I spent most of my time back in Fort Worth shooting up shit at gun ranges and hanging out with my friend Rob. He got in nasty reck about four weeks back and is now in a wheel-chair, numb from about the top of the chest down. When I first saw him, his legs twitched and I was ready to call a miracle. Turns out it's just feedback loop of some sort. The signal goes back and forth between the injured chord and the legs, forever and seemingly at random. Rob says that eventually he'll be a able to predict when they spasm and it will help him move around better.
His hands work, though, his arms and everything above the chest. But the core is dead, unresponsive. Only his shoulders and arms heave all that bulk around. I asked him what he thought about his lower extremities atrophying, whether it was sad to him, like it was going away forever. But no, he said, it was better, the stuff was getting lighter and easier to move around. Rob sticks to practicalities because he has to. There's certainly time to reflect on the symbolism of atrophying legs and glutes, but no real reason. And I realized that none of this shit is me, not my legs or arms or balls - they're willing servants until they fall out of contact. Because Rob is quite the same, he is still here. It made me wonder, where exactly was he?
Anyway, he kicked my ass at Call of Duty 5 and we shot the shit. Rob is a calm soul enveloping like smoke a terrible luck and making it slowly disappear.
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