The Front of a Horse
...a dispatch from bewilderness
The very tall doctor with icy eyes summed things up. “Scans show pronounced brain damage.”
The doctor had a semi-British accent, or perhaps just wanted one. She pointed to a stack of papers. My scores were “quite interesting,” she said, because while my highest scores were in the high 90s, my other scores “were remarkably low.” She called it “the broadest gap” she’d ever seen.
The doctor stood in her arctic office with her hands on her hips looking way down at me. She continued, “Although there should be a 12-point gap between highest and lowest cognitive scores, your highest and lowest scores are instead 77 points apart.”
This meant I can’t get my brain to do what I need it to do because it’s not my brain.
Put in more practical terms, it’s like parts of me don’t belong with other parts. Smart parts with dumb parts. I mean, strange combinations. Like the front of a car joined to the back of a boat, or the front of a horse to the back of a cow. Or a dolphin dancing in my head at night.
Sometimes I invent statistics. Like:
*65 percent of all the world's statistics are made up on the spot
and
*82.4 percent of people believe them whether they're real or not
and
99.9% of cows aren’t combined with a horse
and
99.9% of dolphins don’t dance in human heads at night.
Which brings us to statistics that are true. Case in point: Pick a cognitive statistic and — if it’s one of mine — it might be setting an all-time record high or an all-time record low. Or alternating between pretty smart and very not-smart at unpredictable intervals like a cognitive carnival act.
Here are a few other facts.
*I was hit by a drunk with a truck.
*My agents fired me.
*No one is looking for “brain damaged books” or for a “brain damaged writer” which is the label I acquired due to events beyond my control.
*As opposed to potential other descriptors like “good writer” of a “good book.” Or (at this time) good writer of two good books. Either of which describe me way better than “disabled.”
In my first life, I devolved from a freelance writer/part-time ghost to a former freelance writer and former part-time ghost. I did it in a minute or less.
Yet I am not an ailment or an injury. I’m more like a quilter or sculptor of words. But no one’s looking for a sculptor of words. Not even a somewhat sparkly sculptor of somewhat sparkly worlds. And especially not if she encountered a drunk with a truck.
Thank you.
Thank you, but really I've been a writer since 1972 in the context of getting paid to write. Then I quit getting paid to write when I got hit by a truck. But I write because I'm a writer. And cuz I hope people may want to read what I write.