Shena McAuliffe - Glass, Light, and Electricity: Essays

He was thinking, incidentally, that there was a moment or two in his epileptic condition almost before the fit itself (if it occurred in waking hours) when suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments... His sensation of being alive and his awareness increased tenfold at those moments which flashed by like lightning. His mind and heart were flooded by a dazzling light. All his agitation, doubts and worries seemed composed in a twinkling, culminating in a great calm, full of understanding... but these moments, these glimmerings were still but a premonition of that final second (never more than a second) with which the seizure itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

One night you did not come home. Late in the morning, you pushed your bike into our apartment, leaned it against the wall, sat on the bed next to me, and confessed, finally explaining to me my loneliness. An affair, you said. That inflated word.

I had spent the night waiting for you. On a bench in the park, across the street from our apartment, overlooking the grain elevator. I had paced the labyrinth at the Episcopal church, meditating on being alone, on being quiet, on other labyrinths I had walkedwith you, without youon my breathing, on the importance of the exhale, on the bees hovering in the lavender. I walked uphill in the dark and the wind blew. I listened to the sounds of a couple making love in the house behind me, across the street from the overlook, their rhythm traveling so far from their open window.

Two and a half months after that night, I walked with two friends in Escalante Canyon, in southern Utah, where the river made the best trail, running between red rock walls and sky. The water was shallow and not too cold, the banks patched with quicksand that sometimes gave way beneath our weight. Our boots dangled from our packs. We wore sandals, the straps eventually rubbing holes in our skin. We covered them with moleskin and duct tape, our feet growing ever soggier. The three of us slept on a slope that was too steep for sleep (climb high, stay out of the floodplain). Cate, TS, and I crammed into a tent big enough for only two, all night sliding, sliding, toward the downhill end of the tent. I was the middle body, trying to stay straight, to contain myself, my arms alternately crossed over my chest or pressed to my sides. Finally, after hours of wakefulness, Cate unzipped the door, crawled outside, and wrapped herself in the rainflya weak barrier against ants and mosquitoesbut after that we slept a little.

The next day we walked without our packs, upriver again, but finally gave up our goal of reaching Death Hollow, which had been just around the bend for so many bends. We turned back. At the trailhead, we stripped out of our sweaty T-shirts and shorts and swam in our underwear, rinsing off sweat and sunscreen and citronella, getting sand in our hair.

QUICKSAND

Quicksand is a colloid hydrogel consisting of fine granular matter (such as sand or silt), clay, and salt water.

You can spot it by the way its surface quivers and shines, but usually you dont notice until you step on it and it gives way beneath you. The liquid sand pulls you downa murky sucking at one ankle and then the other. That weekend in Escalante, we tested the depth of the quicksand with sticks, piercing it the way Odysseus stabbed and seared the eye of the Cyclops. Still, we were sometimes startled when the sand collapsed beneath us.

The night that you didnt come home I wasnt wearing my glasses, and the lights of the freighters on the dark bay, so far below, were blurry. I sent you another text message. (Where R U? R U coming home soon?) (I am worried. Just tell me you are okay.) (Why are you doing this?) I left another voice mail. There seemed two possibilitieswhich was worse? (1) Drunk, on your bicycle, you had been hit by a car. How would I find you? Should I start calling hospitals? (2) You were with K. I turned off the light. The sun was rising. Your cat curled against my body. Still it was hours before you came home. Days before the wide light of summer solsticethat vacant delirium.

The drive back to Salt Lake City from Escalante begins on Highway 12, winding along the top of a pale ridge, each side dropping hundreds of feet into the red and white canyons below. The road descends into Dixie National Forest, where the aspens are old growth and thick-trunked. TS was driving. Cate, carsick, had fallen asleep in the passenger seat.

We stopped for food in Torrey. The restaurant was called Chillerza standard fast-food/soft-serve grill, with windows for ordering outside and a counter for ordering inside. A few families and pairs ate at formica booths. I ordered french fries, a veggie burger, and a grasshopper milkshake.

Cate was placing her order when, behind us, a man made a sound. Or rather, a sound came out of a man who was sitting at a table. The kind of sound that makes itself. A sound that forces its way out. A sound formed by the sudden, involuntary tightening of every muscle in the body, by some lurch in the brain. I thought the noise came from a person with a disability, or with cerebral palsy, maybe. That it came from a body that often made such sounds. Dont look.

I sat down. TS was filling her soda. But there was a second noise. The mans friend jumped up. Are you okay? he asked. He didnt touch the man who was making the sounds, who was wearing leather and neoprene with kneepads and flexible elbows, like a superherosome kind of dirt bike attire. The man groaned. His limbs moved of their own accord. His head tipped back. His legs stuck out rigidly beneath the table. His neck was taut. Someone said, finally, as if reciting a dialog in a first-aid course, Hes having a seizure. Call 911.

Still, I thought, this man probably often had seizures. People have seizures. He was probably epileptic.

Get him on the ground, someone said. Protect his head. But his body was stiff and sliding him out of the booth proved difficult. His head knocked against the back of the booth. (How long does a seizure last?) He was on the floor. Someone held his arms, which were rigid and extended. Someone cradled his head. People began to surround him. (Dont crowd him.)

At the counter, the woman from whom we had ordered food was on the phone. Had it happened to this man before? Was he epileptic? Had he had more than one seizure in a row?

SEIZURE

A seizure is caused by excess electrical excitement in the brain.

Seizure The action or an act of seizing, or the fact of being seized; confiscation or forcible taking possession (of land or goods); a sudden and forcible taking hold.

a. Grasp, hold; a fastening. Obs.

b. A sudden attack of illness, esp. a fit of apoplexy or epilepsy. Also, a sudden visitation (of calamity).

Possession.

Mech. The action of seize.

4. The rattle and heave of an earthquake. A crack and schism. The spark that strikes the temporal lobe. The pulse and tremble. The clutching, tensing, and grasping of the muscles. The grip and run. The rift and tremor. Theres no getting around the moment of surprise.