes.
Aluminum skin insulates internal strife,
cushions the churning
of organic wheels,
tempers the carbolic
scent of friction --
padded disk burning
slowly against metallic
firmness of bone.
Alloy comprised of
blood and steel
seeps like oil
from frozen joints;
the winding screech
of tortured metal
resounds in the
hollow mechanism.

SEVEN: The First Step of Pain

Awaken slowly,
     child of mine,
You've slept too long;
     the day is well begun.
Wake from your
     thousand-year rest,
Your prince has come;
     look quickly before he's gone.
So long you've remained
     encased in metal,
Hidden from this life;
     hidden fro yourself.
Fear flows from you
     like tears, child,
Like rain in spring;
     sustenance for what will come.
Awaken quickly,
     daughter, my child,
And taste this new sound;
     the weight and pain of grief.

And So It Began

As part of The Story of Why I'm Writing About Chronic Pain, I present to you a twenty-two part poem, which many of you may have already read, called "The Fall". It took me eighteen years to find words to describe the day I had a life-altering snow skiing accident when I was fourteen and then it came pouring out of me in one night... the middle of the night of October 12, 1991.

I hope this explains a bit about the journey I've been on all my life. At the very least, I hope you enjoy the poems! And, so as not to deaden your eyes or brains, I post here the first three of the group.

ONE: Skirting The Edge

Crystal day --
blue wind whispering
scent of snow,
warmth of ice,
calling, calling my name.

From the top,
the world was held
in terrible silence,
the beating rush
of blood in my limbs
the one constant --
and the bitter blueness
of winter sky
free of storms,
free to hwol
in frigid welcome.

Crystal day --
blue and white and
so very, very high;
such moments we danced,
such arabesques
the white blueness
promised with it's
frozen kiss.

[][][][][]

TWO: Losing Balance

Soft.
Smooth and soft
and terribly wrong;
eternity held in my hand,
a fractured second split.
Suspended on the moment,
on the sloping razor-edge,
the high-wire snapped
beneath my feet and
Earth mated blindly with Sky.

     And the stone sank
     slowly to the bottom
     of the frozen well
     and tubled quicker
     than gravity would perceive
     and plummeted from
     the edge of the world,
     drifting slowly
     (so unbearably fast)
     into the Abyss...
     into the maw of the Dragon...
     and was swallowed whole.

Soft.
Too soft and smooth.
For an eternity
a scream echoed denial--
then was silenced
by the sudden spin.

[][][][][]

THREE: Falling

Carnage
in mind
melts from
ice to skin
to churning blueness --
sulfur the only scent,
copper and rust
cloy to bitten lips.
Death in a whirlwind
of silence;
only the heat
of lost breath
crashed from brutalized lungs,
only the swallowed
scream of fear
tumbling like
a lost galaxy
in paralyzed throat.
Carnage
from quiet --
a broken morning
claws bits of
the whole onto sheets
of pure white.
What was whole is sundered;
the one who lived is lost.

Chronic Pain: A Study

CHRONIC PAIN: A Study
on the subject of chronic pain, how it is perceived by others, how chronic pain patients are perceived, and the realities involved.

I usually begin my sad tale like this: “First the earth cooled, then the dinosaurs died, then I fell down a mountain.”  I tell it like that to make light of it, but also because the entire story has taken place over a period of 41 years.  As of this writing, I am 55 years old.

The story begins when I was 14 years old and had a very bad snow skiing accident.  I fell about the length of a football field straight down a mountain.  My father, brother-in-law (Wally) and I were skiing the top of Mammoth Mountain (the Cornice) in spring conditions and the snow just gave way from under my feet as I stood at the top of the run.  I'd been watching my father, who’d gone down the run first.  Wally was behind me.  All I really remember is something hitting me in the stomach and all the air leaving my body.  I have the odd memory of watching myself fall from the top of the run down which I was falling.  The next thing I knew, I was on my stomach, head down-slope and people were telling me not to move.

Now, before you ask what a 14 year-old was doing on a black diamond run, let me assure you that — despite being anything but an athlete  otherwise — I was the best skier in the family.  I was really good.  Black diamond runs were a challenge, yes, but not beyond my abilities.  So, honestly, I had every reason to think I could handle that run.  The weather, which made the snow icy in places and mushy in others, was against me.

Once I stopped falling, I remained as I’d ended up for a few minutes, before carefully sitting up.  I seemed to be okay.  By that time, my father had made his way down to me.  Wally didn’t come down the run, wise man that he is.  My father told me to just sit still, settle down.  But, after a while, I really felt okay… until I stood up.  My stomach, sides, right leg and right arm, my back and my neck were all screaming at me as though an elephant had run me over.  So I sat back down and Dad crossed his skies uphill in the snow in the universal sign for assistance.  When the ski patrol arrived, they carefully moved me to one of their sleds, wrapped me up, and skied me down the mountain.  I know this mostly because I’ve been told what happened; I really have no memory of it other than that there was a heavy chain under my head and snow was blowing in my face.  They put me in the sled head-down (logically) so I was, basically, between the ski patrolman’s skies.  Not an easy ride.

My next memory is of lying on a cot in a very cold room I took to be the ski patrol area.  I was pretty much out of it so I really can’t say what happened next until I was at a doctor’s office.  In those days, 1973, there was no hospital in Mammoth (there is one now) so the doctor was used to people who’d had ski accidents showing up at his office.  They X-rayed me and found nothing broken so my father took me home.

The trip to Mammoth was, as usual, a family trip but I don’t know who else was in the car with me and Dad.  I only know that I lay in the backseat and slept the entire drive from Mammoth to L.A.

Once home, I was taken to the family orthopedist who also could find nothing wrong with me other than some major bruising.  Being a teenager, most of my complaints of pain were chalked up to me being a teenager.  Since no one could find a reason for my being in pain, it was all in my head.  And I believed that for a fairly long while.

My point in telling you all this?  This accident was the beginning of a long, long, long journey to discover why I was in constant pain, to treat that pain, to attempt to fix the causes of the pain, and how I’m doing today.  Watch this blog for future installments of The Story.

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I Was Denied The Right To Vote

or

How I Spent An Entire Monday Trying To Qualify To Vote

by

Alayne Gelfand

In June 2014, I moved from Orange County, California to Riverside County, California. One of the first things I did was change my address with the DMV. I did so online. When you do this, the DMV site asks if you'd like to also change your address with the Registrar of Voters. I pressed “yes” and filled out whatever I had to fill out, then pressed “submit”. This was the third time I did this online with the DMV after moving from one county to another. Since it worked wonderfully well the last two times, I expected it to work this time as well.

On October 31, 2014, it suddenly occurred to me that the upcoming Tuesday was November 4, 2014 and, so, election day. It had simply slipped my mind. I still didn't have any voting materials so, thinking it was a clerical error, I got online, looked to see the status of my voter qualification in Riverside County to find my status “pending”. It was now November 3. I got back online, located the Riverside County Registrar of Voters Office and then, at 12:30, got in my car and drove the approximate 27 miles from Corona to Moreno Valley.

Inside the Riverside County Registrar of Voters Office the day before an election, things were pretty busy but I was helped very quickly. The clerk, once I'd explained things to her, had to ask another clerk for help who had to ask another clerk for help. The last clerk looked up my name and saw that my case was pending but she also said that my request to register in Riverside County had come in on October 21. It was time stamped. The deadline to register to vote was October 20. Um... That's about a five month lag between me filling out the request on the DMV site and it registering at the Registrar of Voters.

When I repeated that I requested my address change went through the DMV, she was very helpful. She handed me a stack of forms, told me to fill them out then take them to one of five locations where I'd have to go before a judge to petition him for the right to vote on Tuesday, November 4. That was the following day for anyone not keeping up. So, I drove the 17 miles from Moreno Valley to the City of Riverside.

I'm fairly familiar with this part of Riverside so I knew where I was going. Inside the Riverside County Superior Court Building, however, I had to ask several times until someone told me to check with the County Clerk's office, which I did. Once inside, a clerk helped me quickly but had no idea what I was talking about. I had to explain what I was doing there several times before she got it enough to tell me to take a seat while she went to checked with the judge. I took that seat.

About half an hour later, she called me to her window and handed me another stack of forms to fill out, which I did. She told me to sit down again, which I did. It was now 2:45. I sat. And I sat. And I sat. Then I heard someone say: “We close at 4:00.” I looked at the clock and it was just past 4:00. People were finishing their business, clerks were closing down their stations and I still sat there. A few moments later, a supervisor came up to me and asked if she could help me. I explained again what I was doing there and she went to the clerk who'd been helping me and asked: “Did he sign it?” The clerk replied: “Not yet.” They both disappeared at that point.

Another clerk asked if she could help me, because I was still sitting there after they'd closed, and then she said, “Oh, are you here for the voting thing?” Apparently I'd become a story around the office. And I can understand why. I mean, how many people would go through all of this just to vote?

When the clerk finally called my name again, it was 4:35. She said she had my papers but the judge had denied my petition. I would be unable to vote on November 4, 2014. When I asked the clerk “Why?” she said she had no idea, the judge didn't tell her. So I was denied the right to vote.

Today was the first day since I turned 18 that I didn't vote in an election. I find that personally devastating and borderline illegal.

Was it because the Registrar of Voters has my request for an address change and, so, permission to vote in Riverside County, logged in on October 21, 2014, which means I missed the October 20 deadline? It's reasonable to say that the DMV dropped the ball here.

My other guess is that the judge either didn't read my request until the last minute and was just done for the day or just couldn't be bothered to speak to me about the situation and, perhaps, give me the benefit of the doubt after everything I'd gone through to get permission to vote. Again, how many people do you know who would go through so much just to vote?

On one hand, I feel a little silly about all this. I mean, it's just voting. Nothing important. On the other hand, like I said, it was personally devastating to me that I couldn't vote today. I think of all those women who went through so much to gain the right to vote, I think of their sacrifices and I think I owe it to them to vote. I think of all the women around the world who are denied basic rights and I feel deeply that I owe it to them to vote.

And to think, a judge simply couldn't be bothered to look into a case at the end of the day, couldn't raise her tired head to give a woman the chance to vote. Yes, the judge who denied my petition to vote was a woman. And maybe that's the saddest part of this entire story.