My Left Toe
(Jan 30/06)
I’m dying. Of something, of something that seems to have started in my foot, my left foot, my Christie Brown left foot. Though I aspire not to scribble and sketch with my foot, or feet, I do see no way out of it, out of having but one foot. It’s in the middle toe, no, the toe closest to the big toe, the second toe from the big toe, the fourth from the small toe, toe. Whichever which, it’s there, beside, abutting another toe, a digit, an ambulatory phalange. I often wonder, now that he’s dead, if Derrida had foot problems, problems with his toe or toes. It would have been rude and unseemly to have had such thoughts when he was alive, breathing, deconstructing, dodging Cambridge bullets, salvo upon salvo, illogical invidious bullets. No rest for the intellectually meek and impossibly tedious, the Wittgenstein envied and Moore half-cocked and waddled. Wittgenstein aborted his tractatus more than once, thrice, perhaps, sitting bowlegged in a Norwegian shack cooking celery heads and mutton hafts in a big roily pot. Figured out how to engineer a train, a flying machine, and sow a garden without bending the ribbon of his back. Quite the unordinary fellow, school mom and calculus savant, wee blond downed Norse wee ones learning algebra, fractions and logarithms from scratch and rote. I need both of my feet, not one-arched and gamy, but two-footed and carefree of gait and canter. There is an afghan of fresh new snow on the mantel, the rodeo-way and asphalt, the one-way, other-way go that way not that way, roadway the other way, way. It has been snowing, a lot, a lot of snowed snow has snowed, an afghan of it, a fresh throw of new snow, snow. With luck and no little alchemy, I will not die, soon, right away, tonight or into the morn, the snowy, fresh new snow snowed morn, morning. I will elevate, elevate above sea level, level, elevated on a pillow, a cushion, perhaps, my toe, the left one, toe, the one next to the big toe, and fourth from the littler toe, toe. The undertow toe, the one that will spell the end, the final demise of me, me and not me, invidious me, me.
I’m dying. Of something, of something that seems to have started in my foot, my left foot, my Christie Brown left foot. Though I aspire not to scribble and sketch with my foot, or feet, I do see no way out of it, out of having but one foot. It’s in the middle toe, no, the toe closest to the big toe, the second toe from the big toe, the fourth from the small toe, toe. Whichever which, it’s there, beside, abutting another toe, a digit, an ambulatory phalange. I often wonder, now that he’s dead, if Derrida had foot problems, problems with his toe or toes. It would have been rude and unseemly to have had such thoughts when he was alive, breathing, deconstructing, dodging Cambridge bullets, salvo upon salvo, illogical invidious bullets. No rest for the intellectually meek and impossibly tedious, the Wittgenstein envied and Moore half-cocked and waddled. Wittgenstein aborted his tractatus more than once, thrice, perhaps, sitting bowlegged in a Norwegian shack cooking celery heads and mutton hafts in a big roily pot. Figured out how to engineer a train, a flying machine, and sow a garden without bending the ribbon of his back. Quite the unordinary fellow, school mom and calculus savant, wee blond downed Norse wee ones learning algebra, fractions and logarithms from scratch and rote. I need both of my feet, not one-arched and gamy, but two-footed and carefree of gait and canter. There is an afghan of fresh new snow on the mantel, the rodeo-way and asphalt, the one-way, other-way go that way not that way, roadway the other way, way. It has been snowing, a lot, a lot of snowed snow has snowed, an afghan of it, a fresh throw of new snow, snow. With luck and no little alchemy, I will not die, soon, right away, tonight or into the morn, the snowy, fresh new snow snowed morn, morning. I will elevate, elevate above sea level, level, elevated on a pillow, a cushion, perhaps, my toe, the left one, toe, the one next to the big toe, and fourth from the littler toe, toe. The undertow toe, the one that will spell the end, the final demise of me, me and not me, invidious me, me.
2 comments:
You're not dieing. It's just a stubbed toe, you wuss. You've got 19 others anyway.
I copied this from http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s963560.htm:
"The ancient Greek philosopher, Zeno considered pain to be one of the nine forms of grief, said Panksepp who himself was involved in studies over two decades ago which showed similar results in animals.
He described the new study as “a bold neuroimaging experiment” which sought to discover “whether the metaphor for the psychological pain of social loss is reflected in the neural circuitry of the human brain”."
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