Untethering

Epilogue


When you walk, Stride
Go as if there were a miracle unfurling before you
as if the Last Oasis lay waiting
and you have known only Desert.

Create new Ceremonies to entreat wonder.
Listen for the growing aria of that which lies waiting, wordless within you.

- D.C. McKenzie
excerpt from 'The Quiddity of Surprise'


It remains to be seen, every day, sometimes each moment, how we will react to an ever-changing world. I have heard it said that the difference between the right choice and the wrong one is a breath and two heartbeats.
How we keep to our vows should be a measure of our humanity. If we found a way to hold to the vows whispered into our tear-soaked pillows, vows shouted at riot cops, and vows promised to heaven, then we could stop the blight of famine and the terror of war. We could end rape. We could jail politicians who pillage and talking heads that terrorize. We could stop beating our wives and children.
We could slow the feathery, galloping-horse heartbeats of uncounted homeless ghostpeople.
We could make empathy mandatory.
We could drag fear into the light and watch it burn.
We could surrender.

I did not walk out of the hospital, ‘tis true, I rolled. I left with Michael and Gayle on the 29th of November, after a flurry of paperwork and Physical Therapy tests to prove that I was safe to transition from my wheels to the toilet, the car, the plane, the bed…I had to promise them, as they were getting to know me by now, that I would Not do any wheelchair to dumpster or cop car transitions. I have mentioned this already, but it is important: Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Walking, Running…Striding—These are not to be trifled with.
I had to surrender to their process; I have to believe it will work.
All of us rode a terrible, god-awful gauntlet in Miami, and we were happy to leave the field.
There was some snow when I got home and the Ravens have come out of the hills for Dumpster Season. I am home in the 80-degree apartment, surrounded by snow and ice; a dichotomy I deeply cherish.

I stay busy by walking in small circles, complaining, exercising, and getting better by the hour. [bitching and moaning, pacing, healing, and writing to you, Dear Reader, with this lovely gift of a new Whip…Oh, how it gleams in the dark, my Mac…my, my Precious.]

And while it is true that I am getting my strength back, it is a shaky, desperate strength…not backed up with the hidden reserves I once had. This will come in time.
On Patience: Sun-Tzu once said that if you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.
I am not exactly sure what that means to us now, but if my lost life will float by I'll wait by the river as long as you want, old man.

It’s a funny paradox, one that I still don't understand all of— but I had to surrender to pain and fear to finally make a friend of them. I had to clutch them close and stop wrestling, pinned down and smelling my own fearsweat, to finally accept something bigger than myself. It didn’t happen until I was home, alone in my apartment:

The enormity of all that had passed...surgery and epiphanies, all...just ground me into the floor and flayed me into wet dust. It held me down like so many of the bullies in my youth, vicious little bastards like Billy Bivens and Kurt Rosdell and Brady Miller’s asshole older brother, whose name I have burned out of my mind.

Truly alone for the first time in weeks all I could do was take my beating and weep. Yet to my sweet surprise it didn’t hurt all that much. I suddenly realized that I could grin at the pain bully and take its worst. You cannot hurt dust anyway. Dust floats, it swirls when one strikes at it. I will be as dust when pain comes. I can even be cosmic dust. Dust doesn’t keep score. It plays.
Tempered on Fear’s own anvil, I have been taught what can happen to a soul who loses hold of empathy, as I once did.

The Howler broke my heart on the rack
and nothing can really hurt me now, unless I let it.
And let’s face it, some things just have to hurt.
Superman or Green Lantern aint got nothing on me.

-End Transmission-
-Break Break-
Dawn McKenzie

Rehabilitation Ward

"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my paintings,
but I cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater
than I, which is my life--the power to create." 

-Vincent van Gogh



I am home now. Hospital is assuming the cowl of myth.
Though as always among humans there are no Hollywood endings,
there is still our lot of suffering, and I have mine.
Although the burden of my lot has lessened now, and I feel human again.
Perhaps over-medicated, over-stretched, a little like Bilbo Baggins
when he felt like butter that has been spread too thin,
drug too many times over the same miserable piece of toast.
Physical Therapy is a twin edged mistress. All praise Her.

The first night of Rehab I arrived late, just in time to settle in to night mode.
Nightime in Rehab is for waiting. It is for the resting of bodies and spirits,
for the taking of meds, and for watching tv. I curled up in the cacophony
of sick-sounds and blaring football, unsure if I could continue.

The next morning I discovered why they call it Rehabilitation.
They broke me down and built me back into an awareness of Safety.
Thou shalt not endanger the stupefyingly expensive Brain Surgery, Safety...Ohm...
I love them and I curse them, and that is as it should be.
I would not have walked without them.
And I did, over 220' on a walker, when I stopped counting.

Now that I am home and back to work, I automatically began
cooking my experiences down into verse, shucking them of their
symbols and globbing new ones on.
A word though, not all opinions are those of the author.
In this work the subject retains some autonomy.
Here then, without further jibber-jabber is Rehabilitation:


Part I: Jose

Have you ever wondered how it might feel
to forget how to run?

Nurse Practitioner of the Dayshift,
Jose told the story of He versus Car:
his trauma was a debilitating hit and run.

They put cables and long screws in his head.
They put needles in his arms,
wires on his chest and a tube in his penis.
Matter of factly, Jose said that he could hardly move.

Sunlight inundated room 718
of Jackson Memorial Hospital:
illuminated every flinching detail
lit every swarming corner
where things that eat pain lurk in the daytime.

Jose stood, stripping the bed of its foulness.
Washed in morning light, his golden-caramel face
was solemnly composed. He spoke
as he worked, glancing across to me
occasionally, where I fidgeted
uneasy in my wheelchair.

My hands—
(when I stop paying attention to them)
constantly seek the scar where beneath tight,
fragile stitches, rough against my fingers,
they burned out a tiny piece of my brain;
the brainskin where they grafted a piece of someone
who, having died, donated to me a priceless gift.

Turning again—
his too shrewd eyes lighting upon me
measuring with care, Jose picked up the thread
of his story. He spoke of how he hated
the Asian Man washing his ass and jewels

after an enema. He spoke of walking at last:
with the long screws still in his head;
of shuddering down a cold hall, the cables snaking
away beside him; the tube trailing from his penis
and the iv pole straggling next to him,
small wheels squeaking.

He spoke—
of walking alone to the bathroom one night
of how he fell to the floor,
bouncing hard, bouncing halo
of screws and shocking pain.

Jose said, "The key to running
is to have the will to keep walking."

He spoke then of lying on the floor
with iv pole askew, its precious cargo scattered.
Jose’s hands, everworking, paused.

His eyes—hard, black marbles
glazed over with distant memory.

He spoke of the hated Asian Man
lifting him gentle from the floor.
How he wept
seeing at last beyond the hated face.
How he wept
because he had finally learned to accept help.



~D.C. McKenzie

-End Transmission-