online: 17 january 2013 modified: 30 december 2012, 11, 12, 17 january 2013 30 december 2012 prostheses and performances
to the hill garden
...a windy day amidst ornamental trees and bushes as i pick out these words with a touch-screen pen... in gusty winds and mild sunshine...
...after several days almost immobilised by sciatica but today able to walk here again... with rests... on a folding camp stool...
...this three-legged hammock-seat is quite comfortable... and completely relieves sciatic pain... but when sitting on it i attract looks of curiosity... or perhaps pity...
...feeling cold at this windy spot... so i move on...
...now out of the wind in a cave-like shelter... while looking at a theatre-like terrace on which a girl of 5 or 6 (with a stick in each hand) yells
'come on down'
'come on down'
to some people on the pathway above the shelter... while she stands on an ornamental plinth... and then on the stairs...
...now a woman speaks with large arm gestures to a man... who responds with slight movements of his head...
(is it that this theatre-like location is bringing out the actor in all of us?)...
...now three young women and two young men walk swiftly across the stage by the rectangular pond... one of the men pushes a baby buggy as the three women stride ahead... as if they are the leaders...
...as i move across the grass i become aware of a man who arrived by bicycle to perform tai-chi-like exercises (or some other ritual movements) of his arms... he nods towards my sudden emergence from the shelter and then continues his performance...
...walking on a muddy path through the woods i have to sit again on the camp stool until a sudden pain in legs or spine ceases... enabling me to continue walking...
...then (as i walk across hilly ground with conifers) i meet a woman who is performing an indescribable ritual with her hands and fingers before her face... she does not stop (or even vary) this movement as we pass each other closely on a narrow path...
...travelling back home inside a bus (a 'prosthesis for everyone') i realise that while the sciatica lasts i can investigate more closely than before the existentia (my word for the introspective experience of using something) of what we used to call disablement but now can describe as changes in capability now seeing all such devices as cars and phones as well as such things as spectacles crutches and wheelchairs as equally prosthetic... for inabilities (like deafness or blindness) shared only with 'disabled people' and others (like inability to run at high speeds or to speak over long distances) shared with 'normal' people...
...the language of that paragraph may seem clumsy... i've altered it several times... but it is perhaps the clumsiness of the new... of language adapting itself to ever-changing circumstances... and ways of thought... evidence that we are collectively alive!
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