Thursday, October 07, 2010

woven together

how does one qualify the quality of the mind? at what point do we cease to think? to be ourselves? when does the mind trick us into taking over the conscious - fool us into that which is not?

my sweet father-in-law rests in the hospital, recovering from an incredible open-heart surgery where they replaced his malfunctioning aortic valve with one from a pig. amazing. but our bodies were not meant for traumas such as this and so he struggles to regain his consciousness - to return to the world of the lucid. it is not easy. he says crazy things, stops himself, tries again. wrestles to connect what he sees with what he knows, what he remembers. sometimes the result is one step shy of lunatic. other times he is one step shy of sense.

what must he be feeling in this no man's land? far away from what he has known, near enough to reclaiming his presence in the world to feel the puff of sanity's breath.

we feel it with him. we laugh at his funny phrases, nearly choke on tears at his tragic frailty, all the while waiting for him to come home to us. once for all. himself.

the body, the mind, the spirit. we may think, in an age of reason, that we can separate these three - but the divine hand over all creation knows that we are intimately tied together - woven, all three, in our mother's womb.

2 comments:

JRM said...

i'm reading a book right now about consciousness and it would say that Bev is completely conscious - that consciousness does not just rest in our brain and how it is able to function and communicate with the world. that is an extremely gross oversimplification. as he struggles with words and ways to "return to the world" he is completely aware of the annoying and humorous struggle himself. and maybe you are even seeing/saying that.

Stacy Barton said...

wow. that's cool. it is something to see. the struggle that is. the mind.