9.20.01.
Pain.
I will not attempt to prove a point. I have no thesis on "pain."
I have, however, felt some of it, thus;
and thus; and thus;
Some nights I have certain type of cough that manifests when I attempt to sleep. I do not sleep these nights, without codeine.
Last night I was without codeine. I was with a hard floor, in a room other than mine. My back does not applaud that choice.
Six months ago (and six hours ago) I spent lots of time with a monkey wrench. Six months ago (but not six hours ago) I got tendonitis in my thumb. I couldn't write, or make a fist. I wore a splint that looked like a cast. Someone recently said to me, "In sports, we tend to look down on those kinds of injuries. If there's no blood, and the bone's not broken, you don't need to treat it. We only appreciate injuries that come from contact. We would say, 'You hurt your thumb because you used it wrong?'" Well fuck you, bitch, it hurt.
Someone graffitied in my house: When she walks through your room carrying butcher knives, you will know the truth. Ha ha.
I banged my shin on the coffee table. God, I hate that.
There is no pain like the pain of someone who wants to kill themselves.
(That is probably a lie. I have seen no pain like the pain of someone who wants to kill themselves.)
I have seen animals in pain on "The Discovery Channel." See The Crocodile Hunter.
I have seen plants in pain in real life. See Land's End in San Francisco, in a seventeen-hundred-way tie for most beautiful place on earth.
I enjoyed having my wisdom teeth out. More precisely, I enjoyed the accompanying pain. I knew in advance that I would enjoy it. (See personal journal, July 7, 2000.) They put four big holes in my mouth, and it hurt a lot. I tried to experience it as simply a physical sensation. It was a fascinating experience.
(Note to the reader: this does not work with emotional pain. So don't.)
An interesting paradox: pain will make you experience life, and be more acutely aware that you are, in fact alive, while simultaneously decreasing your desire to remain so.
See assorted Greek mythology: see Pandora's box; see Hubris, miscellaneous (e.g. Agamemnon, Odysseus, Oedipus); see Prometheus and the fire and the eagle and the liver.
Everyone is fascinated by pain. Without exception.
Pain is beautiful. If it's done well. If it's ugly. Though it is hard to recognize the beauty while feeling the pain. See Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, the current production of it at Brown University, and my conversation about it last night with a loved one. Specifically, see comments omitted from said conversation by myself.
Of compassion, Milan Kundera says, "Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes."
The only way to make it worse is when you are the cause of that pain.
(I just stubbed my toe.)