Years ago in art school I hammered straight sewing pins about the
neck of a test tube to fix it to the wall for my mindmeld friend J.’s exhibition in the Concordia Univ VA Gallery.
Parkinson’s Disease has taken the pins from my fingers and the
hammer from my hand. It has compressed the tensile muscles, fusing the armature
of bones and slowing the drumming blood, hollowing my body: a test tube of
parasympathetic nerves and febrile Chi, nanosensitive to emotions within and
without me.
I have wondered these few days, why I felt so much this tragedy. Others were closer, more frequent companions…
ever since I met Christophe, I perceived a sensitivity to which I could relate,
a vulnerability (in my case born of Parkinson’s) that he (it seemed to me) saw.
We never spoke of this. When one has a physically apparent, degenerative
disease, even the thickest skinned are subject to others’ reactions. Some people
manage to communicate their compassion and give assistance with such subtlety
that it flows over the pain and frustration without hurting. He did this.
April 15th in Saint Louis du Sénégal, as the paramedics
(les Sapeurs-Pompiers) ran up our apartment
building stairs and his friends forced the door, I was brushing my teeth and
thinking how I’ve kept meaning to share this blog with him, one of so few here who
speak English well enough to wade through…
His suicide has rendered me the test tube.
