If you're feeling down...

[shetuck]

Powerful and sobering account giving some perspective to those of us who think we're having a tough time these days.

Just wow...

Christopher Nolan, the voice of the crippled | Christopher Nolan | The Economist

Christopher Nolan

Feb 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Christopher Nolan, the voice of the crippled, died on February 20th, aged 43

YOU wouldn't have wanted to be Christy Nolan. His two arms looked normal, but they would fly out randomly, like a clockwork doll's. "Dreadful deadly spasms" of cerebral palsy shot their way from his cranium to his spine and into his feet. He needed carrying to the bath, to the toilet, to bed; his long legs were good for nothing, collapsing under him like a deck of cards. When he tried to talk, nothing came out but "dull looks, dribbles and senseless sounds". He could not even wipe the saliva from his own face.

In bed at night, when he was as able-bodied as anyone, he would rehearse what his "drunken, drooling body" could do, and what it couldn't:

Can't chew, can't swallow, so why chew? Can't call? can call, a famished moan maybe yet it suffices...can't cry? can cry, can cry, can cry wet pillows full but who cares? can't laugh? can laugh, can can can
​

At birth, at the County Hospital at Mullingar in Ireland, he had been deprived of oxygen for two hours. He should have died, but instead "sagaciously he dolefully held on". People pitied him, stroked his head and said God was good, but even as a boy he was not so sure. The "closeted cossetted certainty of Christ" could always calm him, as could communion when Father Flynn was able to sneak the host between his spasming, locking jaws. But once, in St John the Baptist's, he had himself wheeled to the life-size crucifix with its grey bloodied face and threw out his left arm in a great arc to give Christ two fingers, because he was to blame.

And yet, despite it all, he could use words. At the age of 13, he could write this:

Among firs, a cone high-flown,
Winged, popped,
Hied, foraying, embalming,
Sembling tomb
Among coy, conged fir needles,
A migratory off-spring
Embarks on life's green film.
​

For a long time, no one knew. He could communicate: yes with upshot eyes, a neck-bow for affirmation, a drubbing of feet on his wheelchair for attention. The IQ tests always went well, well enough for him to go to "ordinary" school at Mount Temple in Dublin. His blue eyes blazed with intelligence. But no one suspected that in his head were stored millions of words, "nutshelled" and ready. They included all the songs and stories he had heard from his father, the poems recited by his teachers, the alphabet-words stuck up round the kitchen by his mother, glittering fragments of Hopkins and Joyce and Yeats. His overriding ambition was how to "best his body" and get them out.

cont'd...

 

[Jake]

Yeah...sometimes we need perspective kicked into our skulls.

I see a lot of pissing and moaning these days by people who have their health, food on their plate and a roof over the heads. We tend to take a lot for granted. :ohwell:

 

[Gatorubet]

Yeah...sometimes we need perspective kicked into our skulls.

I see a lot of pissing and moaning these days by people who have their health, food on their plate and a roof over the heads. We tend to take a lot for granted. :ohwell:

Shetuck, great post. Jake, you are dead on. Really, your health is the main thing. When you do not have it, no amount of money or job security is a replacement. And in the entire history of mankind, be it one million or six thousand years, nobody - NOBODY - has had it better than those of us who live in the United States. For most of time just getting enough water (or water not full of bad stuff that would kill you) was a challenge. Not discounting the many problems the poor face, but if they are living under a roof with running water, on Medicaid having been vaccinated - and on food stamps - they are doing better than most of the people populating the earth since the beginning of time. Fluoride and cavity prevention were not in existence, and the rich and famous had rotted and missing teeth at an early age. Pasteur had not been born, nor Salk, and milk could kill you and Polio cripple you. Fresh vegetables and fruit in winter were an impossibility.

I can get in my car in the middle of winter and drive to the grocery or convenience store and get an orange juice. In my home in, say, late July, on a whim I can fill my drink glass with crushed ice. The famous Kings of England, with all of their power and a country to command, could not make either of those two things happen during all of their reigns until the 20th Century.

And as late as 1924 Calvin Coolidge's son died of a blister. A President's son! He played a game of tennis on the White House court without wearing a sock, and got a small blister on his toe that became infected. He died of the infection, there being no routine antibiotics to take.

Every day I wake up I am happy to be alive. I know that - no thanks to me - I am living the best and most comfortable life enjoyed by the top one percent of the top one percent of the top one percent of the humans who have ever been alive on this planet.

 

[Jake]

Every day I wake up I am happy to be alive. I know that - no thanks to me - I am living the best and most comfortable life enjoyed by the top one percent of the top one percent of the top one percent of the humans who have ever been alive on this planet.

Exactly, Gator. As recently as 20 years ago I would've never known of your existence, or been able to read your thoughts on any topic. (Sometimes, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but I digress)

 

[Gatorubet]

Exactly, Gator. As recently as 20 years ago I would've never known of your existence, or been able to read your thoughts on any topic. (Sometimes, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but I digress)

You've been stalking me since 1989?

 

[Jake]

You've been stalking me since 1989?

Go look out your window.

 

[Gatorubet]