Friday

Paralysis as a concept is accessible to all of us. When it is presented in the body of someone who is physically paralyzed, because of spinal cord injury for example, it is received by those of us with spinal cords intact not only as a physical reality but as a breathing metaphor, idea made visible which, as in art work, is an idea delivered in a way we can experience viscerally. It touches not only our fear that a similar accident could paralyze us too but touches that part of us that is tortured by paralysis of another kind. In this way we can feel [this other paralysis] more acutely as it is brought from the abstract into the material world. Physical conditions such as paralysis or stutter or illness do affect our thoughts no matter how hard we try to keep metaphor away from our bodies.


I was made aware that the woman I saw before me, who had been paralyzed from the waist down at the age of fifteen, had a freedom of spirit so powerful she was able to actively transcend her physical paralysis in a way I am incapable of transcending my own conceptual or psychological paralysis.

of the companionship between body and mind
a single curling serpentine chemical path asserts itself into my brain while I sleep--the big physical monkey part of this organism that is either me or my house needs to awake, or release from this mortal coil, the spirit of me

Each part, body and soul, with its own way of communicating and its different reasons to stay alive in this form jostle for my attention and for influence with the weight of me. The eye using itself to see itself but not without an intermediary. Which part plays the mirror?

I've always sought the straight forward approach, thinking it the true way of the body and spirit but especially of the body which somehow always seemed the simpler and more honest of the two but as I drift in restorative sleep and tend toward coma in my chemistry, a fault brought on by disease, it can be easy to die or become impaired and wake up far away and damaged from the place I had originally laid my head and instead of a straight shot of pure adrenalin to wake me up or a boost of cortisol or whatever it takes (a startling pain would do the trick) that snaky chemical path twists and rattles my dreams telling me riddles that question how I've lived, poking a stick at my consciousness, until I finally awake in complete disorientation shouting uncle. OK, I'm alive. This weight must rise and feed itself some sugar or the end is near.

Interrupting these thoughts he asks for "enough for a cup of coffee" --a generalized amount. I didn't ask what kind of coffee he had in mind--there are so many choices to get through--I simply said no and then he wrinkled his face like a six-year-old boy and said with great anguished emphasis "please". In that moment I felt I knew him. This only increased my desire to deny his request--for obvious reasons.