Pain

I am playing an old Vinyl record of J J Cale and wondering what the hell I can write about today. I know that once I stop writing for any length of time, that starting again becomes less and less of a probability. Blues music is wonderul but one thing that it doesn't do is to raise a smile. It is about pain and loss and maybe that is why it appeals. If we can engage in someone else's pain, maybe it makes ours seems less.

I was reading some Jonathan Miller last night and he was talking about body image and various sensations, including physical pain. Body image is a very strange concept, and he is so right when he talks about our own built in image that never seems to change. Inside i feel the same as I did when I was eighteen, and yet whenever I look into the mirror, I step back mentally, not recognising what my bodyhas become, and not liking it much either.

Pain is a part of out body image and has evolved as a means of protection. Without pain we would self destruct in no time at all. There are cases of people born without pain reception and they have a tough time of it. Toddlers chew anything and without pain, this includes tongues and fingers as well as any other body part that teeth can access. Without pain, we'd continue to walk on broken legs, would ignore rotten teeth and most illnesses and ailments. We know our bodies and we know when things are not as they should be.

In extremis, people may lose touch with their body image and then trange things can happen. Sensations may be perceived but not necesarily conected to the body map. Amputees often suffer phantom pains in limbs that no longer exist, and that is something which must be pretty horriffic. Imagine having an itch in a foot that is no longer there.

In Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, Mrs Gradgrind's death scene includes

"Have you a pain Mother?"
"There's a pain somewhere in the room, but I cannot be certain that I have got it."

We can, to a limited extent dissociate ourselves from pain and the odd illegal substance may help; while some people can manage without. Accupuncturists claim that they can remove pain to the e xtent that some have had surgery without any other form of anaesthetic.

Pain is hard to recall in full. Perhaps that is just as well. I was trying to remember the most painful experiences of my life, and I guess that I have been luckier than some. The earliest pain that I can recall, was at Grammar school. I must have been 13 or 14 and was picked on by an older boy, who for no obvious reason, kneed me in the balls. I went down like sack of potatoes and can still feel an attenuated version of the agony now. It took me a day to recover from that.

Later on, as a result of the TB I had suffered as a child, I was tormented by Arthritis in the hip. This pain is both acute and chronic, and what is more it rarely goes away, and as the months go by it takes it's toll. That sort of pain is pure misery and it becomes all consuming, to the extent that it becomes you. Analgesics do little and besides they have their side effects too.
I was fortunate in having the necessary treatment to remove that pain once and for all. Not everyone is so fortunate, and must live their lives in misery.

Well J J has finished and I have to turn him over. I budgetted for one side but I have over run and will stop before I suffer with RSI.