Disability Arts Online

Smooth as a financial manager, Sumida reflects my sunshine hopes back at me in a glassy smile. Tokyo, gateway to Utopia, or the crutch to support my fantasies?

Is the promise of independence sweeter than the realisation? Is the realisation realistic, or merely my wheelborne take on the impossible dream?

Humanity seems to possess a built-in hunger for the impossible dream, and living in an age where the dream becomes increasingly universal, and increasingly focused on bodily perfection, I am tempted to question my desire for a 'perfect' wheelchair.

And that longing for the one thing we do not have? The one thing that would make a difference... Is my hope of independent mobility a reasonable human right, or evidence that I too, am on the treadmill?

Am I seeking without, the things that should be within?

No, even as that thought occurs, I reject it. Too long I have sought solutions within myself for circumstances that require other input and mobility is certainly one of those.

 

Nobody covets a wheeled chair, No

amount of universal design has

made this symbol of disability

desirable to anyone who

doesn't need to be wheelborne.

But the desire to be more, to be

faster, stronger, tireless, could make us

all equal in a powersuit; provided of course

disabled people can afford them.