one week ago this morning i went into surgery.
i had already long ago acquired a mental habit of chacterizing major life flexion points such as this as moments of becoming ghost. the reasons for this mental vocabulary are complicated and personal, but include how formative Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was in my youth (ghost) and how influential Deleuze and Guattari's Thousand Plateaux was in my subsequent philosophical development (becoming). ive been on this road before: the monotonous hospital hours punctuated by vertiginous pain or impotent frustration.
the beautiful green whooshing trees outside my window provide relief, as does the kindness of strangers and the generosity of friends. the ghost, with time, re-anchors himself in the world, a transformed being imminent in the traces of pain and kindness scored across the body of the preceding being.