Category Archives: Progression

Hands Off

Scarlett was playing her keyboard yesterday, which usually just means pressing a button and dancing to a string of prerecorded songs that make me want to drive my wheelchair directly over the instrument after about ten minutes. But this time, she brought some more creativity to her musical endeavors.

“Mom, listen,” she said to me. “The duck is fighting with the bird.” She pressed the lowest key and the highest key, creating the sounds of two loud animals becoming increasingly annoyed with each other.

“What are they fighting about?” I asked.

“Food.”

Then the coyote was fighting with the woodpecker. Or something like that. There were a few more battles.

“AND NOW ALL THE ANIMALS ARE FIGHTING!” she screamed, throwing her body across all the keys. Cacophony. Read More>

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The Bridge

Drive over the Bay Bridge, eastbound, meaning out of San Francisco. The second half of the bridge is all new construction, white and clean and nothing special, except for those killer views of the water. But look to the right and you can see the skeletal remains of the former Bay Bridge, the one I knew so well, the one that used to be strong, but is being disassembled. Ripped down.

Watch it as you leave the city, and think about how much it carried. All those people, all those stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re safer on the new bridge, but doesn’t it make you a little sad to see something so important coming apart? Look closely, while you can. It’s a ghost town. It’s an entry in a history book.

————

At the beginning of 2005, I moved from Berkeley to San Francisco. I worked in the East Bay, which meant a daily commute over the Bay Bridge. Getting to work was easy, a reverse route that took me past rows of frustrated drivers, making their way slowly into the city, while I breezed along, blasting music and sipping coffee.

After work, I got in my car to go home, and that was the best part of the day. Getting on the bridge, realizing I lived in this amazing city, watching the buildings appear in front of me. Coit Tower, Alcatraz, the triangle-topped Transamerica Pyramid, Sutro Tower. The Bay, just rippling along, catching whatever light bounced off the city. Read More>

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In Dreams

“At the border of the forest—dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare,—the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea.” —Arthur Rimbaud, Childhood, from Illuminations

“Nothing is as boring as other people’s dreams.” —John Green, Paper Towns

“Sorry.” —Sarah, today.

In my dreams, I can walk. I know I have ALS, but when I’m asleep it’s just a vague idea that doesn’t affect my abilities at all. I make my way through unfamiliar rooms, carefully, knowing I could fall, knowing I can’t actually do this thing that I am somehow doing. It feels like something other than my body is holding me up.

Then I am running, from one place to another; so many things need to be handled, and all at once. I see all the people I’ve ever known, and they are confused. “I thought you were sick,” I hear them call as I rush off.

There is a stage floating at the top of a giant stadium. The show is performed inside a net, and I am playing several different roles. I haven’t practiced my lines, I’ll have to read them from a script. There are so many costume changes, but no time to manage them between scenes. The show is starting and I’m not in the right place…

Stress dreams. But not as stressful as waking up with my legs tangled around each other, Left weighing down Right, and my neck uncomfortable from where it’s wedged against my pillow. Read More>

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