Excerpt from Part 2, Chapter 6

I lay on a body worker's table many years after having had the disc between two neck vertebrae crushed nearly to nothing, paralyzing muscles that lift my arm. The body worker's hands performed angelic voodoo, unearthing a deep sigh from my tissues; I'd been fretting without realizing it. Though I had recovered from my paralysis as much as possible, I would never be able to lift my arm properly and continually sought to understand the significance of my injury. A succession of chiropractors and physical therapists over time had assured me the injury was too severe to self-inflict, even through the abuse of professional dancing. I must have had an early childhood trauma. Had I been dropped on my head? Been in a car accident getting whiplash? Could it be forceps delivery? My mother has said none of these happened in my childhood.

I floated in ease as the body worker worked; the room felt distant, my body gargantuan. My skull fell open and little thoughts skittered into corners like ants from an overturned anthill. Half dreaming, the veils between worlds momentarily parted and I saw a shape in my neck. It hovered like a filament of smoke. It was an energetic insignia, a physical karma, curving delicately. I knew, was certain, that I'd been born with this shape in my neck. As I lay dreamily there, I perceived the invisible shapes that structured and moved my life on subtle strata.

For many years, this shape in my neck had been a spiritual choke chain collar. When I was too rambunctious or misguided, the Shape, understanding what I could not, twined inside my vertebrae, torqued them off their axis and snapped me back at the head stem. Eugene O'Neill said, "Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue." I was apparently born in one piece, toes, fingers, and heads all accounted for, the potential of my life ready, imprinted in my core. All I had to do was listen and obey a flawless pre-destined flow, but I couldn't resist fighting my destiny and so got injured. If O'Neill was right, however, my destiny was to resist destiny. My injury was designed, inevitable, the outer edge of subtle calligraphy drawn inside my body's energy by a Mystical Hand containing both my breaking and my mending.

I've experienced my twisted neck as bait in a love story, a beacon whispering beautiful code. It has hushed me down, sinking me beneath surface senses to a luscious lair. My Love waits there for our tryst in the abandoned cloister with walls falling and Bittersweet vines overtaking.

The body worker had long since left the room. I'd been sleeping, without shape. My eyes drifted open, sifting a ceiling out of shadows. An edge of blanket grazed my bare throat, lifting then touching as I breathed, the way the cat's tongue licks her kitten clean.