My Paralympic Blues

During the 12 days of the Paralympic Games, it will seem that we have sprung directly from the technological imagination of the 21st century. Those iron feet! Those wheelchair athletes and their superbuff biceps! But after the medals are awarded we will retreat underground again — into normalcy, I guess, which is in fact a kind of oblivion when you have a body that is either an object of pity or valorized as “super” in order to be acceptable.