His physical therapist had to help him relearn every movement. Laying bare the complexity of each motion. Analysing its constituent parts and coaxing and teasing the brain to fire again with meaningful impulse and not just into unrequited, dead air. He saluted the utter sophistication of the toddler him some thirty years ago, who had picked up and unlocked all this innate knowledge in his seamless developmental stride. If only he could return to such an innocent state of understanding and assimilation. But then there were other memories presently held on to that he would also have to kiss goodbye into obliviousness.
Here and now the muscles had to be stoked with energy. Sinew reharnessed with directionality and intent. He could lift up his foot, but the mechanics involved in propelling it and the rest of his trunk forward were intricately convoluted, so that more often than not he just placed the foot back down on the spot rather than lurching forward.
But in time and with cussed determination he was able to forge a whole new template for locomotion. His centre of gravity was skew whiff, he inclined ever so slightly to the left, but he could ambulate, feed, clothe and wash himself once again. He fair approximated a working model human being. Thus dawned the day of his launch back out into the world. Without burning up on re-entry.
But one step outside of rehab's revolving doors (which seemed to shovel him forward with more alacrity than he felt decent) and everything felt wrong (though not instinctively wrong, since he had overridden these with his new neural programming). Not just awry, but cardinally adrift. Concreted paving was not the plush carpet of the physiotherapy suite. It was ineffably harder and more unyielding. It pushed back upon the soles of his feet with far greater force than the shag of the interior. Also the uncracked leather of his new shoes had their own protesting agenda, compressing his toes from above in a deadly pincer with that of the stonewalling upthrust of the paving stones. The gentle breeze at his back felt like a ghostly hand tugging him back. These forces may each have been inanimate, but they still had volume and density making themselves heard and felt in his teeming brain. Feedback, incoming, overwhelming his own surety of self. He slithered down to his haunches on the pavement. He was crushed. Stilled.
But he'd been here once before. This loss of function and reflexivity. When it seemed that he had ceased to own his body.
For what had caused his accident, that made him lose all apprehension of externality acting upon him? When all else around melted from any recognition or awareness? Why, immediately after a fall of course.
In love.
Fallen deep and hard.
The Kiss by Marc Chagall
