*sapphoq healing tbi
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
On the Edges of Space and Time
The outskirts. The borderlands. The hedge. Jumping over the broomstick. The threshold. Betwixt and between. Crossroads. Turning point. Tipping point. Diverging roads. Blasting off. Journeying. Caves. Initiations. All of these places of power.
Yes there is power, a sudden wildness coursing through her veins. The traveler packs her solitary knapsack, slinks it over her back, and is off again. Unlike tripping through the throes of past addiction or neurology in sudden reverse, she chooses this time of leaving. The open road and the train tracks lay before her. The subtle recognition of the unfamiliar. She leaves once again to collect pieces of her soul from places she had never been before.
The bags are not packed. The tickets yet unbought. And yet she can taste it. She Knows that she will be leaving once again. Not where or how yet. The traveling nourishes her spirit.
sapphoq healing t.b.i.
The outskirts. The borderlands. The hedge. Jumping over the broomstick. The threshold. Betwixt and between. Crossroads. Turning point. Tipping point. Diverging roads. Blasting off. Journeying. Caves. Initiations. All of these places of power.
Yes there is power, a sudden wildness coursing through her veins. The traveler packs her solitary knapsack, slinks it over her back, and is off again. Unlike tripping through the throes of past addiction or neurology in sudden reverse, she chooses this time of leaving. The open road and the train tracks lay before her. The subtle recognition of the unfamiliar. She leaves once again to collect pieces of her soul from places she had never been before.
The bags are not packed. The tickets yet unbought. And yet she can taste it. She Knows that she will be leaving once again. Not where or how yet. The traveling nourishes her spirit.
sapphoq healing t.b.i.
Labels: t.b.i., tbi, traumatic+brain+injury, travel
¶ 7:29 AM 0 comments links to this post
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Places
That excitement of finding new places or re-finding old ones.
Pieces of me scattered in places I had never been.
I set off in April alone to find those pieces and indeed
they have been found. I knew. Never any doubt or question.
In my brain, I have snapshots of the many places I've been.
Places I have loved and places of tragedy or apathy.
Sacred places and places that have lost their holiness to me.
I have lived and loved and died many times over.
I have always been able to navigate through fairly well even those cities which I've visited after lapses of decades.
I remember how to get around neighborhoods and I can still see houses, apartments, stores, trees.
There are very few maps in my world; and very little need to ask strangers for directions.
An acute sense of direction combined with almost no sense of distance and a marked indifference to time.
Time leaks onto the fabric of the pages of my life,
muddying the words therein. I can still sing the words and I do.
I can read upsidedown with no problem.
I can write with two hands in various combinations of left, right, forward, backwards, rightsideup, upsidedown.
These things I have always taken for granted.
A long list of "Can't everyone?"
Just like the phone numbers from childhood and the addresses I can still recall.
First memory-- learning how to walk. And the revelation of a secret tryst inherent.
I was on the second floor of a house being encouraged by an old Italian man with missing fingers
to walk around the coffee table with no hands to steady me.
That old Italian man turned out to be the father of my step-father.
That is how old the affair of my mother and step-father was.
She was still married to my dad at the time.
From that memory, I understood how the two of them had met.
My mother had happened to hire an old Italian woman as a babysitter.
Odd. Almost everyone with a traumatic brain injury winds up with deficits in memory.
I am not one of those. I tested in the 99th percentile in both working and long-term.
My t.b.i.-er friends all tell me that they can't remember. I can't forget.
I did forget for a time who I was before my brain injury.
I could not describe my self pre-bonk.
And then random memories of my life began to return at random times.
Not anything I'd been counting on or even expected to happen.
More memories to add to an already bulging mental scrapbook.
Oh, I did forget how to cook.
The burnt pot of wilted herbs in a smoky kitchen told me so.
Cooking, like so many other things now, not automatic pilot.
I cannot take much for granted.
No. Having walked with death, I've been catapulted into life.
Vision like a permanent acid trip took some getting used to.
The world was too fast. I got used to my own pace, my own music.
I've "adjusted." Those who say otherwise know not of what they speak.
Yes, today I can describe my character traits before the accident.
Today, that doesn't feel important.
My mother told me when I was moving out, "You can never go home again."
I thought that meant she would not take me back in. I was too traumatized to care.
She had lost me through her abuse years before I was able to leave her house.
I understood a different meaning to not going home again many years later.
That people and places change, that my memories of those people and places
were expected to dull to inaccuracy, that returning does not render magical healing of heartbreak.
She was wrong.
So fundamentally wrong
in ways that I cannot explain and don't want to.
I have gone home again.
To places where I had never been before.
spike
That excitement of finding new places or re-finding old ones.
Pieces of me scattered in places I had never been.
I set off in April alone to find those pieces and indeed
they have been found. I knew. Never any doubt or question.
In my brain, I have snapshots of the many places I've been.
Places I have loved and places of tragedy or apathy.
Sacred places and places that have lost their holiness to me.
I have lived and loved and died many times over.
I have always been able to navigate through fairly well even those cities which I've visited after lapses of decades.
I remember how to get around neighborhoods and I can still see houses, apartments, stores, trees.
There are very few maps in my world; and very little need to ask strangers for directions.
An acute sense of direction combined with almost no sense of distance and a marked indifference to time.
Time leaks onto the fabric of the pages of my life,
muddying the words therein. I can still sing the words and I do.
I can read upsidedown with no problem.
I can write with two hands in various combinations of left, right, forward, backwards, rightsideup, upsidedown.
These things I have always taken for granted.
A long list of "Can't everyone?"
Just like the phone numbers from childhood and the addresses I can still recall.
First memory-- learning how to walk. And the revelation of a secret tryst inherent.
I was on the second floor of a house being encouraged by an old Italian man with missing fingers
to walk around the coffee table with no hands to steady me.
That old Italian man turned out to be the father of my step-father.
That is how old the affair of my mother and step-father was.
She was still married to my dad at the time.
From that memory, I understood how the two of them had met.
My mother had happened to hire an old Italian woman as a babysitter.
Odd. Almost everyone with a traumatic brain injury winds up with deficits in memory.
I am not one of those. I tested in the 99th percentile in both working and long-term.
My t.b.i.-er friends all tell me that they can't remember. I can't forget.
I did forget for a time who I was before my brain injury.
I could not describe my self pre-bonk.
And then random memories of my life began to return at random times.
Not anything I'd been counting on or even expected to happen.
More memories to add to an already bulging mental scrapbook.
Oh, I did forget how to cook.
The burnt pot of wilted herbs in a smoky kitchen told me so.
Cooking, like so many other things now, not automatic pilot.
I cannot take much for granted.
No. Having walked with death, I've been catapulted into life.
Vision like a permanent acid trip took some getting used to.
The world was too fast. I got used to my own pace, my own music.
I've "adjusted." Those who say otherwise know not of what they speak.
Yes, today I can describe my character traits before the accident.
Today, that doesn't feel important.
My mother told me when I was moving out, "You can never go home again."
I thought that meant she would not take me back in. I was too traumatized to care.
She had lost me through her abuse years before I was able to leave her house.
I understood a different meaning to not going home again many years later.
That people and places change, that my memories of those people and places
were expected to dull to inaccuracy, that returning does not render magical healing of heartbreak.
She was wrong.
So fundamentally wrong
in ways that I cannot explain and don't want to.
I have gone home again.
To places where I had never been before.
spike
Labels: t.b.i., tbi, traumatic+brain+injury, travel
¶ 12:01 PM 0 comments links to this post
Monday, March 26, 2007
PLANNING 3/26/07
I am going away cross-country. When planning an itinerary, I discovered that thinking ahead in a linear fashion [the way I used to] was no longer second nature. [Drat the damage to my executive functions.] Instead, my t.b.i.-related random chaotic style of doing things has infiltrated far beyond the boundaries of household organization. Yeah, that is what travel agents are for.
Unfortunately, the travel agent was doing a good job of imitating a nervous wreck during my three hour session with her. She was in a mad rush to get me out of there. At the end, she threw the itinerary on the desk and said, "This is it. If you sign this, there can be no changes." It appears that I have already posted about this singularly difficult encounter with the forces of order. Onward ho.
Upon getting everything home, I was informed that no, I did not have to be back for a commitment at the end of April. That commitment is at the end of May. I also realized that one of the connections that the harried travel agent had provided me with was of the "no way Hosea" variety-- as in, no way could I move fast enough for that. I took the weekend off to recuperate and to think about my options.
This morning I got on the phone to fix and amend and alter what I had to.
The upshot after spending a morning's worth of aggravation and phone calls is that I will be leaving a day earlier than I thought and coming back four days later. And renting a car for a day in order to make it to one spot which wasn't doable without spending most of a night in a train station waiting for a transfer.
Now I have several choices. I can continue to grieve the change in my thinking processes-- a total waste of time. I've done enough of that. Something in my inner core was permanently altered by my whacked out neurological landscape. I've known this since I got out of the car after the accident. I can accept it without having to wear the shackle of must stamp the seal of approval on it today. I can bitch and moan. That option is also rather unattractive. A constant diet of cognitive stew is boring. There are a few other options I'm sure that I am missing here. What I am putting my self-determination to is the idea of being happy that I am able to go on an extensive vacation. Because not everyone can.
sapphoq healing t.b.i.
sapphoq
executive function
frontal lobe damage
Unfortunately, the travel agent was doing a good job of imitating a nervous wreck during my three hour session with her. She was in a mad rush to get me out of there. At the end, she threw the itinerary on the desk and said, "This is it. If you sign this, there can be no changes." It appears that I have already posted about this singularly difficult encounter with the forces of order. Onward ho.
Upon getting everything home, I was informed that no, I did not have to be back for a commitment at the end of April. That commitment is at the end of May. I also realized that one of the connections that the harried travel agent had provided me with was of the "no way Hosea" variety-- as in, no way could I move fast enough for that. I took the weekend off to recuperate and to think about my options.
This morning I got on the phone to fix and amend and alter what I had to.
The upshot after spending a morning's worth of aggravation and phone calls is that I will be leaving a day earlier than I thought and coming back four days later. And renting a car for a day in order to make it to one spot which wasn't doable without spending most of a night in a train station waiting for a transfer.
Now I have several choices. I can continue to grieve the change in my thinking processes-- a total waste of time. I've done enough of that. Something in my inner core was permanently altered by my whacked out neurological landscape. I've known this since I got out of the car after the accident. I can accept it without having to wear the shackle of must stamp the seal of approval on it today. I can bitch and moan. That option is also rather unattractive. A constant diet of cognitive stew is boring. There are a few other options I'm sure that I am missing here. What I am putting my self-determination to is the idea of being happy that I am able to go on an extensive vacation. Because not everyone can.
sapphoq healing t.b.i.
sapphoqexecutive functionfrontal lobe damageLabels: executive function, t.b.i., tbi, thinking, traumatic+brain+injury, travel
¶ 1:00 PM 0 comments links to this post
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
Saturday, March 03, 2007
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO 3/3/07
Restless, that is me. Twitching, unable to be still in my own spirit.
Touching the things that give me connection, and yet a desire to
be away, away, away. Now I must seek out the counsel of those
who perhaps have logical thinking skills that I lack. I want to buy
a ticket for a month-long bustrip. See Amerika! Take pictures
with my digital camera through the windshield. Maybe find a
temp job in New Orleans. Then head West. California here I come.
Bring back some sand. Stop in Minnesota and small-town living.
Could I? Should I? When I was whole-- blank there. I cannot
even proceed with the question. No. Is there another way to
possess the freedom of my daydreaming without uprooting
my stability? Will I miss out? New Orleans the obsession.
I miss her bright shining like the sun. She rises out of the River
calling me home. My feet are itching. Or maybe a mere fungal
infection settling in calling for yellowed medicated powder.
sapphoq healing tbi
Restless, that is me. Twitching, unable to be still in my own spirit.
Touching the things that give me connection, and yet a desire to
be away, away, away. Now I must seek out the counsel of those
who perhaps have logical thinking skills that I lack. I want to buy
a ticket for a month-long bustrip. See Amerika! Take pictures
with my digital camera through the windshield. Maybe find a
temp job in New Orleans. Then head West. California here I come.
Bring back some sand. Stop in Minnesota and small-town living.
Could I? Should I? When I was whole-- blank there. I cannot
even proceed with the question. No. Is there another way to
possess the freedom of my daydreaming without uprooting
my stability? Will I miss out? New Orleans the obsession.
I miss her bright shining like the sun. She rises out of the River
calling me home. My feet are itching. Or maybe a mere fungal
infection settling in calling for yellowed medicated powder.
sapphoq healing tbi
Labels: decisions, restlessness, travel
¶ 5:21 PM 0 comments links to this post
