My Time as a Human

Being back in Fuzhou, this grungy, comfortable, familiar little town I’ve grown attached to, is very strange. I feel like I have just barely returned from near death, watching my brain slip quickly away from me, and I have a lot to think about from that glimpse of the end of my life. At the same time, some people here didn’t even know why I was gone and, given the so completely familiar surroundings of the dorm hallways and my old room, there is the strange sense when I see those people that… maybe nothing happened. How could it have been that bad? Here I am, talking and walking normally. They seem so unconcerned, how can I be? Yet there are others who run to hug me, thankful to see me again, and this feels more in tune with what happened. I think I want that support, that reminder that I really did go through something as intense as it feels to me, that I wasn’t just skipping school.

Ironically, I have a different way to experience this place now. My knee is improving and I can walk freely and climb stairs. I can see a place and walk to it fearlessly. The constant stress of school is also suddenly gone. I can enjoy a moment for what it is, without the terror that I’m hurtling ever further behind in every moment that I’m not staring at a book. Together, these two things open this place in a whole new way that wasn’t available before. All of this helped make last night such a surprising delight.

I wanted to see the park. I wanted to be around all of those Fuzhou people enjoying the evening. In the bustle of travel I had somehow lost the tiny sim card for my phone and suddenly had no way to contact anyone. Apparently they had been calling me and gave up and went out to eat without me, leaving me alone to wander. I found one friend, Angela 张萌, who was free and insisted that she go with me to 五一广山 (wu yi square), the park at the heart of Fuzhou. As we waited for the bus she told me about 11/11/11, that day, a day with so many single 1s that the Chinese people call it, “singles day”. Single people are supposed to pair up and have a date that night. I immediately picked up her arm, dropped it into mine, and declared it a date.

I tried to make it as Chinese as possible. First we went to the massive, Burning Man scale statue of Mao Zedong and saluted. The banyan tree is the official tree of Fuzhou, so we found a wise old banyan dripping with beards and asked it, in Chinese, to make tonight perfect. He said sure, and to drink plenty of water. Thus blessed, we walked around the park and the city (after buying some water) just talking and playing and seeking out little places to buy sweets. We danced under the trees and over the steps. We watched drunk groups of Chinese people singing lonely songs to one another in the street. We ended in perfect style in a tower on top of a roof, at 5:00 am, looking out over the city and sipping walnut milk.

The whole night… the simple walking and talking in the light rain, the spontaneous smiles, the people we bumped into… all of it something that only a few days ago I thought would never be possible again. It made everything tingle with an electricity that sang, “just one more.” Just one more magic moment before I go. Just one more silly joke before I go. Just one more dance before I go. Just one more look at a fountain before I go. Just one more smile from a pretty girl before I go. Everything I see, taste, hear or feel now is a bonus, an extra, a treasure. Life has always been this way, so full of treasure. Life will always be this way. It’s so good to notice, feel, and remember this again.

photo links to photographer’s site

if you feel confused too, follow me to the beginning of this story

The report is in. Both my friend Dr. John Edwards and Dr. Ling here at NTU Hospital thought the MRI of my twisted noodle looked pretty much like the twisted noodles of most people who don’t claim brain failures. IE: Normal. So, that’s good. Dr. Ling was actually a Parkinson’s specialist and she doesn’t even currently see residuals of the Parkinsons symptoms we saw earlier. She prescribed:

1) Some medication to stimulate blood flow in the brain for 1 week
2) Drinking water like it’s Burning Man
3) Two short (10 min) exercise sessions a day
4) More of this confounded rest

So I’m on this routine for the next week and then we’ll see. On the plus side, there is a Taipei film festival coming up and that should provide me with motivation to sit still for extended periods. My brain also gets tired quickly, so that’s helping slow me down too.

And now, to be good and get some of the sleep I’m supposed to be so excited about. Sigh.

if you feel confused too, follow me to the beginning of this story

This morning I lifted my spoon to my mouth and it felt a little less like a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. That’s a good thing. It definitely seems like mornings are worse and evenings are better. Last night I was able to keep up a nearly Kai speed of conversation for many hours with a series of people. (Some quite interesting humans, actually, including a Thailand flood-stranded Hungarian psych professor and a professional German designer fresh from teaching a conference.) It definitely took some energy, and my brain was being pushed hard, but it was worth it to feel like a normal me on a roll. Given that success I had high hopes for this morning but, while lessened, the pattern repeated. I opened my mouth to tell Nikita how well it was going but the words took their time meandering out of the barn. The tremors were minimal, though, and I did some yoga and kung fu to see what I could manage.

Working around my fuzzy brain, my still recovering knee and my balance was an amusing trick and, of course, a fascinating puzzle. I did pretty well. I could hold tree pose and extend my leg out completely to the side without much trouble. I could throw some pretty fast punches, although my blocking movements seemed a little odd. This could also be from the fact that, because of the knee, I haven’t been able to train for a long time anyway. The hand clenching and wrist flipping tests the doctor used on me were quick and I could hold a pretty steady palm.

After a shower I’m feeling a little tremor-y again and I’m wondering if it’s the oxy zipping down to my muscles and forgetting my brain. There’s definitely some balance between getting my blood and body moving and making sure there’s enough oxy left over, but I really feel like the movement helps overall and may be why I do better in the evening.

Yesterday I dropped by the children’s Go school again and the enthusiastic teacher, still convinced I speak perfect Chinese, loaned me another book and gave me a huge printout of Go term translations. I bought a children’s book of Go problems (level 2, I’ll have you know) for about $6. As soon as I’ve worked through enough of them I’ll go hit her up for a lesson and another teaching game. I think that working on these is a good break from looking at a screen and provides a good challenge to keep my noodle wriggling.

So that’s today’s lesson to all of you, straight from the adorable vocabulary of Chinese people who learn from old textbooks. Keep using your noodles. Keep your noodles wriggling and growing. The Chinese people believe that long noodles on your birthday bring long life, and I think that from udon to linguini to pho to mian to pasta, it’s our noodles that keep us all connected.

photo links to photographer’s site

if you feel confused too, follow me to the beginning of this story

The Upside?

At first I thought it would be a problem that my speech is incredibly slow and that I sometimes have to simply stop for a moment mid sentence to pull it together. Then I had to explain to my first doctor in Taipei that I wasn’t normal, that something was broken, that normally I talk much, much faster. It suddenly occurs to me that this debilitating situation has reduced me to… normal speed. When I speak Chinese, I now speak slowly and clearly, which makes sense because I’m still learning the language. When I speak English it’s not anyone’s native language and so they assume, while in my head I’m raging behind my slow moving tongue, that I’m being oh so kind by choice. It dawned on me today that I’ve been unwittingly turned into an adorable, kindly old Japanese man.

I’ve also realized that I’m going to still be in Taipei for Halloween, and for that I’ll make the perfect Zombie!