The Return of My Brain

My brain is back. I don't know how it happened, what I did, or did not do, but suddenly here it is, thinking, functioning, remembering, all as clear as a bell.

At first I thought this was maybe just some weird trick of perception--like the way an amputee feels a missing limb--but it cannot be so, for the organ proves itself in performance. The other day, for instance, my wife told me a phone number to call, and even though it took several minutes to go and find paper and pencil and cell phone, I actually remembered the number immediately and without flaw. I was astounded, amazed at the utility of the thing. I wrote down the numbers and read them back to her, just to be certain, as if to prick myself with a pin.

Am I dreaming? No, by God, it's real!

Not a month ago, had we been driving in the car together, my wife would have had to direct me from start to finish. Left here . . . straight now . . . right at the next traffic light. And yet now this sort of guidance, helpful--no, essential--before, has become suddenly acutely irritating, such that old objections return to the pilot's seat as if they had never released the throttle in the first place--I know, I know; you don't have to tell me; I've been here a hundred times before!

Surely I sleep. Surely I dream. Surely I have received without cause or merit. Shall I rejoice now, or tremble at the thought it might depart once again? Shall I tell people about this, or shall I be silent, careful of words that might shatter the gift? Can I trust my brain to stay, or does it whisper but a moment like a ghost, an echo, and arch wings of flight even as I speak.

And if it stays, then what I am to do? What to make of this brain? How should I live for having received this unbroken thing thing from the abyss?

Abracadabra

Disappearing is not easy. It is, in fact, a Herculean task. It is a task better suited to an army of clerks, accountants, and experienced boat people. Aside from being very difficult, it is also relatively expensive. One might imagine that disappearing would be a bit less stressful and exhausting than the relentless struggle of every day life, but it is not so.

Nonetheless, I shall soon do just this--I shall soon disappear--and quite without the use of trap doors, smoke and mirrors, black capes, magic phrases, or a beautiful assistant in high heels and black nylons. Well, I take that back. I will in fact have the help of the beautiful assistant.

Having disappeared, I shall then pop up elsewhere, and by elsewhere I do not mean from behind the nearby curtain, nor in the mouth of the lion, nor from beneath the drape on the table--no, resurrections such as these are all too common. Rather you will find me (or rather I shall find myself) on the other side of the world--not instantly, and not in a blinding flash, and yet sudden nonetheless, of a sudden just there, an astounding product of space and time in as far as these involve distance and displacement.

Physicists of the modern day have discovered a strange phenomenon that would seem to be active at the most essential level of existence itself, the very machine than runs the cosmos, and everything, and everyone in it. In short, and without explicative particulars (for I do not understand them), electrons, which are always in pairs, are perfectly complimentary. The action of the one determines the action of the other, they communicate, and apparently they do so instantaneously. You cannot force them not to do so. Moreover, no degree of separation can ever separate them. If one electron somewhere around the center of the Milky Way turns right, its other member, though it be floating about in the Andromeda galaxy, turns left. One rotates clockwise, the other counterclockwise. It is quite impossible, and yet quite true.

Now we are the creative force behind all this, we individual human beings. There is nothing that happens until it is observed to happen, nor can it happen without being actuated by observation. It is all about us after all. We live in a biocentric universe.

We are part therefore but separate. We are here and yet we are not. And if one thing vanishes, or so it seems, then the other must surely appear.

My God, my God . . .

There is nothing so difficult as stopping someone from doing what has already been done. Our will is to retrieve, to rescue, to restore, to somehow go back. But of course this is not a world with time machines and mysterious portals; it is, rather, a world of consequence activated by choice, a world where the courses of electrons are determined by observation, according anyway to the latest theories of quantum mechanics. What happens happens when it happens according to causation set into motion by the individual human being.

And then what next? Manifestly, it cannot be what was before. It must be something else, something different, something beyond or instead of, for you cannot go home again, as Thomas Wolfe so famously said.

Do you ever get the feeling like you are living inside of a book you once read? Or that a certain story has attracted your interest over the years in a strange persistent way because it has somehow all along been alive with the essential motion of your own life? Why does one story compel at the deepest level where another does not?

Do you get that feeling?

I do.

Just Some Thoughts

They say that marriage is ultimately a worldly expression of relationship with Christ (Paul says so, I mean). This is why the man is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, even to the point of death; and the wife is to love her husband as she loves Christ. Naturally, being only human and subject to all the weakness that is in the flesh, we tend to fail fairly miserably at fulfilling this command. But I guess what we are supposed to do is just try again and again.

It seems apparent that it is impossible for one human being to live up to all of another human beings expectations. The strengths that I do have are strengths that many other people do not have. By the same token, I am found lacking in some things that other people do not lack. Ultimately though, if we are all judged on the basis of those things that are weakest, we must all fail. During periods in a marriage where contention has arisen, it may appear to one partner or the other than someone on the outside is especially wise, attractive, attentive, understanding, and so on. This is the luxury of the free agent, so to speak. He may offer all his best upon the isolated moment, while not having to oppress with the weaknesses that would be present and obvious in the long haul. It is easy to be occasional, far away from the daily drudge, the finances, the frustrations & etc. The details. The hard parts. It is much more difficult to be permanent.

Now, if there is one thing I know about women it is that they are eternally dissatisfied, and no mere man of flesh and blood can hope to change that. On the other hand, men are eternally needy emotionally and in terms of self-esteem, and this is why they so often try to cure their frustration by falling into the sweet talk of another woman. It is a vicious circle, and something we can all benefit from by recognizing and remembering. The fact is, the grass is not greener on the other side, but just all part of the same yard.

My philosophy (and perhaps a mistaken one) has always been to make the most of what is good in a person, while tolerating the weaker things--this with the thought that people suffer as much from their own faults as anyone else does. I begin to wonder, however, whether my refusal to make an issue of the less attractive facets in a person's makeup is really only an unwillingness to enter into conflict. Do I love the best and endure the worst, making it sound like a character strength--or do I simply seek to hide from trouble under the guise of a worthy sounding philosophy?

Ever since God took Eve from Adam's side, the man (who had been doing fine before) has depended upon the woman (nice going, God). In a sense she is like his mirror, that reflection by which he evaluates himself and either values or despairs at what he sees. He will see, according to the light and shade she chooses to provide, all manner of creatures, from the strong and the heroic to the base and worthless. If the woman reflects something of Christ, the man will see something of Christ in himself. If she reflects little of Christ, he will not see Christ.

If is evident, of course, that until the man (and the woman too, for that matter) sees, evaluates, and works by the light of Christ penultimate, he must suffer through an ever unreliable world made of circumstance and mood, as unpredictable and as impermanent as the clouds.

By His Striipes

The other day an anonymous visitor posted a comment on my blog in answer to a tongue in cheek sort of thing I'd written about a spat of bad luck involving any number of aches and pains--the topper being an injury to my back which left me hobbling about like some sort of troll. As my hyper religious son most often sees these sort of things as directly attributable to Satan himself, I joked around about the notion--because, as it seems to me, ones failing health can manage very well on its own without Lucifer's help. That's just the way it is.

But in any case, this person offered a diatribe (mind you, a complete stranger he or she) about how I just needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps and receive the healing of Christ, understand that we are healed by His stripes, and so on and so forth.

That's fine. But first off, I would ask anyone commenting here to go the extra mile and avoid hiding behind the anonymous option. I mean, if one truly believes in what one says, why feel that ones identity must be kept secret. Seems to me to undercut the whole point the writer had apparently hoped to convey.

In addition, I do not see physical ailments as things foreign to the pattern of natural life. This happens, especially as one gets older, and also if one suffers at baseline from a disease such as multiple sclerosis. I do not agree that such things are indicative in any way of being somehow distanced from God or being faithless. Rather, I accept my lot with a sort of thanksgiving that thrives in the spirit rather than in the flesh, and I understand that sometimes adversity is the best, sometimes even the only, effective nutrient to the spirit.

By His stripes we are healed, yes indeed--emotionally, spiritually, even physically--whatever is in His will. At the same time, part of our business in life is in finishing out the sufferings of the Lord, for unless the seed falls to the ground and dies, there is no new life. Understand the Word, therefore; understand the transcendent philosophy of the apostle Paul; and then please, please leave the childish things behind; for we are grown in due time, by pangs and by pains, by sorrows and deaths, into adulthood.

What Now?

You know the truth--a thing that is immutable, dispassionate in and of itself--and yet your immediate inclination is to run from it. You imagine other things that might be true, other things that might render the real truth false. You want to run because you already know what the pain is like, and yet you know that you are running on air, and in the wrong direction at that, and you know that your unwilling feet must soon hit the ground, and sink, and sink, and sink, and sink.

When you walk on the sucking sands of shit instead of solid ground, you have to walk in a certain way. You have to try not to struggle. You have to try to remain calm. The trick is in using upper body strength. You have to pull yourself up, inch by inch. You have to stay calm, even though you think you are dying, and you have to regain yourself inch by inch, and somehow believe, and somehow have faith, and somehow understand that dreams had always been only dreams and good for the moment but not for balance of time.

For better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless.

So says the teacher, and yet we never will listen, for hope will forever come before hearing.

The Measure of a Man

Okay, so maybe I ought to write something. It's an important day, after all. New Years Eve, 2009. It's some kind of a significant hallmark, or must be, I'm sure. There is a big difference between 9 and 10. Can anyone deny it?

Then again, I am less and less an observer of days, as the apostle Paul put it. And that's a good thing, right? Attaching a significance to numbers is tantamount to witchcraft. Right? Superstition, magical thinking. Be ye not conformed to the patterns of the world, for the world is passing away.

So it is, so it is.

I remember spending quite a long time on this subject last December 31st--the passage of one year to the next, that is. It seemed a natural time for rumination, summation--an accounting, a valuation, an appraisal of where I had been and where I had ended up. I was still fairly new to MS (funny how you can become old to a thing in the space of one year's time), and my feeling at that time was that the disease had changed me in some essential way, that it had become central in self conception. In short, it seemed important.

And so I have changed after all, now that I think about it--for MS no longer seems very important, or particularly pertinent, or even particularly interesting.

Why had it seemed so on December 31st, 2009?

Recently I watched a movie where aliens had come to earth and got stuck here (their ship broke down). These were a lizard like people, and not good for much--unusually stupid as aliens go. By and by, the main character in the movie (a human) became somehow infected and began to turn into a lizard himself. What was alien became little by little part of him--he sprouted jagged scales, claw like hands, a weird looking yellow eye. The infection, as it seemed, grew from within, like a cancer perhaps, or a leprosy, so that at last our hero had shed his human appearance altogether and had become quite fully one of them.

What was he in the end? A man trapped inside a lizard, or a lizard which quite incidentally had once been a man? Is this how it works: We are what we become? A lizard without recourse learns to live in his skin, for he is what he is. What would be the point of outrage?

Lizard like, I slither therefore into 2010--unaffected, unsurprised, all but unaware. One thing only do I note as new: An intense desire to find a new abode, in a hot, dry, humid land.