June 25, 2002

• 
  

  Do you often feel like the coal miner’s canary? I do, and if you do you know what I mean. If you don’t, I’ll tell you. The bird twitters all the time, trills and sings, really brightens up the atmosphere down there in the mine. But when the canary serves his purpose is when the trilling stops. A miner’s ear is tuned to the birdie’s voice. The little yellow bird keels over at the slightest hint of poison gas down in the mine, giving the miner, if he’s fast and lucky, a chance to get out.

  
  

  I used to be the sort of person who keels over at the slightest provocation. It still happens, but much less often than it used to. In my youth, before I learned about blood sugar, I fainted a lot from hunger. A defective appestat is the way it was described to me. That term is less likely to evoke the image of a skinny girl starving herself than the proper medical term, anorexia. I didn’t have anorexia nervosa. I loved food and still do, hardly “feel fat” unless I’m looking in a mirror. I was a plump girl who often forgot to eat. One thing that would clue me to eat was the smell of food. Of course, that complicated things when I went into food service work. Metabolic chaos: one way to keel over a lot.

  
  

  Then there’s a somewhat different form of endogenous syncope: anoxia. I experienced it at birth. “Blue baby” is what my mother called it. Labor took three days and almost took both our lives. During the many high fevers I had in childhood, I’d hold my breath to relive the experience of anoxic unconsciousness. There is a visual effect, an auditory effect, and an olfactory effect along with the shrinking sensation and the texture… Do you know what I mean? Autoerotic asphyxiation… or strangulation not self-induced but violent and all but lethal… been there, done that, got the endless ringing in my ears.

  
  

  There are also many exogenous ways to render oneself unconscious and I’ve had a few. I’m a cheap drunk. One beer and I should not be driving. Half a Quaalude, and I can’t navigate. Heck, kiddies, I can think myself into a trance in a snap… lots of practice. I’ve no doubt I could also think myself dead if I tried. I’ve been willing myself to live for as long as I can remember; it oughta work the other way, too.

  
  

  One of nature’s simplest ways of knocking one out is the cranial concussion. Car wrecks, brutal boyfriends… not all of these blackouts are as much fun to recall as some others are. Two outstandingly weird ones were one of the earliest, when Cheeko, my father-in-law’s quarterhorse, ran under a tree limb, brushed me off, broke my arm and cracked my skull; and the second- or third-most-recent one, my “windfall”. Shortly after Greyfox took early retirement and came here, finances were very tight. I prayed for a windfall, then got blown off my feet by a gust of north wind in an icy parking lot. Less than a week later we had an insurance settlement. Be careful what you ask for, children.

  
  

  The most frustrating concussions have been ones that happened after I blacked out. It’s one thing getting whacked in the head and zonking out, and quite another just passing out, falling down, hitting your head and waking up with a swollen brain, puking if you try to move.

  
  

  Where’s all this going? I don’t know. I just recalled that canary story my mother told me years and years ago, and it brought up all these memories. I had asked her why I was always the first kid in school to come down with whatever disease was next to go ’round, the first one to get dizzy and fall down when we spun around. She tried to put a hopeful spin on it for me.

  
  

  I’ve figured out a lot of the mechanisms behind the various weaknesses, but don’t really know if there’s any productive purpose for the benefit of the planet or its population. It would be nice if there were. Could it be my dharma to be the bellwether for bad karma, the avant garde of affliction, maven of malfunction? What a mark of distinction! In a weird way I can see how that idea meshes with the Coyote Medicine, the exemplar of exactly what not to do.

  
  

  I know that for me, these foibles have served the purpose of keeping me humble. There is some balance after all, some strength to offset the weakness. I’ve a natural preference for dwelling on the positive aspects, taking pride in my intellect, intuition, will, perception, and guts. I can get so far up on my high horse that sometimes it takes a fall and a whack on the head to bring me down to earth. Works for me. What does the job for you?

  • 6:49 pm
  • 3 Comments