him, because
it was certainly that way for me. The skink’s disappearance was explicit. Things
live until they die. Consciousness begins and then it ends.
How it ends I’m only now discovering. I can only speak for me, of course, and everyone
is different, but dying slowly, as I’m doing, feels like a retreat from consciousness
back to the oblivion that precedes it. This retreat is led by the body, which grows
weaker and weaker, requiring less and less fuel and more and more rest, until a few
trips to the bathroom and back are all the exertion you can manage in a day. I am
no longer shocked by how feeble I am. My body is a dying animal. It is ugly and deformed,
a burden I would like to lay down if only I could. But the body has its own schedule
in the matter of dying, and its own methods, none of which I understand.
What I do know is that my world has contracted to the size of two rooms, my bedroom
and my living room, because these are the rooms where I spend all my time. I sleep
in my bedroom, I write and read and watch television in my living room. I’m much
like an infant now, with an infant’s dependence. My husband does all the shopping
and cooking and takes care of all the chores. My son helpsout with the driving,
the banking, the running of the household, all of which I used to do when I was well.
In the meantime, I lie around and dream. I most resemble a baby in the early mornings
when I first hear the birdsong outside my window. It takes me right back to the time
of the kookaburra and my earliest lesson in death. The more wakeful I become the
more I yearn for the state of unknowing from which I emerged back then.
The kookaburra belonged to the first garden I remember, next to a eucalypt forest.
The house was in a clearing but a few tall gums grew at the back and front, so that
it seemed to me as if we were in the forest rather than separated from it. And the
forest seemed to be in the house, because the rooms were full of forest smells and
sounds, and because I brought the forest in with me from my games, and dreamed of
it when I slept.
When I was on my own I played in the shadow of these giant trees, poking sticks around
their roots to look for cicada skins, stabbing at the gobs of golden sap that oozed
from the tree trunks, peering at the armies of ants that ran up the trunks towards
the high branches. I stripped ragged lengths of bark and made houses for slaters
and snails. When my brother and sister were home I went with them up into the bush,
chasing after the dog. I regarded him as human, as human as I was, I thought,with
the same feelings, the only difference being that I felt the cold and needed clothes.
It fascinated me that he had eyes like mine, and a tongue the same colour, and feet
divided into toes. I liked to watch his chest rise and fall while he slept. I liked
to watch him eat dead things, and chase after birds, and shit in the forest. I even
took to shitting in the forest myself, because it didn’t seem strange to me after
seeing him. Human, animal, it was all the same to me.
The point is that I never thought of my body at that time as something separate from
the bodies of the dog or the kookaburra, or the skink, or the mother cat up in my
sister’s sock drawer, who, one day, had somehow produced more bodies, tiny versions
of herself. And I certainly didn’t think of my body as separate from my new consciousness.
They were one and the same thing, consciousness being a bodily sensation, just like
sight, or touch, or hearing. So, if I had it, everything else must have it, too.
I knew this, not from my reasoning, but because it was obvious. When a snail felt
my touch, it curled up. When a bird saw me approach, it flew away. When I flipped
my sister’s tortoise onto its back, it righted itself and lumbered on. It was all
only consciousness at work as far as I was concerned.
I enjoyed my body in the same way the animals enjoyed their bodies. I liked to lie
in the warmth of the sun the same
it was certainly that way for me. The skink’s disappearance was explicit. Things
live until they die. Consciousness begins and then it ends.
How it ends I’m only now discovering. I can only speak for me, of course, and everyone
is different, but dying slowly, as I’m doing, feels like a retreat from consciousness
back to the oblivion that precedes it. This retreat is led by the body, which grows
weaker and weaker, requiring less and less fuel and more and more rest, until a few
trips to the bathroom and back are all the exertion you can manage in a day. I am
no longer shocked by how feeble I am. My body is a dying animal. It is ugly and deformed,
a burden I would like to lay down if only I could. But the body has its own schedule
in the matter of dying, and its own methods, none of which I understand.
What I do know is that my world has contracted to the size of two rooms, my bedroom
and my living room, because these are the rooms where I spend all my time. I sleep
in my bedroom, I write and read and watch television in my living room. I’m much
like an infant now, with an infant’s dependence. My husband does all the shopping
and cooking and takes care of all the chores. My son helpsout with the driving,
the banking, the running of the household, all of which I used to do when I was well.
In the meantime, I lie around and dream. I most resemble a baby in the early mornings
when I first hear the birdsong outside my window. It takes me right back to the time
of the kookaburra and my earliest lesson in death. The more wakeful I become the
more I yearn for the state of unknowing from which I emerged back then.
The kookaburra belonged to the first garden I remember, next to a eucalypt forest.
The house was in a clearing but a few tall gums grew at the back and front, so that
it seemed to me as if we were in the forest rather than separated from it. And the
forest seemed to be in the house, because the rooms were full of forest smells and
sounds, and because I brought the forest in with me from my games, and dreamed of
it when I slept.
When I was on my own I played in the shadow of these giant trees, poking sticks around
their roots to look for cicada skins, stabbing at the gobs of golden sap that oozed
from the tree trunks, peering at the armies of ants that ran up the trunks towards
the high branches. I stripped ragged lengths of bark and made houses for slaters
and snails. When my brother and sister were home I went with them up into the bush,
chasing after the dog. I regarded him as human, as human as I was, I thought,with
the same feelings, the only difference being that I felt the cold and needed clothes.
It fascinated me that he had eyes like mine, and a tongue the same colour, and feet
divided into toes. I liked to watch his chest rise and fall while he slept. I liked
to watch him eat dead things, and chase after birds, and shit in the forest. I even
took to shitting in the forest myself, because it didn’t seem strange to me after
seeing him. Human, animal, it was all the same to me.
The point is that I never thought of my body at that time as something separate from
the bodies of the dog or the kookaburra, or the skink, or the mother cat up in my
sister’s sock drawer, who, one day, had somehow produced more bodies, tiny versions
of herself. And I certainly didn’t think of my body as separate from my new consciousness.
They were one and the same thing, consciousness being a bodily sensation, just like
sight, or touch, or hearing. So, if I had it, everything else must have it, too.
I knew this, not from my reasoning, but because it was obvious. When a snail felt
my touch, it curled up. When a bird saw me approach, it flew away. When I flipped
my sister’s tortoise onto its back, it righted itself and lumbered on. It was all
only consciousness at work as far as I was concerned.
I enjoyed my body in the same way the animals enjoyed their bodies. I liked to lie
in the warmth of the sun the same
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