In waking life, the dream is helping me progress. I can lift a can of baked beans and was able to float in Lake Anza on Sunday. I am not able to wave gaily yet, but I am determined to overcome the odds and swim, if not the Bering Strait, at least across Lake Louise. I'll even be reasonable and try it in the summer. Of the few interesting things I have discovered during this test, one is that neurosurgery is thought an art not a science.
Neurosurgeons are pianists looking for a piano to play.
I have chosen not to become their clavichord. But these monochrome X-rays leave no record of the pigment of pain before and after. The tangle of nerves is invisible, the clotted scars are not recorded. Both are what compel and determine your suffering, you sense of being alive and your capacity for hope. You are forced instead to find your place and define yourself in the spectrum of malady.