Do We Not Bleed?. Daniel Taylor
molecules are just the combination of atoms that started flying with the Primordial Pop (and so on into the dark), then how can Zee blame me for wanting to watch football instead of talking to her about her cousin Irene? I mean, who or what is left to blame—or to feel guilt—whether I turn on the TV or I cut off someone’s head? (“It wasn’t me, Your Honor; it was the Big Bang.”)
So do I freely choose to turn on the TV or am I required to do so by the inexorable logic of the distribution of matter when time began? What is freedom, anyway, in a Big-Bang-is-the-only-Bang universe?
But then some Seriously Scientific People, much to the consternation of Other Seriously Scientific People, allow that there is something besides the brain. Let’s call it mind. The mind is bigger than the brain even if you wouldn’t have mind without the brain. Pain talks to the brain, they say, whereas suffering dialogues with the mind.
I mean, how do I explain feeling terrible when my dog Blue died when I was kid? Why should the brain care? What in the Great Explosion inscribed suffering into the passing of a mutt? And what adaptive value does it have? Maybe something about reinforcing social ties that increase survival rates, I suppose. But how circular is that? Seems more adaptive to immediately forget a dead loved one and start looking for someone else with whom to pass on your genes. Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be all about? (Or are the All-Confident socio-biologists not talking to the All-Confident physicists?)
I suffer, therefore I am. Is that the mind’s mantra? (A lot of whiner writers apparently think so.) Brains don’t suffer. Brains register the stimulus we label “pain,” but they don’t give a damn about it. They don’t even care about their own continued existence. All those molecules will just reconstitute themselves as something else, something not bothered by questions of brain and mind and soul. Something loamy, perhaps, or tree-like. They will just float out into space with the ejecta from the next asteroid that punches the earth in the nose. No hurry, no worry.
Then again, maybe suffering is evidence for the existence of God. Not pain—that requires only neurons. But suffering seems to imply values and oughts—because it lives in the gap between how things are and how they ought to be. And values and oughts create a possible space for God. Something that transcends. (I hear the materialists screaming.) Genuine values, that is. Real oughts, real shoulds and shouldn’ts. Not just pragmatism (“things will operate more efficiently if”), not just power (“we will punish you if”), not just arbitrariness (“the big end of the egg is good, and the small end of the egg is evil”). No, I want real right and real wrong and real should and shouldn’t or I won’t play this game anymore.
And my brain says, “So quit playing. Who cares? You’re boring me.”
And I am boring. I know it. I bore myself. But these are the kinds of ruts my brain-mind-consciousness is heir to. These are the worn tracks that feel most familiar to me. Ideas and emotions and physical sensations pinballing inside, colliding with each other and with the rubber bumpers that make up my inner space, flung out in seemingly random directions to collide and combine and re-collide and re-combine, creating the “I” that is me at this moment but not-me at the next. Mixed as my metaphors.
And my dirty little secret is that I like pinball. It’s what I’m used to. The bells and flashing lights and whirling scoreboard are what I’ve known. And now the noise and flash is muted, though not far away. Do I want them back? I can’t win the game with them, but do I even want to play the game without them? Should I put another quarter in the slot? Just one more turn? Like I said, what’s the advantage of silencing the voices if the result is simply . . . well . . . silence? If overly full is replaced by completely empty, how is that an improvement?
And what does any of this have to do with the fact that I’m supposed to be back at work tomorrow morning?
six
Life does not stop just because someone goes missing. Someone going missing, in fact, is the very stuff of life. It happens about 150,000 times a day. If it touches us personally, we sometimes call it tragedy, but that word means less and less in a world that does not believe there is anything to fall from or fall to. If everything just is, then “missing” is just another is.
(There I go trying to figure things out again and be clever at the same time. It’s a bad habit.)
Anyway, the Schedule says today, only a couple days after Abby’s disappearance, is a special day. Every day is a special day for some of our Specials, but no day is more special than Special Olympics day. It’s the day some Specials realize for the first time how entirely Special they are. It’s four hours of hugs, medals, high-fives, hugs, food, doing your best, everyone a winner, hugs, self-esteem, more medals, thumbs-ups, more food, laughter, hugs, and cheering. Did I mention hugs?
New Directions has a big field, and so the local Special Olympics folks have chosen it for a preliminary competition in preparation for the statewide competition next year. The nuns had used the field to raise vegetables for the dinner table, provide work for the residents, and raise a few cows. But New Directions plowed it all under and turned it into a big, grassy recreation field. Mens sana in corpore sano. Well, not exactly.
We have a number of Special Olympic immortals in our own group home. Jimmy is a bowling force—and bowling is part of the expanded field of Special Olympic events. He is more about style than pin count. He likes to dry his hand on the air blower for an inordinately long time—both hands in fact—holding the ball first in the crook of one arm and then the other, peering into the distance with chin held high, a look as resolute as Napoleon’s before Waterloo. He then finds his pre-established mark, a piece of tape on the floor, places both feet together as instructed, tosses his hair into place, puts the ball under his chin, and stares down the lane at the pins, his mortal enemies. Waiting patiently for the synapse to fire that says “bowl,” he sometimes holds this pose interminably, deaf to the occasional outburst from Bonita: “Bowl the damn ball, for Christ’s sake!”
He eventually shuffles purposefully toward the line and swings the ball gracefully, releasing it with an upward motion of his arm that he holds overhead, like a Greek statue frozen in time. He invariably releases the ball late, causing it to arc to the floor, bouncing once or twice on the lane before settling into a roll. About half the time, that roll leads to the gutter, sometimes immediately, but this is of no concern to Jimmy. He pivots back toward the onlookers—proud, solemn, regal—and returns to the bench, collecting high-fives and other tributes along the way.
There will be no bowling today. This is a field day—all running, jumping, and throwing, with some lifting and tossing along the way. The tossing is bocce ball (that famous Olympic sport) and Bonita and Judy are both competing—Judy in singles and Bonita in what they call a “unified” event that pairs her with a Normal.
One of those explosive words—normal. Seems innocent enough, but for some it reeks of elitism, condescension, insensitivity, Otherism, and who knows what. Start with the idea of norms—how things ought to be—and you end up with firing squads. Cassandra seems to think “as normal as possible” is the goal for our clients, but the whole concept calls out the “who are you to say?” types that reject all generalizations about anything so “totalizing” (or whatever the word of the day might be). And nothing, apparently, is more totalizing or generalizing—or abusive—than the notion of normal. (I thought I left this stuff behind when I fled the academy, but I’ve found that snow is general all over Ireland.)
But I have to say, I think the anti-Normalizing crowd has a point. I mean, if they themselves are normal, who would want to be like them? Or me? If normal is measured by Western, productivity-obsessed, make-money-don’t-cost-money, be successful or be gone, self-actualized individualism, then Lord make me a Special. As I guess he has.
Anyway, Judy is in the bocce ball singles division and Bonita is paired with, let’s just say, a non-Special. They should, of course, have had it the other way round. Bonita—irascible as a wild boar—should have been in the singles, and Judy—mender of the world—should have been someone’s partner. But perhaps pairing up was seen as a growth opportunity for Bonita, and so the die is cast.
I’ve been asked