" I mourned for Paul and I also mourned for myself and for the loss of the word drenched companionship we created, due to a tiny land mine traveling through his blood vesssels. Beneath our civilized hair and hide, and beneath awareness even, we easily destroy ourselves. To be so Godlike, and yet so Fragile. "
This beautifully describes the reality of a stroke, how, 20 years of 'further education' and time collecting, gathering, and exhuming tte works of others [he was an English Professor, graduated 1st at Oxford, wrote 50 books] and consuming their phrases can be utterly stolen fom you forever due to a tiny rock - lodged in a vessel - for 10 seconds. Bang - all over, done, gone. The loss of blood causes nerve cells to commit suicide, and those peices of material matter were the things which we ephemerally associate with consciousness, memory, creativity, ability to use speech!
"The deified Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than any other man, did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his conversation ever reverted to this subject in his hope of leisure... He who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determines the fortunes of individuals and nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness. .. And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind. "
Let the words spoken before go forever speaking - heed the above, so no longer are we 'unawares' of this prior wisdom!
Other fun:
"A computer with a large sleek monitor.. [while] ripped out newspaper and magazine clippings filled a series of wooden filing cabinets and [there were] overflowing three-ring binders I affectionately loved.. "my portable universe", a repository of things I found curious.
"Quietly, sometimes, unawares"
"Life lives in nuances and innuendos. How could Paul's immense cosmos of words shrink to the size of a communication board overnight?"
"No more confiding, whispering intimacies, playing with words, sharing the world?"
"Paul patrolled the darker recesses of the night."
"I crossed the threshold into a world that was unfamiliar, with an unfamiliar man lying in it."
"[Raccoon Young] are born blind, deaf, and furry"
"Your poor battered brain, I thought, trying to peer through bone on the left side of his head, to where the brain stores the memories of how things are done, how to perform a simple task. His stroke somewhere in that region had clearly unskilled him. Now his years had come unglued."
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