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Tales from the Other Side of Language 123 Nia dance exercise classes with my daughter form a major part of my sensory-motor practice. My first class is early morning in her spacious mirrored studio. Satsi lies on his mat near me on a riser, and I stand on the polished dance floor. I’m listening carefully to the music and trying to feel the beat of it in my body at the same time. Even this is hard. The class begins with small stepping movements to the music. I hear the music, feel the beat, make one small movement with my hands; this is the most I can do. I can’t do anything more complex than that. I want very much to press beyond my limits into the choreography, step forward and back rapidly, my arms moving up and out, stepping to the side and circling back. My body weeps that I can’t do this and aches remembering how it could be stirred by music, could move lyrically like water to music. To get better I have to stay with the small coordination that I can actually do. I will learn body awareness in motion, blending forms from dance and martial and healing arts. It is a practice based in joy of sensation. What’s in the black box that I imagined at the beginning in the hospital now isn’t words or sensory mind, but movement, planning, and sensory coordination. I was an observer in my baby research and in my clinical practice. I use this capacity now. I notice what my failures in daily functioning are and look for activities that will challenge them. Going slowly with the challenges I set for myself is the way to recover. To listen extensively to own my body is new. I start to be aware, in the Nia dancing, of the sensations in the 73 trillion cells, the community, the diversity that makes up my body. I’m a fractal of the larger oneness. I’m in kindergarten again. The most pleasurable part of my rehabilitation practice is the vision to superimpose my artery images on self-portraits using my new computer and art software. I’m starting new here, too. I first set the computer up on a white Formica table in one of the little bedrooms. In the meantime the building of the studio from the attached garage is progressing. I have a thing for making other uses out of garage space, like my garden office before. When the whitewalled studio with high track lighting and two skylights is finished, I move
124 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance: all the art there. The computer and printer go along one wall, my big painting table in the center. There are large windows in the front and side, giving the best light of the whole house. I know only the bare basics about computers, and the art software is a mystery to me. Word-to-action sequencing is still difficult, and now I have the additional impairments in sensory planning and work strategies. I can’t dream of taking an actual computer class, far too much information to handle. So I find an artist who’s willing show me only the one or two steps I want to know. One afternoon I sit with him in his studio and he shows me how to do the five little steps it takes to erase unwanted background from my angiogram x-rays. I ask him to show me again, and yet again. Weeks later I call him to teach me how to resize images. I’ve upped the ante of difficulty considerably to create this arteryportrait. Many times I start over, try again. Like the movement practice, I have to learn one small piece at a time. I begin Shotokan Karate for focus, fierceness, and energy awareness, and because the sensei has such a huge, grounded heart, I would follow him anywhere. Karate challenges everything for me. Standing before the dojo, Sensei tells us all, white to black belt, “Presence and intent are essential, not aggression.” I stand there in the back row in the middle school gym with the other white belts and wonder at his words. I think that presence and intent are qualities of my mind, but Sensei is saying they are radiant qualities to develop in my body. Yoga, Karate, Nia, the computer, and now the addition of games of solitaire are all ruses to urge my brain into flexibility and coordination again. And in their different ways, they give pleasure and variety to my days. Easy speech fluency is gone. I’ve lost expression again, speak little in groups, even with family around the dinner table. Small chitchat is all I can do. I am invisible again. With the stroke, I learned how to balance the damaged verbal left brain with the sensory, creative, expansive right brain. This time, with these different limitations, the route to recovery is listening to the intelligence of
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Weeds, ink dr
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PART ONE: THE PRECIPITOUS ABYSS
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Tales from the Other Side of Langua
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