Page 123 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 4 #2

“Yes.” There is another gym across self to see again for all intents and purposes.
the street and the owners of that one had
purchased Fitness Today and then promptly
closed it down.
“And now we are here.”
It was a profoundly awkward moment.
Granted I had seen him many times at the gym,
but I had no memory of him prior to joining
The Rush, my current gym. About my height,
he was standing with his back against the pol-
ished metal pole of one of the machines. He
didn’t look comfortable. His nearly gray hair
shows only a scant trace of black randomly
scattered about his head. He is very thin and
his eyes appear to be pushed almost out of
their sockets. He walks strangely - as though
he is skating gently over the floor beneath his
feet. Or, as though every step is immensely
painful.
“So,” I said as I tried to gather myself
together. I’m very uncomfortable in such mo-
ments. I am many things, but I am not natu-
rally gregarious and I often find moments of
random social interaction extremely uncom-
fortable. “How’s work?” I didn’t know what
else to say.
“Oh, I retired in October.”
“Really?” Again, what else was I to say.
I just wanted the moment to end so I could get
back to my self imposed exile.
“Yes, I have.......” I missed the name of
the disease - an unintended consequence of
hearing Mary Fahl’s incredibly seductive voice
in the my left ear.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah I was a pharmacist and the pain
just got to be too much. I did teach myself to
walk again.”
I tried to imagine what that would have
been like, but then, I have had to teach my-
I know what that was like. An already awk-
ward moment had now become desperately
so. “Wow, that’s really good,” I said trying to
find something to say, even if the words were
superficial and vain.
“Yeah. I just keep going.”
“Well, I’m glad,” I said offering him my
hand. He smiled, the kind of smile that says it
is nice to know someone cares. I didn’t - I mean
I felt badly for him. Having to teach yourself
to walk again..... But I had no context for the
conversation and though he hadn’t intended
to do so, he was awakening in me a restless-
ness that I have learned I need to avoid. When
I first realized that all the visual problems I
was experiencing were part of a deeper, more
profound problem that could leave me blind,
my initial response was to bring my life to an
end. “After all,” I said to the doctor, “there is
no point to living blind.” She took exception
to that comment but I would have none of it.
Next to what he faced, my confrontation with
blindness seemed almost trivial.
But the truth is that I am never far from
that question or that possibility. However
much I am intellectually indebted to Camus, I
parted way with him on the question of suicide
long ago. As far as he was concerned, commit-
ting suicide was tantamount to admitting that
life isn’t worth living. I have never been sure
life is worth living. Resistance and rebellion
still end in death. Worse than death itself, ag-
ing and it’s slow death, its dismemberment of
all that we are and all that we once could do,
is a miserable indignity. Why not take from
death its sting?
A student of post Holocaust theology,
intellectually indebted to Eric Fromm, I know
all the reasons why some people survived the
horrors of the death camps. Those who were
not randomly singled out for death survived
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