Saturn and Utah
from Brain Damaged News
Something comes flooding back, like someone turned the lights on in a room, then floods away just as fast. I am moving in slow motion. No, I am not moving at all. I can’t leave the chair. I’m hearing in slow motion, too. A new resident arrives. He rubs his temples. His eyes look glazed like Krispy Kremes or like he feels lost, too.
I must relearn how to see, how to hear, how to walk, how to talk, how to place my hands on a keyboard, how to read, how to write, how to retrieve memories, how to make a cup of tea. This is a walk on the weird side, then the even weirder side where you can’t walk or talk. I would give a billion dollars to know what was in my head. And a billion more to know what was there before.
In the sixth or seventh month post-truck, I began scratching anything I could recall on any surface I could find – paper plates, paper cups, placemats, napkins, coffee stirrers and Popsicle sticks. Words inscribed one at a time, composed over days, weeks, months. I called them scraps. They were not in alphabetical order, not in numerical order, not in chronological order, but out of order, like me.
They jumped from first person to second and past to present and took place in diverse settings like Saturn and Utah at the same time. Vonnegut called this “unstuck in time.” Each scrap contained part of a picture -- which, if I could put together -- might make me feel less broken, more normal, and like there was less of a hole in my soul.
One scrap said: First I couldn’t say it. Then I still couldn’t say it.
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