Around St. Mary’s in a Wheelchair

There is no need to go into details, but I am currently unable to walk without the aid of a stick. My system flooded with analgesics from the hospital, the throbbing is tolerable. However, there will be no psychogeographic walking, cooking or vertical fun for at least 10 days.

This morning, as Surreal Girl pushed me in around St. Mary’s in a wheelchair, visions of Luke Haines crowded my mind. I would not want anyone to think I had jumped from a wall to get out of my upcoming journey to Australia. Nor would I plunge onto concrete to make myself so twisted with pain I could generate words as menacing as those found on After Murder Park. Yet as I faced the prospect of spending the next two months in plaster, I knew there are those who would have made such links.

Hospitals present a landscape of terror for me. Their architecture always seems designed to concentrate a sense of mortality, the walls between life and oblivion become paper thin. Recursive corridors with fractal linoleum are guaranteed routes to dread. Everywhere is filled with a cloying tang of disinfectant and the constant wheeze of machinery.

Today the fear was held at bay. Not since my mother would accompany me as the gurney was wheeled from the ER room to the oxygen tent during childhood asthma attacks has anyone been there with me. For the first time in years, there was someone to hold my hand. I will always love her for that.