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Heavy Plant

Walk past a "Heavy Plant" warning and wonder vaguely if the trees thought it was for them; if whoever put it up had enough imag...

2006-03-18

Dead arm

I awake with uneasy feeling, not unlike I've forgotten something. Have I left the oven on? Did I leave something important at work? No that's not it, something's missing. What could it be? Slowly I sit up getting more and more concerned for an apparently groundless psychological malaise. My left arm slides from my chest and falls into my lap lifeless and inert. That would be it then.

I have, for the second time that night fallen asleep in such a way that I have cut of the blood flow to my arm. It has been deprived of oxygen long enough for my unconscious mind to become worried and wake me, again. It sits there, warm and useless resisting every instruction from my brain. It might at least twitch or something, demonstrate that there's a bit of life left in it.

I try and massage some life back, reaching under my armpit to get the artery working again. I soon realise the stupidity of this as the blood rushes back into my arm bringing with it the return of sensation. Hundreds of blood vessels pop back into shape and capillaries slowly uncoil in the most excruciating way. Why is this sensation called 'Pins and Needles'? It is an entirely inadequate phrase to describe the pain, it feels like someone has let a thousand biting earwigs loose inside my arm. I get up and start flailing my arm against the doorframe. That'll teach it. Feeling returns to my wrist just as I whip it round and catch it on the doorknob. Ouch, a lot.

I wonder whether the bizarre dream I had about a limb gaining a life of its' own and wandering off without me is really such an unrealistic proposition. My left arm is certainly doing its' level best. Perhaps it will go off in a state of fugue and have an ever more elaborate set of adventures. It might get bored and return to me one night and I will wake up with some of its' memories. Maybe that's already happened and it goes off on its' own every night...

...maybe not.

2 comments:

  1. Maybe that's what's happened to my head.

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  2. Maybe usuing a variation of a game called shiritori I can predict the title of your next blog...thus, "Milosevic Dead" - "Dead Arm" - "Arm..." Hmmm...arm the tramps?

    The really funny thing is that shiritori means "take the bottom" - ooo err indeed...

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