Wish You Were Here pt.2

Young or old, we are the sum of our experiences, be they personal or vicarious,and the lessons we've gleaned from them. As such, there is much we are unprepared for, and much we could not possibly have prepared for. For the most part we adapt. We get up and dust ourselves off when we fall down. All of our mistakes, our failures, and our inadequacies, provide an opportunity to change what we are doing. In the moment we may bemoan our misfortune, but inevitably the present will become the past, and we can move on as stronger individuals for our troubles.

So too are we confronted by those experiences that we would give back in a heartbeat. For all we may learn, for whatever strength we may gain, some lessons cost more than we would ever willingly pay.

April, 2004

The sun is shining. A cool breeze perfects a warm spring day. Walking from the car to the door, a phone call takes me back 18 years, and once more I am an infant born into the terrible unknown. After stumbling back into my dorm room I curl up into a ball and sob with every muscle in my body. It is all that I can do. It is all that I am. If I stop for one second, if I open my eyes and find myself in the present, I will be in a world where someone I love like a brother has taken his own life.

Stretching out into the past, a million events like threads make their way into the present. In all colors, shapes, and sizes they lead unerringly to this moment. Stretching out into the future are a billion possibilities. In only one place it all comes together. In only one moment, this moment, all of the threads meet. Often I find myself tracing back along my cord. I alight on a moment and wonder how I would've done things differently. I wonder where things would've gone, but the future only extends so far from an individual choice before breaking into a billion possibilities. It is a way of reliving missed opportunities. Now, more than ever, they truly are missed. Before this, there was always tomorrow. There was always another night out with friends that I missed to study. There was always another woman to replace the one that I was too shy to ask out. There was always love, life, and a bright future. Who we are is a construct of the present moment. When I go back and wonder "if," I do so with the knowledge that I have now. The man in those crystal moments of my past is not quite me. There is a cord between us, but wisdom and knowledge can only flow in one direction.

After a tragedy, time stands still. In our shock we hold onto the world as it was just before that moment. If only... If only. The further time marches on from that day, the more we are stretched. Something has to give. That moment is gone, and so are the billion possibilities that sprung out of it. In truth, the love, life, and a bright future that existed in that moment are gone with that moment. The task, then, is to find that which may come in this moment. It is a lesson that I learned from a death. It is a lesson that I would give back in a heartbeat, but now I find myself profoundly grateful for it. In a tragedy, the pain of the loss is a reflection of past meaning, and future hopes. There was a time when I could hardly think of the good times shared with my friend, because of what it meant going forward. A beautiful soul, a wellspring of life, a piece of the world, and a piece of me were suddenly gone in a flash. There was a gaping hole in me, because of all of the good things that this person represented in my life. When I made peace with his death, when I could take the memories we made for what they were; I could see all of those good things again; I could see how the past lived on in me. It is not the same. It is never the same. What impotent vision, what tragic delusion; that we should endeavor to make it so.

Continued in part 3...

Wish You Were Here Pt. 1

The world is a simple place, dark and warm. All sounds are muted, and ever present is the constant rhythm, invoking life where there is none. There is little else but this single presence, until a moment that changes everything. The world squeezes in over and over in brutal assault. Blinding light floods reluctant eyes, and violent blows bring violent breaths.

The birth of a new life is by its nature a savage experience, ever visited upon a being that did not ask for it, a being that is not prepared for it, a being that will suffer for it. When we come into this world as infants, the experience follows us for years, even decades, as we stumble through wondering where we came from, what we are, and where we are going. In the beginning, all we can do is wail. Our entire bodies are wracked with sobs, because we hurt without ever knowing why it is that we hurt. We suffer without ever knowing that there can be anything beyond our suffering.

As we grow older we are initiated into one of the most deceptively complex ideas we will ever face. It is the trinity of past, present, and future. Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Throughout our lives, our answers to these three questions will be in constant flux. Through them we will visit both joy and pain upon others, and upon ourselves.

The only constant is change. Some things simply change faster than others. There are things that we watch change, and others that watch us change. In every moment of our lives things will be different, and we will call it gain or loss. Perhaps it is in our nature that we should always seek to gain. Survival is our deepest instinct, and so it brings us great pleasure to ever be clawing our way upwards. Conversely, should we find ourselves slipping, we shake within our perception of loss. Perception, perception, perception.

grief, grief, Grief. How odd it is that we find ourselves so unprepared to deal with the major losses in our lives. Grief is not a concept that we are taught growing up. We see that someone is sad when they lose someone they love. When the dog dies we feel much the same, and then we get over it. We see grief, we feel grief, and then it fades away. Before we have a chance to understand it, it loosens its grip upon our throats, and we bid it good riddance. Despite our experience, we will miss the meaning. If our losses repeat themselves, we can catch on to the pattern. The first time a relationship fails it is difficult, but it becomes easier each time. We learn that the ocean is large and teeming with fish. The first time we lose a grandparent it is a hammer, but we are a little numb when the next blow falls. It is the new and different losses that we are most unprepared for. If we never understand grief, if we can only deal with the things that have already hurt us, then we will always bear the full force of the storm. If we can reflect on where we came from and we can see clearly what we are, perhaps then the path going forward will not seem so dark after all.

update

Have no fear, I have much more to say. Now that things have settled down a little bit, I have started back to work on my graduate degree. Time is tight, but I hope to have a new post out soon.

Variation on a Theme

Two sleepers
Wake up
To find
Their world
In ashes

The first,
Surveying the earth,
Lays down
And waits to die

The second,
Surveying the sky,
Finds beauty
In the ashes,
And weeping,
Finds beauty
In the tears

Both now
Beneath the skin,
There are only enough
Twinkies
For one


Author's note: I have had a question or two about the Twinkie reference. There is an old joke that claims that Twinkies will survive a nuclear apocalypse.

The Life Kinesthetic

I am paralyzed. I am paralyzed. The first few times I spoke the words out loud they stuck in my throat, refusing to come out. The thought came with a shudder. I hardly even knew what they meant at the time. Even so, there is a visceral fear that comes along with the words. Some instinct buried deep down lets us know that it is a terrible thing. A loss unlike any other. Take my nose. Take my ears. Take my tongue. Take my eyes. Anything but this. What is this?

I wonder:

Up above, the sky is a dark canvas stretched taut from horizon to horizon. Thousands upon thousands of reluctant stars have been coaxed into the painting. Their tiny points of light join into great swathes, pure white, radiant, delicate. The thinnest of yellow lines streaks across the edge of vision, foretelling the coming goliath. Crashing waves of golden oblivion will soon sweep this moment into the past. In a word, in the only word, beautiful.

When we think of something beautiful, it is usually an image that comes to mind. If further pushed it may be a song. One that stirs our hearts. Even a smell or a taste can take us back to a beautiful memory. When I lost the ability to play my guitar, I knew I lost something beautiful. It was not the sounds that were made, lovely as they were. It was not the strings beneath my fingers. Are there even beautiful feelings? I walk back through my memories in search. Blades of grass pass under my feet. A warm summer rain comes down, the drops of water splashing against my body, soaking me to the bone. Soft lips brush against my own. They are all just sensations. It seems that beauty is a feeling to be invoked within us. What then have I lost? What is this hole in me?

Touch. I have lost touch. I have lost connection. We all want to touch and be touched. We all want to move, and create, and destroy. The world goes by in front of me, just behind the glass. I am the fish in the fish bowl.

I am paralyzed.

There are times when I look into the future. I see that I will never feel, beneath my fingers, the warmth of the woman that I love. In those moments, I feel so very lonely.

A note to the reader

Dear reader,
It has been nearly three months since my accident, and I have now moved out of the hospital. It has often been difficult to find moments where I have both the time and energy to blog. As a result, my blogs are still largely an expression of my first few weeks in rehab. Fear not, things do improve, moods and outlooks in particular.
Yours,
Craig

The Day The Music Died

The first reality I faced following my paralysis was the loss of mobility, the inability to rise from my bed, the steps I could not take, the lifeless body set in place of my own. I stumbled through the first week after being moved from the ICU to the rehab unit. As the initial shell shock subsided, my black world began to take on tones of blue. It is one thing to find yourself suddenly helpless and still, but it is quite another to realize that you can no longer do the things you love.

Music has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. I have played one instrument or another for 20 years now. First the piano, then the trumpet, and then finally the guitar. I enjoyed the first two, but in the last I found love, an instrument worth marrying after flirting with others that just did not make the cut. The courtship was tentative at first. I was inspired by a friend who played beautifully, and I wondered if I to could have a musical relationship capable of producing such results. Before I drive the metaphor any further, let's just say that the last six years have been fruitful. By the end I had gotten quite good, and was finally writing songs I was proud of. Although I have always sung to myself while playing, it was only recently that I gained the confidence to sing in front of other people. Somehow having my grandmother tell me I had a good voice had just not been enough, but a few drinks and a very encouraging karaoke crowd did the trick.

Over the weeks I have been watching my calluses fade. Long hours spent enthralled had toughened my fingertips, but now they are soft again. Writing songs has been an intimate experience for me. It starts as a primordial emotion, half formed and waiting. With fingers sliding smoothly over the strings, I search, I long, for the one note that will resonate within me. I am struck like a bell. A sigh carries the first words past my lips. Springing forth, music and lyrics emerge intertwined. Each is shaped by the other. It is a unique expression formed by the joining of a person and an instrument. It is an image of myself crystallized in song. I sink back into my chair, and my guitar slips from my fingers. We are spent, but the lines on the page tell the tale of our union.

In the rehab unit, I watch my calluses fade. In my room at home, my guitar gently weeps. Though we are apart, the words spill from me, a song half formed.

Such As It Is:


Pitiful thing, bent and broken
With last words already spoken
In your arms cradle my head
Love me, and put me to bed

Lived all the ways I know to live
I burned the candle at both ends
Can't breath through the pain, I suffocate
Love me, let me slip away

Sleep now sleep
Don't begrudge me
Sleep now sleep
And dream that I am whole

Sleep now sleep
No don't begrudge me
Sleep now sleep
Dream that I am whole

We were never meant to live this way
I need you now to be my strength
A man can't live in a cage
Love me, send me on my way

Can't even hold you in my arms
Can't play for you on my guitar
Can't put music to my words
Love me, I'll fly as a bird

Sleep now sleep
Don't begrudge me
Sleep now sleep
And dream that I am whole

Sleep now sleep
No don't begrudge me
Sleep now sleep
Dream that I am whole