Sick

It's hard when we hurt. I don't know -- maybe you smashed your toe on Friday and it hurts like a son of a bitch.

But when we wake up, what we have is our mind. It has nothing, really, to do with our body. Only me, myself and moi. Just me here, ain't done nothing spectacular, and at the end of the day it will still only be me.

But what if somehow, you WEREN'T you? What if somehow, all your circuits went haywire? If it wasn't hurting, but just damned strange?

There are probably ten trillion circuits in your brain. If any single one of them goes awry, well, tell that to a 747 pilot at 37,000 feet with a sudden alarm of smoke in the cockpit.

There are no doctors. No ER, no bullshit. You hurt, take twenty-eight Advil. But your mind hurts . . . you are doomed.

I'm reading a book about the famous bass player, Jaco Pastorius, and I seriously wonder whether it's better to have a horribly painful cancer that screams you torture to your dying moment . . . or just lose yourself in a strange world that only the human brain can do.

I mean, think about it. Fido, faithful as he is . . . if he has leukemia, or is feeling bad, he just can't express it, at least in your terms. But you know he's hurting.

My brother, older than me, died at 48 years of age, almost five years younger than I am now, of muscular dystrophy, but he had every single brain cell intact at the moment he died.

Trust me, I've done my share of hallucinogens, and it ain't pretty.

But I haven't quite decided which is a worse fate . . . Jaco was beaten to death by a crazed maniac, but JACO was ALREADY a crazed maniac . . . through not a single whit of fault of his own. God, what the world would be like if he were only still alive.

Please, burn off my fingernails, but don't make me lose my mind . . .