Travel Tips

If I Were Cured …

I would sit myself in a chair by the window in the late afternoon, cross my legs, and stare out at the continuum of life, without fear of the future.

I would pick up a pen and write you a note, by myself, no one by my side, inscribing each letter like a chisel in stone, taking my time, taking my time, taking my time.

I would work the worst day of my life and be grateful for the misery.

I would grasp the door handle, turn it and open the door, feeling like Hercules.

I would scratch an itch, immediately, and feel omnipotent.

I would change my mind, telling no one, and feel like a great seer.

I would wash the dishes and revel in the simple human skill.

I would stand, take a step, and defy the law of gravity.

I would walk away from the judgments of small minds and take comfort in the global rightness of the big picture.

I would breathe without machines and hoses and masks and batteries and wires and electricity and trepidation and … just … be.

I would raise a hammer over my head and bring it down with thunder, over and over in the blazing sun, reducing a pile of rocks to pebbles, and welcome the sweat I can deliberately make.

I would hurl my wheelchair from the highest bridge, delight in its accelerated descent through the water below, making the grandest splash, plunging into the mud and succumb, inexorably, to the power of nature, spreading its rusting remains to oblivion.

I would worship the cup of coffee I just made myself, face it front and center, draw its heat to my hands, meticulously add sugar and cream precisely to my liking and stir it with a spoon, slowly and deliberately, like a mighty oar moving the ocean … if I were cured.