The sixth January Two thousand and eleven my purpose changed wholly beyond my control from participant to observer. Thinking back I now recognize the sometimes-gentle hints and often violent shoves that should in a less self-assured or centered man suggested some curtailment of my worst or at least most exuberant activities. As it transpired I was as ill equipped to take such advice as I was prepared for the physical and mental strife such an enormity of physiological upheaval can present.
Reconstructed as ninety five percent flesh and blood and five percent automaton I was obliged to consider serious alteration of my lifestyle, both from a perspective of capability and advisability. Sure, I was after considerable months of rehabilitation somewhat capable of my previous absurd and unholy behaviors but was obliged to realize such excesses were beyond suitability. My mechanics were in many ways improved and rejuvenated, but something within my core was changed irrevocably, strangely altered, reflecting if not a different persona certainly one inordinately changed.
The realization that pleasures, joys had drifted from the physical to cerebral was a slow and disconsolate tramp steamer voyage, full of rising disappointment interspersed with sudden unprecedented elation. I became slowly but surely aware of the full functionality of my lesser overpowering senses, particularly mine eyes and ears, and a full appreciation of the lost and much maligned arts of voyeuristic pursuit. My awareness of my fellow passengers upon that singular excursion of discovery cultivated within a new hunger to understand my kin, both close and distant, in all their various activities, beliefs, hopes and dreams. Not to understand, that would assume some almost superhuman capacity, simply to watch and in that careful observation gain perhaps some modicum of insight into mine own newly reanimated condition. For regeneration I was, as different in thought and consideration as a born-again babe second time ejected from a now unfamiliar mother’s womb.
