*sapphoq healing tbi
Friday, March 23, 2007
T.B.I AND DEAD PEOPLE 3/23/07
I like mornings alright. It's something inside of me really. Something that resents change. Those between times where I shake myself from infested sleep, where the boundaries are blurred. Tapping into power. It is not something inside of me. It is I who doesn't care for the murky undefined borderlands of between.
The dog is instantly awake. She is my startling opposite. Frizzly energy to my melancholy. She explodes with happiness. My dog celebrates mornings for both of us. We are a community intertwined in Destiny herself, my dog and I. Without her, my fear would have rendered me sterile. Taken me down and drowned me in the onslaught of my atypical neurology.
It is my fear that chokes me. I will not be remembered. I will not have made enough of a difference. That is my fear. My dog knows this. She pushes me on and out into the sunlight. Blinking with pain and photophobia, I shield my eyes, always glad to return to the safety of home and dim lighting.
Home is where I hang my hat, hang the dog leash, stash my protein breakfast bars of power and frozen colored ices. Those bars of power are the breakfasts of champions.
Mrs. Eugenia Simpson gyrates onto the stage, clickety-clack, screaming for notice. It is a curse, this 99th percentile memory which survived through my broken brain. It is a curse, this second sight, third eye, and fourth dimension. "Eugenia," I address her, "I don't care what you think about my breakfast. I didn't know you thought about me after all of these years. You are dead you know. D-E-A-D dead." She throws my eighth grade health book at me. It opens to the how to eat correctly and what to eat when triangle. I laugh. She keeps dancing.
Some wise fool once defined nirvana as a day without dead people and traumatic brain injury. The ghosts keep floating through me as more memories filter in, like sunlight stinging my eyes. Rebuilding neurons and synapses yield dead ends of central nervous system tremor. Permanent. Another mark of progress. I have been marked beyond skin and sinew.
Community is the who around me, the us, dead people and all. I have neglected so much in my artificial quest for wholeness. I have forgotten the Other. The Other whose land we have stolen. I am also the Other. The interior landscapes of my brain has also been stolen, twisted beyond recognition, and left in a dumpster.
I am a second generation American. Briella is my second generation brain. Brilliant but sideways. Doing the two-step to Eugenia's celebratory dance. My dog nudges me. She dances and sings to me, "It's okay to let go of the gilded lily. It is not yours to pay. Come play with me in the wilderness." Somehow I think that didn't translate so well. I sigh and pick up the dog leash. We step out into the wilderness together.
sapphoq healing t.b.i.
The dog is instantly awake. She is my startling opposite. Frizzly energy to my melancholy. She explodes with happiness. My dog celebrates mornings for both of us. We are a community intertwined in Destiny herself, my dog and I. Without her, my fear would have rendered me sterile. Taken me down and drowned me in the onslaught of my atypical neurology.
It is my fear that chokes me. I will not be remembered. I will not have made enough of a difference. That is my fear. My dog knows this. She pushes me on and out into the sunlight. Blinking with pain and photophobia, I shield my eyes, always glad to return to the safety of home and dim lighting.
Home is where I hang my hat, hang the dog leash, stash my protein breakfast bars of power and frozen colored ices. Those bars of power are the breakfasts of champions.
Mrs. Eugenia Simpson gyrates onto the stage, clickety-clack, screaming for notice. It is a curse, this 99th percentile memory which survived through my broken brain. It is a curse, this second sight, third eye, and fourth dimension. "Eugenia," I address her, "I don't care what you think about my breakfast. I didn't know you thought about me after all of these years. You are dead you know. D-E-A-D dead." She throws my eighth grade health book at me. It opens to the how to eat correctly and what to eat when triangle. I laugh. She keeps dancing.
Some wise fool once defined nirvana as a day without dead people and traumatic brain injury. The ghosts keep floating through me as more memories filter in, like sunlight stinging my eyes. Rebuilding neurons and synapses yield dead ends of central nervous system tremor. Permanent. Another mark of progress. I have been marked beyond skin and sinew.
Community is the who around me, the us, dead people and all. I have neglected so much in my artificial quest for wholeness. I have forgotten the Other. The Other whose land we have stolen. I am also the Other. The interior landscapes of my brain has also been stolen, twisted beyond recognition, and left in a dumpster.
I am a second generation American. Briella is my second generation brain. Brilliant but sideways. Doing the two-step to Eugenia's celebratory dance. My dog nudges me. She dances and sings to me, "It's okay to let go of the gilded lily. It is not yours to pay. Come play with me in the wilderness." Somehow I think that didn't translate so well. I sigh and pick up the dog leash. We step out into the wilderness together.
sapphoq healing t.b.i.
Labels: dead people, ghosts, motivation, shadows, t.b.i., tbi, traumatic+brain+injury, travel
¶ 11:31 AM 0 comments links to this post
Monday, February 12, 2007
INTIMIDATION AND MOTIVATION 2/12/07
Rather unfortunate this whole question of motivation and the traumatic brain injury survivor. I suspect that I am not the only t.b.i.-er in the universe with disappearing motivation. The problem lies in intimidation. The world is noisy and multi-tasking. I am neither. Now finding my new true self even more out of step with society as a whole than I used to be, introspection and deep dark thoughts are now the norm. Or to put it another way-- the laziness factor.
I have written about this problem before. Laziness is composed of many facets. We have the sit factor, the sit-and-pitch-numerous-bitches factor, the mystic-meditator factor, and the oh-hell-I-think-I'll-just-sleep factor. Reality can be intimidating to those of us who are now content with or have to make do with single-tasking. Since I am not prepared to argue that reality is entirely subjective, I must leave behind the fantasy world of the quick-fix and the get-rich-now. We are indeed human beings and not human-doers as the old saw goes. I find that being usually does not exist outside of a context. Thus the backdrop of doing cannot be eliminated.
Intimidation. Change is intimidating. A messy house-- or rather, the prospect of cleaning it up and organizing-- is intimidating. Taking risks is risky. Am I better off hanging with bunches of people who have no ambition or hanging with people who do have ambition in healthy measure? Is it better to keep the peace or to hold one's own in an argument? Is intimidation the indication of time to run off and hide or the measure of inner strength?
Questions, questions, questions. These questions do have answers. If I want something different, I must do something different. The old ways and the learned new ways do not work. Change I must. And so I look intimation squarely in the eye and I laugh!
sapphoq healing tbi
I have written about this problem before. Laziness is composed of many facets. We have the sit factor, the sit-and-pitch-numerous-bitches factor, the mystic-meditator factor, and the oh-hell-I-think-I'll-just-sleep factor. Reality can be intimidating to those of us who are now content with or have to make do with single-tasking. Since I am not prepared to argue that reality is entirely subjective, I must leave behind the fantasy world of the quick-fix and the get-rich-now. We are indeed human beings and not human-doers as the old saw goes. I find that being usually does not exist outside of a context. Thus the backdrop of doing cannot be eliminated.
Intimidation. Change is intimidating. A messy house-- or rather, the prospect of cleaning it up and organizing-- is intimidating. Taking risks is risky. Am I better off hanging with bunches of people who have no ambition or hanging with people who do have ambition in healthy measure? Is it better to keep the peace or to hold one's own in an argument? Is intimidation the indication of time to run off and hide or the measure of inner strength?
Questions, questions, questions. These questions do have answers. If I want something different, I must do something different. The old ways and the learned new ways do not work. Change I must. And so I look intimation squarely in the eye and I laugh!
sapphoq healing tbi
Labels: goals, intimidation, laughter, laziness, motivation
¶ 5:24 PM 0 comments links to this post
