Six weeks and more
The pain abates imperceptibly slowly.
Day by day punctuated by waves of relief then irritation
I am reminded of it daily.
A wrong move
A twist or turn
Lying the wrong way
Sore reminders of a worse period of intensity.
But I feel I have failed it
The pain inscribed in my sinister leg and back
I have missed somehow the message it contained
Written into the C1 fibers as they emit their strong
message top the cord and brain.
I have not decoded the written message, the Morse code
that would banish the need for them again.
As if I still don’t get it
As if I must interpret the body as pointing to something
beyond itself
Why not just accept the body as is, for itself
An automaton, independent of mind.
Listen to the waves, the character of pain the triggers, the
sensitivity
The paresthesias, the dysesthesias the hyperpathia,
each a different quality of pain and sensation, listen to the
symptom,
stop interpreting, stop reading the body.
But that is my way!
The body as text
Sometimes impenetrable
Often inscrutable
To be deciphered like a sacred manuscript,
Musty and wilting, letters almost disappeared
But then what parameters are we to use in our
hermeneutic quest!
What Middot or rules of interpretation, 6, or 13, or 32!
Each points us in a different direction!
Each leads to a different oral text, a different imagined
body.
Reading is one thing
Interpreting a different art
Translating is something else
As Benjamin said; translating is violent; creating or
destroying in its path
I must not be a good interlocutor
Or maybe good at listening to others but stomped when it
comes to my own body.
Have I let it down?
Have I failed yet again?
I need more patience for sure
To allow the voices to percolate up
From the depths and the memories
Patience is such a rare commodity these days.
The work is hard
Journaling recovery mediation and prayer
The quartet of song
The medium by which the feint voice may just surface
If allowed
I will wait more.
