|
“At
a children’s holiday fair, a well-dressed father circles her
for a long time viewing her body from every angle, like someone
seriously scrutinizing an exotic animal in a cage. Then he goes
off to a greater distance in a corner of the gym and does exactly
the same thing, closing in, asking sarcastically, bitterly, “Tired,
are you? Are we disturbing you?” “But
if I was going to do more than stay at home and grow neurotic roots
there, if I was going to raise my child in the world, I had to go
public, go visible, even though absorbed in the new privacy of my
capsized self. But none had my permission to make me an object of
judgment. I wanted that privacy, that border between my country
and theirs.” Berger p.126-7 |
| “Living
in chronic pain is like being trapped in an abusive marriage, the absence
of the freedom to traverse the wide world, but mental freedom is ruined
too” Berger (p. 49) |
| “The
person in chronic pain, or the person painfully disabled, can feel like
an immigrant in a new world, on real terra infirma. Horizontal, I began
to operate like a stranger in the world, uneasy, too willing to please,
trying too hard to blend in, though everyone was looking down on me.
We could have been two species; those who move around and those who
lie down. They were the natives, I the intruder.” (Berger, pxx) |
|
“Mind
says, I want you to leave me alone, or go run, or get out off the
couch, or... Body says, I can’t , pain wont let me. So you shut
up. “ “At airports or train stations people have thought I was derelict or crazy or maybe homeless: only the dispossessed lie on floors, children lie on floors, dogs lie on floors, tiles ie on floors, but adults?” Berger p36 |
|
“With friends inside my house, being down here upsets a balance of conviviality, of the whereness that grounds a conversation. I am always looking up as though younger or subservient....” Berger p.23
|
|
Differently
placed on the floor, on the couch, on the ground, I appeared fallen,
an outsider to be stared at. Strangely disabled, not suffering from
visible damage, I did not fit in any category of illness, or “handicap,"
and so I was Other. Berger
p. xvii |
| “Adults
are not supposed to be on the floor. Adults are supposed to sit up for
important conversations, sit up, not recline in a pew at weddings.....”
Berger p.23 |
| “Suddenly
she hears two voices: Look at her. Isn’t that just something. Aren’t
you just the height of luxury there? She looks around for height, for
luxury, and finally for a weapon, but her eyes land on her daughter's
bewildered face, where they need to stay, more than on these strangers'
misguided prattle." Berger p126-7 |