{"id":10598,"date":"2016-09-29T12:59:33","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T16:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10598"},"modified":"2016-09-29T12:59:33","modified_gmt":"2016-09-29T16:59:33","slug":"concussion-diary-and-then-socrates-collapsed-upon-the-couch-proclaiming-i-cannot-smell-my-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2016\/09\/concussion-diary-and-then-socrates-collapsed-upon-the-couch-proclaiming-i-cannot-smell-my-feet.html","title":{"rendered":"Concussion Diary: And Then Socrates Collapsed Upon the Couch, Proclaiming, “I Cannot Smell My Feet.”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So a week ago yesterday I fainted and concussed myself. It\u2019s all fine, they know now why it happened and it\u2019s a truly minor medical condition for which the only lasting treatment is, \u201cDrink more water,\u201d but I have manfully restrained the urge to whine on social media and my manfulness is at its end. This is what my week has been.<\/p>\n

WEDNESDAY<\/strong> I saw a movie called Demon<\/em>, a Polish joint about a man marrying into a (formerly?) Jewish family, who begins to be stalked by the ghost of a Jewish girl. I do not remember this movie well for reasons which will become clear shortly. I do remember that I didn\u2019t think it was stellar, but it did really interesting stuff with marriage-as-death (our friend \u201cPython\u201d is dying, the mature man Peter will be born from his ashes!) and if you\u2019re specifically interested in Polish horror or Holocaust-legacy ghost tales you should look for it. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve seen wedding-as-funeral portrayed before (parallel to baptism as baptism into Christ\u2019s death).<\/p>\n

Then I got on the 79 bus to go home and the next thing I know I\u2019m on the porch talking to my best friend about how I think I might have a concussion. Apparently this was probably our second phone conversation; my short-term memory was so frayed that she was really worried about me. The rest of the night is an intense reminder of our need for people who care for us\u2013and, frankly, people who live with or near us. Without the allied forces of friends and family I have no idea whether or how I would\u2019ve gotten the care I needed. I try to keep other people\u2019s lives out of the blog, but this really brought home to me the gap between what I perceive as my own vocations to love and my current living situation (a rooming house with lol youthful strangers).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s odd how the brain works. I noticed that my sense of humor seemed to come back in stages. At first I was super earnest. Then I was able to laugh at situations, in a sort of, \u201cWhat can you do?\u201d way, but I didn\u2019t make actual jokes. By Thursday I was able to do cute references and phrase things in intentionally-funny ways.<\/p>\n

When I was hurt and confused I fell back on relationships. But afterward I did notice that I didn\u2019t fall back instinctively on prayer<\/em>. Not sure what to think about that except that a) I\u2019m glad my prayer life is recovering apace, and b) I am not as embedded in the rhythms and habits of Catholic faith as I should be.<\/p>\n

THURSDAY<\/strong>: The main thing that happened Thursday is that I lost my sense of smell and taste. Apparently this just happens sometimes with concussions, when the olfactory nerve is damaged. It may come back in a few weeks. Or not!<\/p>\n

Can I just say, you use smell to navigate the world a lot more than you realize? I feel like I\u2019m in a movie or something\u2013everything is blank and alien, textureless. I keep thinking, Maybe I smelled something just now!<\/em>, but no, that was the feeling of cool air on my face, not the smell of fresh rain. It\u2019s basically like living in black and white.<\/p>\n

Also I can\u2019t tell if my sweater smells. Sorry to anybody I\u2019ve smelled near recently.<\/p>\n

FRIDAY<\/strong>: It is starting to sink in that I am not going to be able to work normally for a while. I can read a few pages at a time before my head really starts to hurt and it gets hard to concentrate. Everything is bad.<\/p>\n

Also, seriously, everything you want to do when you\u2019re sick is bad for you when you have a concussion. You\u2019re not supposed to read, watch tv, or use the computer; I can\u2019t taste food!!!!; and even sleeping makes my head ache, because I guess I press on different parts of my skull or something.<\/p>\n

WEEKEND<\/strong>: Lunch w\/Mudblood Catholic<\/a> and another gay celibate dude. Super fun albeit very, very tiring just bc of the whole head injury thing. Confession and Mass Sunday at the Basilica, and I showed a friend around the Lady chapels. Do you guys have favorites there? I really love the little cavelike grotto place with the candles, and the small image of Our Lady of Ephesus, and obviously the chapel commemorating the African slave trade is so powerful.<\/p>\n

The new fun symptom on Sunday was waves of pain at the base of my spine when I stood up. That\u2019s mostly over now but I had it for about three or four days. Great fun. OTOH I was able to work on the ongoing novel draft, for the first time since the concussion.<\/p>\n

MONDAY<\/strong>: Did you know Jeeves & Wooster<\/em> is on YouTube? I mean, illegally, so I won\u2019t link, but man, what a pleasant show. Also \u201cI wish the whole world were a newt!!\u201d This is the first time in my life I have ever thought, I feel you, Gussie Fink-Nottle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

TUESDAY<\/strong>: Did an interview about \u201cwomen who choose rules.\u201d Lol I don\u2019t really think I chose the Church so much as surrendered to Her, and I do find Catholicism as liberating as it is constraining. I mean all<\/em> you have to care about is God.<\/p>\n

At the pregnancy center I found myself talking about the impossible moral situation teenage girls face in so many US communities. You\u2019re taught that it\u2019s wrong to be a teenage mom; it\u2019s wrong to have an abortion; and it\u2019s both embarrassing and even morally wrong to still be a virgin! We have a moral mandate of premarital sex, so you won\u2019t feel like you missed out\u2013people think, wrongly, that \u201ctrying things out\u201d protects you against divorce. \u201cWaiting until marriage\u201d is often considered naive, self-righteous, a way to end up alone, unrealistic and risky and fake. So just contracept diligently and hope for the best, I guess.<\/p>\n

This was an exhausting day. I had two intense things to do and I think I made it halfway through the second thing before I was just completely wiped out.<\/p>\n

Reached the Spode\/Blackshorts episodes of Jeeves and Wooster<\/em>. Enjoyed how precise the satire of fascism is\u2013physical culture, rationalization of production! You can see the shared parentage with Progressivism.<\/p>\n

WEDNESDAY<\/strong>: Another gay Catholic interview, lol. This time the thing I emphasized, that I don\u2019t think I say enough, is that virtually no gay kids growing up in the Church ever hear that their longings for same-sex love and intimacy can be good<\/em>, can be lived out in harmony with God\u2019s will, are not things to be feared and hated but might be signposts guiding them toward their true vocations.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that this is true for everybody. There are lots of different kinds of heterosexuality, and so too there are lots of forms or narratives of homosexuality. Think of the monk in Of Gods and Men<\/em>, who says that he was in love (I\u2019m guessing, with a girl!), but he found at last a much greater love in the monastery. For him, heterosexual (again, I\u2019m assuming) love wasn\u2019t a signpost toward his vocation, although it might have been a preparation, a gentling of his heart which prepared him for life with God and men in the monastery. So too for some gay\/same-sex attracted people their homosexual longings are something that may humble them, teach them patience and surrender, but aren\u2019t ultimately the clearest signposts to their vocation. Many of us, though, do find ways to live out same-sex love and intimacy in harmony with God\u2019s will. Letting gay kids imagine that as a possibility would imo do so much to heal their shame and self-hatred.<\/p>\n

What are people shamed for in the way they\u2019re shamed for sexuality? The closest analogy I could think of is poverty\u2013poverty as synecdoche for irresponsibility or laziness, the way being gay is treated as a synecdoche for lust. What a colossal indictment of the churches.<\/p>\n

On the way to this interview I think I smelled something!!! I may have been making this up, and it hasn\u2019t happened again since then, but man, I have never been so glad to smell a Pizza Hut.<\/p>\n

I also ate at Slim\u2019s Diner<\/a>. I can definitely taste salty, sweet, and spicy now, and I think I even got hints of some nuances of flavor. I was totally pleased by the food. I had a cup of chili and a plate of french toast, and the toast, you guys, was so sugary and crispy that it was almost candied. Delightful. The jukebox was great. The service is still, you know, easygoing.<\/p>\n

TODAY<\/strong>: I have learned that if you sleep on your side, you hurt your head less! I hate sleeping on my side but we do what we must.<\/p>\n

The third gay Catholic interview of three. This time the thing I said that I haven\u2019t said before was, \u201cThis is maybe too clever, but I think a lot of gay kids growing up in the Church find themselves with all the stress and craving for parental\/divine approval of the \u2018elder brother,\u2019 and<\/em> all the guilt and social stigma of the prodigal son.\u201d I\u2019ve been struck by how hard it is for \u201cgood Christian kids,\u201d virgins or anyway kids who have never disbelieved Christian sexual ethics, to truly accept that God loves and cherishes them, and I think this is part of how that dynamic works. So, so painful.<\/p>\n

So, that is concussion diary week one. Pray for me, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So a week ago yesterday I fainted and concussed myself. It\u2019s all fine, they know now why it happened and it\u2019s a truly minor medical condition for which the only lasting treatment is, \u201cDrink more water,\u201d but I have manfully restrained the urge to whine on social media and my manfulness is at its end. 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