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Tales from the Other Side of Language 115 out at me in surprise attacks. I can’t keep my feet steady. My vision is clear enough, but everything feels blurry. I can’t sense the spaces of the dappled woods beyond the path, only the green jumble in my face. I escape and go to a farmers’ market, hoping that talking to a close friend who has a stall there will soothe me. The sunny brightness of the street hammers on my head and the din of happy conversation over flowers and organic peaches cuts into my ears like a buzz saw. Someone jostles me, and I feel barbs all over my body. All I want to do is get out, run away. A trial of medication isn’t helping. On the way to my car, I see Ruth lunching with her husband and his mother at the window table of a Vietnamese restaurant. Impulsively, I go in. I make no small talk to the family, just blurt out to Ruth, “I need a consultation. Could you possibly come by this afternoon?” My voice quavers. Though she is always busy, she says, “Yes, I will come.” I know she sees the desperation in my bolt into the restaurant and my agitation. Her husband, and his mother too, see my peculiar behavior. My body relaxes a trifle with the thought she will see me. I pass a vague smile across them all, and rush out. I have to get home to the haven that will enclose this derangement. When Ruth comes, I’ve stretched myself on a lawn chaise under the wide canopy of the cherry tree in my backyard in a fitful effort to be comfortable. Just seeing her come through the gate, I am more hopeful, and my body eases. I hurry to tell her, “I’m very anxious and maybe depressed. I can’t sort anything out.” She sits down in the white and blue wicker chair near me, leaning close, searches me with her eyes. “I think you are terribly exhausted,” she says. She knows I’ve been seeing several patients a day, three days a week, spacing them across the day with a day off in between. I thought this strategy would work. “This is too much for you,” she says. “Fewer patients, one a day.” I’m not happy about this, but I know she is right. Once again it is brain overload, not anxiety or depression, as I so often think. This is a profound distinction. I have to keep remembering this. I forget so easily. I have been here before, new context, different disability. It was aphasia and loss of words before; now the disability is poor sensory integration
116 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance: and sensory planning. I must pay attention to understanding how these new limitations affect me. Sensory overload is not the same as depression. In my little garden office, sessions with patients are good; I’m at home in my work. A few weeks later with the new plan, I am not more rested or organized. My life is not easier, and my patients wait weeks between sessions. None of this satisfies me. I step into my kitchen to clean it up after breakfast. I see dinner dishes piled up for a couple of days. Jars and bags lie around in disarray. Half-sorted mail is all over the table. My body hangs limp on my bones. I’m bleak. I can’t see how to straighten up the mess, though I want to. I am not making art. I walk into my studio and stare at my huge empty painting table. No images ferment in my body now. There is no “Yes!” from core to hands to canvas. Good lord, there is passion everywhere: grief, loss, hope. I feel them all, but the path to act is stunted. I’m mystified. It’s like the kitchen; I can’t get the wired-in “how-to” to function. Leigh hears my misery through the phone as we talk one afternoon and says, “Do self-portraits.” “Brilliant idea! So simple!” I reply. It takes me days to manage, because I can’t organize myself to get the materials all together easily. Using a mirror to pose myself, I make fast, crude little pencil sketches to get the particular square angle of my jaw, the dark circles around my eyes, and the deep lines around my nose and mouth. Then I make Conté crayon drawings from them, blurred out with water on coarse paper. My mind settles deeply into the coarseness of the texture, the cadged disconnections in my body smooth onto the possibilities of the paper. More drawings and some sketches with paint.
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We must be willing to give up the l
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Weeds, ink dr
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PART ONE: THE PRECIPITOUS ABYSS
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