Prudy Sutherland

Prudy Sutherland lived in the second half of the 20th century on the eastern coast of the United States in upstate New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Florida. Prudy was the youngest daughter of Arthur and Suzanne Sutherland, born at the end of WWII. She was raised mostly in Massachusetts.

Prudy was an intellectual who identified with the underdog. She had a keen sense of humor, which was wonderful, though challenging because she lived with a condition known as cerebral palsy which in her case made it difficult for her to speak clearly. Often she would have to say her funny statements three or more times before we’d understand what she was laughing about.

Prudy was an activist for the rights of those living with handicaps. She published a number of articles on the topic, including one in the New York City based Village Voice.

Prudy was a writer, and an artist - to the extent that one can do art with an IBM electric typewriter - which she did. Primarily Prudy was a poet, though she also wrote short stories. The internet was not so active or popular during her time or else she would probably have had her own blog. She did not get a website before she died. In honor of her life, as her neice, the daughter of one of her brothers, I am establishing this website to make her work public and accessible. Prudy’s only sister will also help with preparing her bio and with additional material.

It is particularly inspiring to read the creativity, depth and humor that this woman offered the world, living her whole life as she did, sitting in a wheel chair, having all of her needs provided for by her caregivers. Prudy could talk, and push with her feet, and type with a custom designed hat (helmut) that initially held a pencil with the eraser pointed out - so she could hit the keys on her typewriter.

We all can find inspiration from her work, and Prudy hoped that would be the case.

Her work will be made available over the months to come, some on this site, and more hopefully through book collections of her poetry and essays.

Copyright 2008 for all content on www.prudysutherland.com. All rights reserved.

This rhetorical question is familiar to all of us. Its message is that we do best when we conduct our daily lives with a philosophy of contentment. Be happy over the good fortune and enjoyments that come your way, while at the same time overlooking as much as possible the curve balls that life throws you.

The philosophy of contentment is not a blindly Pollyannic view that everything is rosy. Rather, it is a measurement of the pleasant against the not-so-pleasant, with the perception that the pleasant outweighs the distasteful and the decision to celebrate that finding.

There is indeed much merit in the view that the glass is half full, in the ability to rejoice over life’s gifts rather than to forever bewail the defects and aggravations inherent in living.

Your loving wife leaves the cap off the toothpaste. You think about how gentle she is when you come home after a hard day. You never tell her you find the bathroom sink messy and unhygienic.

Your city has an excellent after-school care program. The city also prohibits nude dancers in any club except those which do not serve alcohol; you cannot see why lack of liquor renders watching naked women dance any less immoral. You keep quiet.

You consider the United States to be a rich, free and beautiful country which has afforded you the opportunity to carve out a decent life for yourself. You don’t quite agree with all of our nation’s foreign policies. But the leaders of such a great country must know what they are doing, and you support them.

When push comes to shove, the view that the glass is half full is a view that upholds the status quo. This troubles me. The attempt to change conditions comes at a high price. The attempt requires hard work, at the risk of social ostracism and perhaps physical danger. If you tell your wife that the messy sink drives you crazy, she may retaliate with a withdrawal of emotional nourishment. If you work to get nude dancing outlawed, you may become known as the neighborhood prude. If you protest a popular war, you may well get killed.

The view that the glass is half full can easily lull us into the belief that everything is really all right, that such hassles are unnecessary and even a sign of ingratitude.

To me society is like a small child whom I love dearly. With the proper attention and care, a child constantly changes, developing into a more and more competent person. Without the right care, the child is irrevocable damaged.

The child does not always like the good care. A trip to the pediatrician for inoculations brings kicks and screams. The denial of candy ushers in a pouting sulk. Yet it would be a perverse parental love which dictated “Tommy doesn’t like injections; I’ll keep him at home for an afternoon of lollipops.”

Like the child, society, as often as not, balks at reform. Indeed, it seems to have a perpetual case of the terrible twos. The history of society’s stubborn resistance to constructive change can be traced through the need, by those whose goal is the improvement of society, to resort to protest marches, non-violent demonstrations, and even armed struggle.

To work for social reform requires steadfast faith in the goodness of human beings and the belief that, if shown the way, they will ultimately choose good over evil, justice over injustice, decency over cruelty. Guided by this spirit of optimistic love, the work can be done with a sense of joy and fellowship, despite the arduousness of the task.

Is the glass half empty or half full? I suggest that if we view the glass as half full, we just may perish from thirst, whereas the view that the glass is half empty may urge us to work to fill the glass to the brim, ensuring us a long and progressive life.

Prudy Sutherland

Christmas 1991

“Handicapped people are forbidden, and sex is forbidden, so it’s no wonder that the sexuality of handicapped people is doubly forbidden.”

Published in the April 7, 1987 Village Voice, New York, NY

For years, because of my cerebral palsy and certain other physical difficulties, I doubted my ability to give and receive pleasure in sexual intercourse. For a long time I did not want to ask my doctors about sex because I felt a negative answer would make me regards myself as non-human - such is the value our society places on sexuality. But I got to the point where I felt I owed it to myself to find out. Besides which I was mighty curious! So at a routine physical evaluation, attended by my nurses and my physical therapist, I asked the doctor, in what I thought was a simple, forthright manner, if I could give and receive sexual pleasure. Extremely nervous laughter ensued - but no answer.

At various times after that, the hospital instituted sex-education programs which dealt with such topics as birth control devices and the unwed father, amazingly irrelevant to the institutionalized handicapped person. Several times I asked my question, with similarly depressing nonanswers.

Finally, since I was extremely hazy about what physical movements were involved in coitus, I decided to go to a porn movie. I reasoned that a movie would provide an uninhibited graphic illustration. But none of my friends took me seriously.

One dark night, with a young man with whom I was just getting acquainted, I took off and pulled up at a sleazy, red carpeted theater complete with groaning old men in raincoats. They let me in for nothing, and I am not sure whether that was because I was a woman or because I was a cripple. After the first ten minutes I got the idea down pat and saw I was perfectly capable of performing. My self-image skyrocketed. I, just like other women, had something sexual to offer a man!

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this educational adventure…

to be continued…

The rain on the window crinkles like a black celophane.

Nothing to feel, and nothing to say,

Not sick and not high,

No time to write a good insightful letter

Full of earthiness and vim –

Just this feckless poem.

My textbooks have everything down to a science;

Percentiles glitter like rhinestones in the scholar’s crown.

Yet whys are the thumbtacks in my soul,

Which bears the stigmata of either an artist or a fool.

They hurt, generating self-pity if nothing else.

The radio offers occasional smiles

Between the bong, bong, bong of puberty’s ravages,

Songs that bring back meaningful times:

Warm beer in a joyous suicide car,

Being hugged for hating myself.

I am these experiences;

The radio affirms me.

Tonight is not a meaningful time,

Just pent-up solitary raunchiness after too much study.

Prudy Sutherland

15 November 1981

The day casts a stone

Into the pool of the mind;

Dreams are the ripples.

Prudy Sutherland

29 October 1981

With a scream of joy

I take my humanity

And give it to you,

And in your touch, a mirror,

I receive it again –

An exalted spiral of affirmation!

Prudy Sutherland

The Moment

Live in the hope-spangled moment!

Yet the fragile crystal moment

Too often shatters

Into thought-slivers

Of barren futures

Or painful pasts.

Live in the moment

But gingerly.

Prudy Sutherland

26 July 1981

Elaina

Elaina, she dances, she dances, she

Dances across fragrant meadows

On a primal summer morning,

Her silk gown billowing;

Sweetly she hums a melon cool tune,

Whispering, swishing.

Elaina, she trods across sullen graveyards

At cold winter midnight,

Her sirge robe mimmicking

The shadows of the gravestones

On which her foot falls leaden;

She wails, she wails, she wails.

Prudy Sutherland

19 July 1981

Valentine

Look at it this way:

A heart is just an upsidedown bosom

Which has a point at its top,

Perhaps an arrow to ecstacy.

Prudy Sutherland

16 February 1981

In Therapy Together

The sweet-smelling kindergarten teacher

Gently showed us how to play with the Tinker Toy set,

And after she left the room

We took the sticks

And poked each other’s eyes out.

Prudy Sutherland

27 January 1981