I have been adapting to, merging with, if you will, with the gravity feeding tube installed in the exterior of my abdomen for five months now. The initial realization of having a possibly permanent add on to the physical system was somewhat concerning, scary, discombobulating,, but after a few days adjustment the mind is quite capable of forming a form of relationship with the new addition, it is after all necessary for the continuance, wellbeing, of the being.
I use the word relationship very specifically, for there is created a definite a two-way interaction, the addition and the original performing separate but equally viral tasks. The new becoming the source every form of nutrition, the old taking responsibility for care and upkeep of the new appendage.
Addition, extra, projection, addendum, the accessory oft do seem to represent a negative, denigrating change, similarly to a replacement limb or organ. New and undoubted necessary, but not fundamentally historically, original. A strange and absurd differential.
This very morning I was obliged to take apart, clean, and reassemble the valve mechanism to my additional orifice, the extra access for my digestive system. This procedure was very much trial and error, look and see, sense, and feel, like clearing a nostril, cleaning an ear canal, trimming nails, normal functions of daily exitance in a seemingly flesh and blood organism, but far more practically an overly complicated mechanical unit.
Whether I simply noticed the blocked valve, became aware of problem in usage, or far more intriguingly felt to irregularity, the problem, the fault, failure, as we might with a tooth ache, a pulled muscle, weakening natural instincts. This novel idea now suddenly haunts my thoughts, questions my understanding of how the human psyche can adapt to, accommodate, include, facilitate, fresh, seemingly impossible, and wholly illogical components. Mary Godwin and her immediate cohorts, Shelley and Byron, indeed most or the late Victorian intelligentsia would have no difficulty with the concept of genesis through adaption, ‘tis an abstraction that science has obliterated.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 