paralysis

kenny salvini is two years younger than me and now he's a quadriplegic. he has no feeling below his shoulders, just stuck in a - what? a bed? a chair? forever. before his accident, he was an athlete and an amazingly gorgeous and obviously very smart person, with every reason in the world to be happy and to expect to enjoy his life, and then one day, he broke his neck skiing with his dad, and now he's facing the prospect of always being reliant on people for the most personal and basic tasks. bless him, though, he's been writing it all out so lazy fuckers like myself can look into his head and see the movies of memory and hopes he's replaying. i came across his weblog in msn spaces and was amazed when i started reading his posts as often as he refreshed them. eventually i figured out that he had pictures up on his site and was even more dismayed that this guy was just unfrickingbelievably beautiful to look at, too. somehow that made it a bit worse. does that sounds shallow? would it be even more terrible if he was a brilliant, sensitive horse-faced pigmonster stuck in a pressure bed for the rest of his life? i don't know, so don't ask me. i'm just saying that he's so gorgeous, and it makes my heart hurt a little to think that this is what he's got to work with from now on.

today he writes about making weight for wrestling and i was just shattered by the determination and the clarity of purpose. (two things i'd do anything for.) towards the end i caught myself wondering if it was worth it. all that rigor and early mornings getting to know how to use this body, honing it down to it's peak, starving it and working it till it was perfected, so that he can now recall in such details the sense-memory of electric impulses jagging down every nerve fiber, or the sharpness of hunger after a week of starvation. would you be glad you'd made the most of it? relieved that you'd proved your mettle before it was stripped away? or would you wish you'd smoked up and eaten brownies and mac n cheese and taken the ease of your body.


what makes every minute count? when i'm lying in a bed i know i'm not getting back out of, am i going to remember the roasted foie gras with peeled grapes and brioche and sauternes or will it be coming to the top of the hill in the park and seeing the lake and feeling the pain fade away and the wind buff my cheeks and chill my sweat? will i remember being loved and falling asleep in someone's arms, or the sheets on saturday morning?

(to some extent, this train of thought is lawrence's fault, as his blog from this morning got me thinking about the astroglidelubed texture of time, about how fast each good minute flows past.)

back when i was taking scott's classes, i remember talking about the arrow of time, and about how there is not any particular reason for us to percieve time as flowing from past to future. although that has since proven to be untrue, (http://www.aip.org/pnu/1998/split/pnu402-2.htm) having to do with 'T violation in the observed decay rates for neutral K mesons,' (whatever the fuck that means...)

it seems to me that i was on the right track back in sophomore year of college in thinking that time just rushes us through like a snotty waiter.

i deserve this... punishment? for my life of fornication and pot-smoking, wine-swilling, cigarette-huffing sensualism far more than killer kenny salvini does. at least he gave it his best shot... what in the fuck am i doing with it? making amusing comments, i mean...?

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