Description: The Sound of One Hand Clapping - Storms
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I’m sitting in the library right now and watching a thunderstorm. It’s a pretty typical thunderstorm here in Fairhope, maybe a bit noisier than most, but common on the Northern Gulf of Mexico in July. Storms come in many shapes and sizes here; from the rain showers that appear in full daylight to the ever present late afternoon thunderstorms in August. Then there are the tough ones, hurricanes and tornadoes that rearrange things and leave a mess behind. I’ve weathered my share of those, but the worst storms
My storm hit me in an operating room in Birmingham, AL. Severe neck pain caused by two ruptured discs in my cervical spine had brought me here. It was supposed to be routine. The surgeon told my then wife (we are now divorced) that I could ride the Scream Machine in nearby Six Flags over Georgia in a few days. Instead I awoke in the recovery room unable to move from the neck down.
In one of the random shifts that frequently happen in such storms, my legs (and everything beneath my armpits) were restored fully. My arms not so much. My left arm is somewhere around 80% paralyzed. It is my good side. The right (and formerly dominant) arm is near 100% paralyzed. So now you know how I came up with the catchy name for my blog, “The Sound of One Hand Clapping.”. It’s a koan, or question designed to measure a student’s progress in their study of Zen. It’s supposed to be an unanswerable questi