Poet’s Corner: Dispatches from the Winter Games

Closing Dispatch: I’ve Been Dreaming Other People’s Dreams

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:15:00 -0400

Why do so many of us find sport achievement inspiring? Why do the Olympics and other games seem to draw out of even some of the most timid of our friends and neighbors overwhelming, even volatile, passions and emotions?

Over the last five to six weeks that I’ve been following the games (by the way, when I work out the math I’m astonished to discover that I’ve essentially attended at least one sporting event per day—everything’s a blur right now as I write this last dispatch before taking the plane home to Toronto), I have heard from friends and colleagues following the poems and dispatches who have also been swept up by games fever. One told me she lost her voice just jumping up and down in her living room when Alexandre Bilodeau won the first Olympic gold medal on Canadian soil. Another sent me a link to an overhead video of Vancouver’s Cambie Street Bridge—all is quiet urban landscape and then you can literally hear the city rise with a roar as Crosby scores the overtime hockey goal. A woman from Belgium that I met at cross-country skiing yesterday, who had never attended an event before, was off her seat, yelling “Come on! Come on Canada!” as Brian McKeever passed his guide to tackle nearly half the sprint course in the lead position—personally, I think he wanted to be the first person to cross the finish line. And as I watched Brian bravely take on the icy turns and pole his way to a smashing victory—his third gold in these games—after suffering heartbreak from not being able to race in the Olympics, I was close to tears. OK, I shed a few tears.

In sport, human wishes and dreams are admitted, openly, to the public. The athlete is vulnerable, and no amount of training and talent and determination can completely guarantee the outcome. The race, the game, the score, a medal, is simply a visual or quantitative representation of the dream to succeed against the odds—to have one’s dream undergo metamorphosis and step out of heart, mind, and body, and exist resplendently in front of all. Art at its best does this also. Readers, spectators are invited to participate in the dream world of another person. It’s emotional. It’s scary. It’s magical. When the dream is crushed by a fall or error or by another’s dream, it’s devastating.

I’ve spent the last several weeks literally dreaming other people’s dreams, my sleep filled with athletes and medals and glory and heartbreak. And over the course of these games, their dreams have become my dreams too. Talking to the athletes, writing poems for them and about sport, writing these dispatches, attending the live events, I have been privileged to enter the space of the elite athlete and to invite the elite athlete and other readers into my dream world as well. The experience has been an overwhelmingly positive one.

I hope it doesn’t end here. On a personal note, I want to put out to the universe that I would love to work the same job during 2012 Summer Games in London, England. And I know several of the athletes hope I will make it there, just as I hope they will make it there. But on a much larger note, I would like to see the worlds of sports and arts meet more, and on more creative terms. And I truly hope society embraces the dreams of these athletes to encourage people to live more physically active lives, not just to be healthier, but to learn the great life lessons sport offers us all. I also hope these three games encourage our policy-makers and funding organizations to recognize the importance of sport for all—for our women (who won more medals in the Olympics and Paralympics than the men), for our aboriginal youth, and for those with disabilities.

We need to dream other people’s dreams once in a while to reimagine our own.

Other People's Dreams

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:00:00 -0400

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

The Art of Pain Management

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:15:00 -0400

I’ve made the claim several times that athletes and artists share a lot in common, and that one of the things they share is the ability to manage pain, or to use pain as a transforming, rather than debilitating, force in their lives and work.

I’m a bit obsessed by the topic, and my new poetry collection Traumatology, to be released in a few days, explores traditional and contemporary concepts of health as divided into three categories: mind, body, and spirit. While I am happy with the subjects explored in the collection, I almost wish that I could add, at this last minute, some poems relating to what I’ve learned about health, pain, and the body-mind-spirit dynamic by watching the Paralympic athletes compete.

I feel lucky that, aside from smoking—which I quit once I realized I wasn’t young enough to smoke and run anymore—I’ve been a physically healthy and active person. I also feel lucky that I seem to possess great mental strength and determination. One of the documents relating to my life that I am most proud of is a psychological evaluation report conducted a year after my mother ran off. The doctor concludes: Child exhibits trauma. Child exhibits excellent coping mechanisms. It’s not a bad biographical sketch to live up to. And I try. I deal with mental anguish—melancholy, pessimism, existential angst, utter rage, disdain, horror—on a near daily basis. A lot of people don’t believe me when I say this, because I love to laugh and embrace the joys of the high life, but it’s true. I’m restless, and terrified, and angry, but am determined to fight back. Through my art, I try to confront the causes of our human suffering, to give it form, if not meaning.

Though I do sometimes wonder what it means to live in that pain. Does it mean I sometimes like it? I wouldn’t say that I like physical pain (I’ve never punched anyone, and paper-cuts distress me), but when my legs are aching and my throat is burning when I’m running, I sometimes realize that I’m actually smiling. Same when I’m writing a sad, brutal poem. Do we just know each other now so well as adversaries or opponents that we have some of the habits of friends? Or am I smiling because deep down I’m thinking: You won’t win. You can’t take me down.

I know that the Paralympics is an uplifting celebration of the human spirit, but to me it’s also the flicking of a giant middle-finger up to fate, a f*** you to anyone who ever said you shouldn’t or couldn’t. It’s a mastery of pain: physical, mental, psychological. The paradox is that one must live in pain to master it. These athletes not only deal with the massive challenges in this area that all elite athletes face, but have also had to handle pain in beneficial ways to be able to live with their illnesses and injuries and all the problems, challenges, and prejudices that go with them. Some of the competing athletes were born with their disabilities, some were able-bodied athletes before becoming injured, some are war veterans or victims of violence. They each have discovered strategies, or coping mechanisms, to use that pain as an intense, motivating force, and to not get bogged down in the “why me?” question. It’s as if they just admit pain, rather than fight it: Yes, I’m in pain. So what? That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing what I want to do.

We hit limits, of course. But in sport and art people test those limits all the time. When they test the limits, they encourage others to find ways to shatter them. (Sometimes it’s the next generation that figures it out, but the trailblazers, even those who failed to achieve their goals, needed to press up against those boundaries before they could be broken down.) Whenever I have writing students who have played competitive sports, they are usually much more willing to put in the hours of discipline needed to complete pieces of work. They don’t expect it to be easy, and are less likely to shy away from struggle and the pain of the process. They know that, most likely, if they keep at it, they will see results. And even if they don’t, the pain will have taught them something about themselves, or about the subject of writing, which they didn’t know before.

(Today’s poem was written in response to watching visually impaired alpine skiers fall or crash. I am boggled by the bravery required to send yourself down a hill when if you fall you will have very little idea of where you will be on the course or what you might hit on the way down.)

Struck by Lightning

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:00:00 -0400

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

Play like a Paralympian

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0400

How do you play hockey without ice skates? What does it feel like to sit-ski? How does a blind biathlete shoot the targets? How to you aim stones in wheelchair curling? While I’ve been attempting to answer these questions throughout my Paralympic dispatches as a spectator of the games, beyond simply watching the athletes compete, each venue includes a “Play Like a Paralympian” area whereby the public can try out Paralympic sports equipment and learn in a hands-on manner what skills disabled athletes develop to succeed in their given discipline. Both adults and children are encouraged to participate in these interactive spaces, and line-ups to try out sledges and sit-skis and wheelchair curling are steady throughout the day.

At Whistler, I sat in a mono-ski, the type of ski used by most alpine athletes in the “sitting” categories (those who have injuries or disabilities affected their lower bodies). While I was already amazed by the speeds these skiers execute (sometimes faster than able-bodied Olympians because their weight is so close to the ground), the turning skills required to negotiate downhill and slalom gates, and the way the ski acts as a spring on bumps propelling the athlete through the air, I had no concept of the immense strength required to balance the mono-ski on a flat, let alone a steep downhill, surface, until I was placed in one and would have toppled over if not for the kind woman explaining the equipment to me. The skier must have incredible core strength and acute balancing skills, as those are the only factors holder the skier upright. And the skier is rarely upright during alpine—he/she is always turning—which means that the skier is always in danger of falling over if not for this balance and use of poles. When you see a skier fall, the volunteer told me, now you know what strength it takes for the athlete to push the ski back up and continue down the hill. I couldn’t even get out of the mono-ski by myself. (And I’m glad no one wanted to blindfold me and send me down the slopes to teach me about visually-impaired alpine skiing.)

The sledge hockey equipment available is adjusted to a “floor hockey” version—sledges and the hockey sticks with wheels instead of blades and picks—since ice rinks are not available for demonstrations. But hockey is hockey, and Canadians won’t give up the chance to play hockey whenever the opportunity arises, so the space dedicated to instructing would-be sledge hockey players (able-bodied or not) is usually the most popular at each venue. The volunteers even set-up mini sledge races and two-minute matches for the children. Again, you recognize the arm strength required to propel yourself down the ice. And since sledge hockey teams have fewer players than stand-up hockey, you are propelling yourself down the ice a lot. (This is why sledge hockey periods are fifteen minutes rather than twenty.)

You can try out a laser rifle used by visually-impaired biathletes, a cross-country sit-ski, and the sticks used to slide stones across the ice in wheelchair curling. (I learned wheelchair curling is even more technical than conventional curling because there are no sweepers to help navigate the stones.) It confirmed to me what I’ve been thinking throughout the Paralympics: familiarity builds interest and excitement. The children love the equipment. The adults are fascinated by the technological developments. I love learning the rules of the games and the skills the athletes need to develop to excel at each sport. You just need the opportunity and exposure to trigger the rest.

Sports are, at their core, the triumph over restrictions. In Paralympic sports, human ingenuity and creativity is showcased in amazing ways. Weekday stands are packed with schoolchildren—there’s a great initiative to bring entire grades and schools of children to the games to learn about sports, disability, and international culture, and of course none could afford to do so during the Olympic games—and it’s great to hear them cheer as loudly for Paralympic athletes as they would for any other athlete, and to screech with delight as they try out the equipment.

(Today’s poem relates to a group of schoolchildren attending the sledge hockey 7th and 8th place game: Sweden vs Norway. One boy was waving a flag with Sweden on one side and Italy on the other, and I stole little bits of overheard conversation to construct this poem.)

Swedaly

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0400

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

Sledhead

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:00:00 -0400

When I made my first donation to CAN Fund, the athlete I was told received my money was a sledge hockey player named Billy Bridges. I hadn’t heard of him at the time, mostly because I hadn’t heard much about sledge hockey at the time. I knew Paralympians competed in hockey, I just had never witnessed a game either in person or on television, and so I’m sure I must have thought it would be equivalent to wheelchair basketball—the same sport but in wheelchairs or, in this case, a sled.

But each Paralympic sport (including wheelchair basketball), although based on conventional able-bodied sport categories, is in many ways an entirely new sport, or at least another distinct version of the game. If sport were a language—and it might be—we might call these versions dialects.

I was excited to meet Billy, who I now thought of as one of my athletes, and when we were introduced, we immediately hit it off. Billy loves writing and literature, and he proceeded to shoot question after question at me about my favourite authors and books, about studying literature at university (Billy is enrolled at the University of Toronto, taking a course or two a year while he competes in hockey—he’s even a member of a frat), and about creative writing. I shot question after question at him about sledge hockey. Billy was born with spina bifida and his parents were told that he would never lead an active life. At fourteen, he became the youngest hockey player ever appointed to Team Canada. He has competed in three Paralympic games, and probably has at least two more games in him. He has one of the fastest shots in the world. (Oh, and he’s also won a ton of national medals in wheelchair basketball.)

Last fall, he told me about a film called Sledhead, by David Mcllvride, a documentary following Billy and a handful of other players through their journey to the World Championships, that was showing during a Toronto film festival highlighting representations of disability. My partner Chris and I attended the screening. And we were amazed.

Sledge hockey is a very different game than stand-up hockey (as it is called among Paralympic athletes). Yes, the rules for scoring are the same. And most of the rules regarding penalties, off-sides, icing, and face-offs are the same. But these athletes play strapped into sledges, lightweight titanium sleds with skate blades underneath, and they move about the rink by utilizing two short hockey sticks with shooting blades on one end and picks on the other.

OK, so what does that mean, besides that they utilize a different mode of transport on the rink? It means that when they hit each other against the boards, one, they are hitting each other with their entire bodies, and two, they are hitting each other on the part of the boards where there is zero give whatsoever. The picks are violent weapons that the players are not shy to use on each other when they get into a scuffle or when they are fighting for the puck along the boards. At one point in the film, a player lifts his jersey so the camera can capture the multitude of jabs he has suffered during the game—his entire torso littered with bleeding or scabbing puncture holes. It also means, if you’re a goalie, that almost every shot is aimed at your face. Paul Rosen, the goalie, claims Billy has knocked out a least a dozen of his teeth, just in practice. And I know that Billy’s fiancée, Sami Jo Small, a two-time Olympic gold-medallist and one-time silver-medallist women’s hockey goalie, has found that aspect of the sport a little hard to get used to as she sometimes straps on the sled and her goalie mask for the Ontario guys if they can’t train with their team goalies.

These men are a lot tougher than the majority of NHL players. And they want to win just as badly, if not more. For many of them, the game is their life, their entry into a life, away from being “physically-challenged” persons to persons who physically challenge themselves. And they are challenged in ways that, even with a disabled father, I had never considered. Perhaps the most haunting scene in Sledhead is watching Team Canada navigate a German airport (I believe it’s Frankfurt) where there is no wheelchair accessibility available to them for their flight transfer. Men who can piggyback each other through the terminal and then to their airplane seats. Others slide across floors and up stairs on their knees, some carrying their wheelchairs in one hand. Billy tells me this happens all the time. It’s what they go through to compete.

I’m very much looking forward to today’s rounds of sledge hockey, which will mark the first time I’ve ever gone to a live game, and so the first time I’ve ever seen Billy play. I urge you to watch a game, if you can, and to rent Sledhead. I assure you, no matter how much you think you know about hockey, you will be astonished.

Sledhead—The Poem

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0400

for Billy Bridges

This isn’t standup hockey.
Our team is colder, bolder,
more bruised under the maple leaf
than you can imagine.

This is the definition of physical.
Full-body contact into unforgiving boards,
pucks to the face, torsos to ice, spiked
sticks stabbing into sides.

Every man on the ice has a story
whose moral is victory, if only he doesn’t run out
of time.

This is ice-calligraphy.
Sleds carve their names as they race from goal
to goal, bench to bench, penalty box
to locker room.

This isn’t standup hockey.
Our team tests its strength against 
the rinks and scoreboards themselves.

No prediction remains unsmashed.

The Athlete-Guide Relationship

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0400

One of the most fascinating aspects of Paralympic sport is how the visually impaired athletes compete: what technology is used, how the rules are adjusted, and how a relationship is built between athlete and guide. The logistics are not just important for the success of the athlete, but are essential to ensure as much safety as is possible. In winter sport, after all, falls and spills and dangerous speeds are par of the course for fully-sighted and able-bodied athletes.

The immense courage (or recklessness, depending on your point of view) to ski let alone race without the ability to see the course is part of the appeal of watching this sport category. Spectators can’t quite believe what they are seeing. When races are delayed due to low visibility, this is done for the sake of the guides.

Now it should be pointed out that the guides are also, by necessity, elite athletes themselves. Most have skied competitively at a national if not international level, and have been recruited as guides either if they’ve fallen just short of qualifying times, if they have recently retired, or if personal reasons lead them in this direction. For instance, Robin McKeever decided to dedicate his skiing career to guiding his brother Brian—and they are among the most decorated Paralympic athletes in history. Brian qualified for the Olympics this year, and so Robin must also maintain Olympic shape to stay in front of his brother.

It’s very heartening to see how many family members, at least in the initial stages of a career, take on the role of guide. I met Dustin Walsh, two-time, 800-metre, visually-impaired Paralympian, and his parents at a CAN Fund event the other evening, and it was Dustin’s father who first trained daily with his son, holding his shirt, laying a hand on his back, even holding his hand as they ran the track for hours each day, until Dustin’s talents took him farther than his father was able to go (he would have had to quit his job to train properly with his son, and the twenty-year age difference wasn’t helping either). Now Dustin and his guide, who use a short tether between them as they run—I’m told the hardest part is synchronizing stride, as to be most efficient they should look like one person running—have been working together for the last six years, and are hoping to qualify for London. It won’t be easy. I’ve been told the Canadian standard for Paralympians is ridiculously high. Dustin must meet a 52-second standard for London. Only three athletes ran this time in Beijing.

The guides are involved in the competition as much as the athletes themselves—although, again, try to put yourself in the visually-impaired athlete’s shoes or skis and imagine what it must be like to rely nearly exclusively on the vocal commands of your guide to instruct your body to get through a challenging or dangerous course in the quickest time possible.

Here is how it works: guides can ski in front or behind (I have yet to witness a pairing where the guide skis behind the athlete, but Courtney Knight’s guide, Andrea Bundon, tells me that because Courtney is heavier than she is, Courtney frequently passes her and then Andrea guides from the behind position). Guides can be either gender, and I’ve seen women guide male skiers and men guide female skiers. The guides communicate with their athletes by radio microphone. In cross-country races, you can actually see and hear the guide talking, calling to, and encouraging the athlete. In biathlon, laser rifles are used and a tone indicates when the athlete is aiming at a target. Guides are also continually glancing behind to ensure their athlete is not too close or too far—again, a real challenge in downhill where the speeds are blistering and where spills can be life-threatening. If the athlete is too close, a collision can occur. I saw one race where the guide fell, and the athlete could not go on without the guide, although technically, if the athlete is able to ski to the finish without the guide, that’s fine—the guide need not finish the race, only the athlete.

In fact, it’s downhill where the guide-athlete relationship, from a spectator point of view, is at its most intense. Yesterday, nearly every single visually impaired female athlete wiped out after crossing the finish line (if she made it to the finish line). These athletes skied the same downhill course that caused chaos for the Olympic athletes, where acceleration increases at a mind-blowing rate at the bottom of the hill. On top of this, although the audience is instructed to be as quiet as possible for the visually impaired races, so they can hear their guides, applause is difficult to deaden, especially once the athlete has crossed the finish line. The course caused havoc for the men skiers too. And athletes in all categories. Over the course of the day, one athlete was lifted out by helicopter. A Canadian skier was taken off the bottom of the hill in a stretcher.

The first person to congratulate or console the competing athlete is their guide. And in winter Paralympics, medals are awarded to both athletes and guides. For some reason, which no one has been able to explain to me yet, guides do not receive medals for the summer Paralympics. The acknowledgement of training, dedication, and accomplishment that a medal offers is a motivating factor for guides. Summer Paralympics guide medals would encourage more elite athletes to perform this crucial role in a visually impaired athlete’s life. It would also help to continue to build a lot of important relationships inside and outside of sport.

My Guardian Angel

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0400

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

Shame, Shame on VANOC

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0400

I had intended to write about the logistics of visually-impaired skiing today. But it seems that will need to wait until tomorrow as my fellow riders on Greyhound this morning have urged me to write more on VANOC’s abandonment of the Paralympics and their fans.

My wake-up call came, as usual, at 5am. I now have all my clothes and gear set up the night before so that all I need to do upon hearing the ring of the telephone is answer it, shower, then pull on my clothes, grab my backpack, and take the elevator down to the lobby to grab a ten-minute and ten-dollar cab ride to Pacific Station Greyhound Bus Terminal. I get there around 5:40am, as we are instructed to arrive approximately 1 hour before the departure bus time. The last two times I have taken the bus to Whistler, the bus has been late, once by 15 minutes and once by 35-40 minutes. While this may not seem like a long delay, for those attending the Paralympic Games at Whistler Creekside or Whistler Paralympic Park, this means one might miss the start of the event, if not entire competition fields, as is what happened today.

I asked the woman at the counter, Will this bus actually leave on time today? I was told yes. Yesterday, apparently the bus was faulty. A new bus had to be found. Shouldn’t someone have checked the bus earlier? I asked. The 6:30am bus is the only bus that can get spectators to the Whistler games on time. Shouldn’t they be concerned about this? I was informed that during the Olympics 98% of their buses ran on time. OK, so you’re now zero for two for the Paralympics.

Let’s make that zero for three. Today, my fellow passengers and I waited over 2 hours for a bus we were told would be here any minute. (Please keep in mind that we are waiting outside, and have been since about 5:45am.) The problem: two passengers (one of whom told us he’d made his reservation days ago, indicating that a wheelchair accessible bus would be required for his trip) who would require wheelchair accessibility, and no accessible bus available.

You’ve got to be kidding me. A number of us complained loudly. They had more than enough buses, and wheelchair accessible buses, arranged through VANOC during the Olympics, but during the Paralympics, those buses are no longer available? We were told that Greyhound has only a certain number of their own wheelchair accessible buses, and these are spread out around the country. Does no one seem to realize that because VANOC has refused to offer the Olympic bus network to venues for the Paralympic Games, this 6:30am Greyhound is one of the only options for those staying in Vancouver, another location of the games, to get to Whistler, and you don’t have a wheelchair accessible bus available?

Talking to Robert, one of the two paraplegic men with spectator tickets to the games this morning, it is clear that he is used to this situation and second-class treatment. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t angry. He too is frustrated that there is little to no coverage (and by coverage we mean more than highlights of medal winners, but coverage of actual events of the games), and that VANOC has made it very difficult for those who don’t drive, can’t drive, or do not wish to drive and navigate the full parking lots, gondolas, and bus rides you need to add to your trip even if you do decide to drive up to venues to attend the games. (My friend drove us to Whistler on Sunday, and it’s a long and complicated haul as well, especially for someone in a wheelchair.)

The most heartbreaking scene: an entire Japanese fan-club, in face-paint and full national wear, was waiting for the bus. The boy who spoke English told us his father was competing this morning. He very well might have missed seeing his father ski, as our 6:30am bus did not leave until 8:30am, and did not arrive at Creekside until 10:30am (and then one needs to walk to the venue, up a hill, and then take a chair-lift to the stands). This is ridiculous. And despicable.

We told the manager so, who assures us that he does not want a black stain on Greyhound’s record, and therefore the 6:30am bus tomorrow will run at 6:30am and that they will order more accessible buses from Seattle for the rest of the week. We are also all receiving refunds for today’s trip. Of course, as many of us said, the money isn’t the point. The point is VANOC and Greyhound both dropped the ball and both, particularly VANOC, should be embarrassed by their treatment of Paralympic athletes and spectators.

I guess we’ll see what will happen for the rest of the week. Buses, hopefully, will run on time so families and fans can watch the events they’ve been waiting for and cheer on their fathers, mothers, siblings, friends, and athletes from all countries. But the coverage issue won’t be dealt with, that’s for sure, even though reports are indicating that ticket sales are higher for this Paralympics by far than they were in Turin, with many events completely sold out. Shouldn’t the rest of the country be privy to why these tickets are selling out? To the compelling nature of Paralympic sport? Even in Whistler itself, if you’ve decided to seek a little refuge from the pelting rain or cold between races in one of Whistler’s restaurants or cafés, the TVs are tuned to tennis or NHL hockey or other sports, and fans who are attending the games can’t watch the live action unfold or catch up on standings or even know if the race has started or if a weather delay is in effect. The waitresses are complaining about this as loudly as the fans. It’s as if the games are not going on a few hundred feet away.

And that’s VANOC’s fault. If we can’t find coverage of the Paralymipcs, I hope that coverage of VANOC’s shame can be shared across the country. I tried to gain access to the Media Tent today to inform someone in the mainstream media about what happened this morning, but I was not given permission to enter. Although the volunteers guarding the door were very sympathetic to the details, when it was clear that VANOC would not be presented in a kind light, they were worried they might get in trouble for letting me in. If you are a journalist reading this, or want to write more about this in your own publication, let me know. Or if you’re disgusted, phone VANOC and let them know your thoughts on the matter.

(And, inevitably, today was the worst fan day I’ve experienced in terms of weather as well. It rained non-stop the entire day—cold, soaking through your layers of clothing done to the bone rain. And fog patches that wove in and out of the competition area, causing havoc for competitors. So, today’s poem is a weather poem.)

What Does the Fog Want Anyway?

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0400

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

Paralympics Game Day Logistics; or VANOC Should be Ashamed

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:00:00 -0400

I wrote an entry on the same subject regarding the Olympic games. The time commitment required for the Paralympics is just as taxing as that required for the Paralympics, but for different reasons.

VANOC should be utterly ashamed: according to its promises to host both games, it ought to be providing adequate and relatively equal support in relation to scope for the Paralympics, as it did for the Olympic games.

It has not done so. Nor have the media outlets and sponsors committed to the games. While this might not be a surprise for the general public, it should be of concern, and we should hold certain committees and corporations to task for purposefully dropping the ball in this area.

There is no Olympic bus network for the Paralympic games. I’ve called VANOC several times regarding transportation for the Paralympics, and the operators are not even informed of the travel options for those who are tourists in Vancouver to attend these games. Even though I was very clear that I do not know how to drive, two operators reiterated that I could drive my car to the Paralympic Games and this was the transportation service open to me.

The reality of the affair is that I am, as someone who is a tourist and does not have a driver’s license, dependent on Greyhound bus service from Vancouver to Whistler, and will be for 7 out of the 10 days of the Paralympics.

This is significant, as Greyhound has not allotted any extra buses to accommodate demand for the Paralympics, and it does not orient its bus schedule around the Paralympic competition times. OK, so what does that mean, really?

It means that on Saturday, because I needed to be back in Vancouver for 7pm, and my cross-country skiing event at Whistler Paralympic Park was scheduled for 10am to 2pm, I needed a 4:45am wake-up call, for a 5:15am taxi to the Greyhound bus terminal in Vancouver, which insists you arrive at the terminal and stand out in the cold for one hour before your bus departs. No matter that I had phoned VANOC about their transportation options half a dozen times, no one told me that once my bus arrived in Whistler Village (late, at 8:50am) the shuttle I would need to board took us 35-40 minutes away to the competition venue and then a 20-minute hike awaited us on top of that. I was in my seat at 10:15am (the competition started at 10am). Although I greatly enjoyed the biathlon that I was able to see, I needed to leave my seat at 11:30am to be ready at 11:50am to board the shuttle that would take me to Whistler Village to catch the Greyhound bus leaving at 1:30pm to get me into town before 7pm (the next bus time could not guarantee this). So understand that I spent over 8 hours in transit to account for just over 1 hour of sporting event. This is ridiculous. Especially when it could have been avoided.

VANOC has decided not to run the Olympic bus network. Not only does that mean that it is encouraging travelers to take cars rather than environmentally friendly buses, but it also means that traffic is clogged in Whistler, irritating tourists and locals alike, and the price tag of attending events, and the hassle of attending events is much higher. (I am paying a lot more to attend the Whistler events in travel costs than I did during the Olympics—I explained to VANOC ticket agents that they were actively discouraging people from attending the Paralympics and should be ashamed of this, but found little sympathy or response.)

I was, therefore, heartened to see an article in today’s National Post of all places lamenting the lack of Paralympic coverage on television. I did not realize that CTV only aired the Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver (not nationally) and that there is very little media coverage of the games at all in Canada. While Bruce Arthur, the writer of the article, is sympathetic to the counter-argument that “that’s just the reality” of the situation, I am not. I don’t have cable at home. I consider it criminal to pay for advertising, and therefore stick to public television and movie rentals. When I am travelling, however, I sometimes indulge in a little cable and digital TV.

Is this a luxury? I find that I spend at least one hour simply finding something worth watching other than terrible reality TV and celebrity gossip shows. Are our television networks trying to tell us that the Opening Ceremonies of the Paralympic Games and the events are not as compelling as a bunch of desperate idiots primping themselves for a date with a vacuous moron? If so, our whole country needs massive therapy.

The Paralympics are not going to gain popularity, and therefore make large corporations a lot of sponsorship paybacks, if they are not experienced in a significant way by the public. This can’t happen through newspaper articles alone. Newspaper articles offer readers medal standings, little else. Certainly not the experience of attending and witnessing the Paralympic games and related events.

I took my friend, poet Sonnet L’Abbé, to the slalom events yesterday. She, admittedly, would not have considered attending the Paralympic games if not for my involvement. Nevertheless, within minutes of watching the astonishing downhill weight-balancing of sit-skiing, Sonnet asked me if it was possible that the Paralympics were more fascinating than the Olympics. Well, yes, actually. In fact, I know several sports advocates who are convinced that those involved with the Olympics (not the athletes, but the bureaucrats and business people) are afraid of the Paralympics. The Paralympics have greater stories of overcoming adversity, greater personalities, and the ways in which each participant uses personal training and technology to compensate for physical limitation offer unique approaches to each sport. For a spectator, these circumstances allow for a rich, varied experience of the events. I can’t believe a person can do that, is a frequently expressed comment, much like what one overhears in extreme sporting events, not conventional regularized sport.

And VANOC has decided that security is not important either. I am no longer searched as I enter a venue, even though I am carrying a backpack. I guess they don’t consider our disabled athletes terrorist targets? I really don’t understand it. And there are not enough volunteers to deal with the crowds (yes, there actually are crowds at some events), and several seem more interested in trading pins with spectators than operating the games. I say this because I actually witnessed a Russian man with a large flag on a pole, not only dismiss several requests from volunteers to sit in his designated seat, but this man threw his flag at the cross-country skier heading to the finish line for a gold medal. I gasped and called to others—as he nearly hit the skier who did go on to win a gold medal—but the flag remained on the track for several minutes before someone went to retrieve it. The man was not removed from the venue for some time, if at all, though he had seriously jeopardized athlete safety and the results of the event.

VANOC, be ashamed. Today, I witnessed Brian McKeever win the first Paralympic gold on Canadian soil, skiing with his brother guide, Robin McKeever. Brian is one of the most decorated Paralympic athletes in history. The country should have witnessed this feat, live. Even if they have yet to learn the rules of Paralympic sport, such as that you cheer with your hands for the visually impaired because you don’t want to interfere with the communication with their guides. Those who attended, including myself, still need more training in that area. We couldn’t help cheering as we watched the brothers make history. We couldn’t help being proud, no matter how many people have done their damnedest to render their accomplishments irrelevant. No matter that Vancouver has made a killing off hosting these games. And that includes the Paralympians.

Photo: Team McKeever

Long Distance

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0400

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

Bang-Bang, Bang-Bang

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0400

During the Beijing Olympics, a commercial aired introducing us to one of our 2010 Olympic biathlon hopefuls, a dimpled, young brunette from Quebec who acted out her sport, shooting, with hand gestures, enthusiastically spurting, Bang-bang, bang-bang! I found her utterly adorable and found myself contemplating biathlon, a sport I’ve never watched, even on television, and one I’ve certainly never tried.

I understand its utility. Many summer sports are based, historically, on skills necessary for war, many winter ones on hunting skills. The biathlon demonstrates the ability to chase your prey and shoot to kill with accuracy. But it does seem a little odd to most people to give athletes rifles in this day and age, especially in a competition. As comedian Jeremy Hotz put it last night during the last performance of his tour, his last stop being here in Vancouver, They strap a rifle on your back! If you’re the person in second, and the one in first goes behind a tree, and they break for commercial, you could just…!

You may recall a couple of years ago Canadian women gave the sport a higher profile—and a more erotic one—by producing a nude calendar to raise money for their training costs. The women really do have beautiful, buff, lean bodies. Rick Mercer even posed naked with a gun on his show to promote their cause.

Apparently, it’s all breath control. To be able to bring your heart rate and breathing rate down enough to fire an accurate shot. That way no penalty laps or time penalties are applied and your score will be based on your speed alone. The breath training is a crucial part of the athletic training. To control such a basic body function to that scientific degree is itself an interesting field of study relevant to many other disciplines.

I’ve never shot a gun or a rifle in my life. Well, OK, I shot a BB gun at the CNE in Toronto and it was so embarrassing, I can’t bear to try again. When you’re that bad, it can be misconstrued as mockery of the sport.

And I wouldn’t mock this sport. Yesterday I attended my first biathlon event, at Paralympic Park in Whistler. The grandstand seats allow spectators a view of the shooting range, the starting and finish lines, as well as two sections of the course. Participants are categorized by gender and by disability: visually impaired, standing (missing arms), and sitting (paraplegia or missing legs). The shooting range includes technologically modified rifles designed to provide an alternative suited to each athlete’s disability.

For instance, the visually-impaired shoot with rifles that emit electronic audio signals that indicate when they are aiming at the target. Guns are adjusted, in advance, to heights. The most incredible innovation in the rifle portion of the race was without a doubt that of German Paralympic legend **Jesen. He is missing both arms. He skis the course on the power of his legs alone. And he fires his rifle with his teeth. Yes, that’s right. With his teeth! And he usually shoots clean.

The youngest participant in the Arctic Games was a ten-year-old biathlete. He hit several of his shots, even though it was the first time he was shooting bullets instead of air. Teammates joked about carrying him on their shoulders for the snowshoeing portion of the race (they include snowshoe as well as skiing biathlon in the Arctic Games), but they are confident that he will be a contender in later years.

Recently, a friend of mine tried to give a teenage boy a birthday gift certificate for a shooting range. All he does is play video games. I thought if I could get him to actually learn the skill, he might get involved in biathlon and start exercising. It didn’t work. He asked for the money instead. Maybe if he started earlier—like this ten-year-old, he might be off the couch by now, doing more than staring at cartoons muttering, bang-bang, bang-bang.

Biathlon Brings Me Closer to Religious Awakening

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0400

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

My Father as Olympian

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0500

When the sailboat my father was on capsized in the Caribbean, he was a changed man. The contaminated water he swallowed caused his quadriplegia. His life story altered from a successful immigrant story to a tale of tragedy.

At the time of his accident, in the 1970s, he was essentially told his life was over. He retired from his job. My mother left him. He didn’t even qualify for single parent benefits because the government had not accounted for a single man to be father—the benefits were strictly “single mother.”

But my father has always been a determined, stubborn, and passionate man, and these traits ballooned after his accident. All his energy was now focused on ensuring his children would succeed and find stability in the world. Like many South-Asian parents, he emphasized our intellectual talents, telling me often, Your brain will get you out. But he also encouraged us to play sports, I think because he didn’t want us to take our bodies for granted. My father had loved swimming and tennis.

I will confess that I was skeptical about whether Canadians would embrace hosting the 2010 Paralympic Games. During the Olympic Games, I overheard several snarky, ignorant comments from spectators, such as The Paralympics are just going to lose Vancouver money. We shouldn’t have to host them, and, I don’t think tax payers should be responsible for funding international charity work.

Most people don’t know much about the Paralympics. This is problem number one. Many confuse the Paralympics with the Special Olympics, which it isn’t. Paralympians are elite athletes with world rankings in their disciplines. Special Olympians have mental disabilities and the focus of their games is on participation, which is valuable as well, but is different from the focus of the Paralympics, which is athletic excellence. Problem number two is that people tend to assume that watching disabled athletes will be depressing somehow—remind them of their own fragility and mortality. Problem number three is that many people have little contact with people with disabilities, and this inexperience only perpetuates stereotypes of what the disabled are able to do and accomplish. As someone who has written about disability in my novel To Whom It May Concern, I have discussed my characters Hardev and Dorothy (Hardev is a quadriplegic, Dorothy is deaf) this way: Everyone has limitations. For them, however, a number of their limitations are right on the surface, for the rest of the world to see. What matters is how we deal with our own limitations, and that’s what builds character and identity.

As I hope we’ll all see in Canada, first-time host of the Paralympics, watching Paralympic athletics is invigorating and awe-inspiring. The Paralympics are a truly amazing representation of human spirit and will mixed with human ingenuity. And I am hopeful, because I was very pleasantly surprised to be among a full house at BC Place for the Opening Ceremonies. Athletes from all countries were welcomed with cheering and dancing. And the video montages of Terry Fox’s journey across Canada and Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion world tour reminded us that two of our most famous Canadian athletes of all time are disabled athletes, whose inspiration is still felt internationally today.

I was extremely young when Terry Fox died, but I do have a vague recollection of the country’s collective grief at the time. Growing up in Ottawa, I frequently walked past his memorial statue, and I ran in events at Terry Fox track. But I vividly remember Rick Hansen’s tour, and my father, brother, and I keeping eyes and ears open to all Hansen updates. I also remember us yelling at television screens, urging him on to gold medal victory from my father’s adjustable bed. Through Hansen, my father’s struggle was legitimized. He wasn’t just a survivor, but a winner. His life did not end with his accident. He raised two successful children—he accomplished what he set out to do.

Fox once said to reporters that he was not running across the country for fame or for any personal gain. He only wanted to raise money for cancer research. I am no better than anyone. I’m equal.

I’m not so sure about that. The examples of the disabled achieving what most would have deemed utterly impossible, urges us to mine the depths of our inner and physical strength to live our own lives to the fullest.

My Father as Olympian

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0500

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.

Mush Music

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0500

I have to admit that I’ve stolen this headline. It appeared in the Ulu News, a daily newspaper devoted to the games (ulu is an Inuit blade instrument—all the sport medals are in the shape of ulus), over a photograph of bright-eyed, lean, shimmering husky dogs and their family of owners (a brother and sister team from Alaska, eleven and fourteen years old respectively, compete together as well as against each other): Family Version of Mush Music.

I have few truly happy childhood memories. Although I’ve always sought good times and interesting experiences, what I mean by this is that I’ve had very few of those “no cares in the world, I’m a child and I’m going to enjoy the wonder of being a child” moments. Especially when I was eight and nine.

My mother had just run away, leaving me and my slightly older brother to the care of our quadriplegic father. Needless to say, he was not immediately equipped for such a task and so we were bandied about to various relatives in New York state and West Bloomfield Michigan. After a dramatic return of my mother and an attempted kidnapping (more on this in an upcoming memoir—too little space here, sorry), we were packed up once again, driven back to Canada, and plopped onto a secluded French-Canadian farming community in Curran, Ontario to live with a family I’d never met before. My father refuses to speak about these people, except to insist they were good friends of the family, when I know that it all reeked of foster care.

Those two years were traumatic years for me and my brother in many ways. I don’t mind revisiting them, though—must be my morbid writerly imagination—whereas my brother has managed to completely wipe out the majority of his childhood memories and cares not to have them resurrected. Sometimes his wife asks me questions, mostly so she can figure out a timeline issue or locate some cause for my brother’s quirky ticks, as she knows that I am the one who will remember incidents, people, places, and conversations from the past. However, my brother does have one vivid memory from that time in Curran, Ontario, and it is a happy one. The memory is also a happy one for me.

Dog-mushing. I had no idea it was a sport. But I loved dogs with a passion many damaged kids possess (especially those not permitted to own animals), and so did my brother. Our neighbours, four families, lived in two semi-detached houses. We lived with one of these families until my father managed to arrange for his arrival, and then we lived in an abandoned gymnasium with temporary Styrofoam walls to indicate our rooms. I used to let in all the dogs and cats at night to run in our gymnasium without our neighbours’ knowledge. In the nearby barn, the families kept chickens, rabbits, and goats, and later on a pregnant husky dog.

They bred huskies for dog-mushing, and when a female husky became pregnant, we children would be asked to construct popsicle sleighs for the puppies, for when they are born—no time is wasted in acclimatizing the animals to their role as pullers, and to my recollection, the puppies take to it right away, love it, as if they were born for the pulling and the running in the snow. It was pure magic to watch the tiny creatures, with their sloppy legs and paws, and salivating tongues, wiggle and jump, and scurry about dragging the popsicle sleighs we had made along.

But the best was when they got a little older and my brother and I were permitted, with a chaperone, to take a ride in an adult sleigh as the puppies began training with their mother. Now that was pure bliss. Speeding down the highway, wind against out cheeks, laughing and yelping as the sleigh went up and down, bouncing along to the rhythm of the dogs. One of the few moments of my childhood where I remember being absolutely happy, without a care in the world but the present bliss of fur, cold, and magic.

And so I almost started sobbing today when I discovered the dog-mushing competition schedule had been rearranged to deal with the warmer than usual Grande Prairie weather and that I had already missed my chance to see them. I had been saving the pleasure for today, when I could get out to Evergreen park and spend the entire day there watching the athletes harness their sleighs, gather their team of dogs, and race. I was dreaming of the ear-blasting noise of hundreds of dogs barking with excitement.

Some might interpret this turn of events to mean that I was not meant to sully my childhood memories by standing on the outskirts watching others steer and ride the sleighs. I just think it was bad luck. It does make me eager, though, to plan a winter trip for next year where you can pay for an afternoon of dog-sledding. I’ll take my brother with me.

Popsicle Sticks

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0500

The season of failures started with my birthday: a sleepover where no one slept, where none arrived—local parents too nervous to send their precious to party or prance about with the little girl with brown skin and buck teeth—without a mother living in an abandoned gymnasium turned apartment. We moved on to other events: Failure to overcome homesickness, Failure to catch the bus, Failure to axe a chicken, Failure in French, Failure to endure Winterlude without wetting snow pants. A laughing stock, I took to drowning my sorrow in sucking popsicles. Grape was my favourite, but I’d condescend to chocolate, banana, strawberry, whatever blue was, should no grape be available. And the only one I thought understood my state of mind & predicament was the old bushy dog, Diable, who never managed to learn to stay away from porcupines & had as many needles lanced through his face as I had popsicle sticks in my pockets. And one day we heard, Chamois, the husky with a diva’s white coat, was pregnant & Diable the father. Even at that age, I couldn’t understand how a being as shimmering as Chamois could condescend to doing whatever dogs do to get pregnant with Diable, but so it was. And though Diable was isolated, because he was a walking pin cushion, the rest of the town was trembling with excitement. The children collected. Imagine: to eat popsicles!

To read this poem, look for Priscila Uppal’s collection, Winter Sport: Poems, forthcoming from Mansfield Press.