The Spine

JG Ballard talks in the "Drowned World" how travelling down the spine is travelling back in time, back through evolution to the Jurassic, Triassic, Silurian...Devonian.

An injury to the spine takes you back in time, and forward too. It renders you helpless, a simple muscle pull leaving you an occasionally twinging, shrieking child or an elderly person spilling tea or soup down themselves as they sit down. A glimpse of hopeless past, helpless future, at the mercy of carers and family - if you have any.

Why are we still so vulnerable? We should have evolved past this flimsy calciferous entity within us, one that can paralyse us if it goes wrong. Should it now have been replaced with something constructed from carbon fibre or titanium alloy? Must we be a slave to this ironically invertebrate prawn like structure within us? 

Our livelihoods and basic functionality depend on this weak, vulnerable, hopeless thing? And we have to suffer the pain when it goes wrong?

Pah. I'm getting a new one...I shall make one myself. Maybe even lego is preferable to this.

Copyright  Bloody Mulberry 05.07.14