I keep moving to be stable

chilling on a weekend like usual listening to my pgabriel and thinking about my community/creativity mental blocks and i decided to read the scrapped script fresh off of blood of eden and what do you know. affirming to myself that this is an exercise for me to hack out some of the middling quality words until eventually i find some pretty good ones. thanku

Sitting isn't just sitting anymore. It's a critical state of suspended inertia reserved for deep focus or deeper spasms. It's a context of temporary, chronic inability (supposing your chair of choice doesn't have wheels) rather than one of permanent, acute disability. It's a place where, momentarily, it might be pretended, claimed and disclaimed, that his leg does not factor. That, were one to imagine the pain removed to a point of infinite distance, he can do anything any other sitting individual can do.

Were one to imagine that it's really so much about replicating others' able-bodied capacities. But motorcycles do not idle in order to threaten that they, too, can rev at a quick-checkered notice. They do it because turning the motor on and off in the middle of traffic hampers the maximal display of quickfire roadway agility, somewhat. Because they are somewhat more equal to the total size of their riders and it just feels dangerous to be sitting in the center lane astride an inanimate hunk of metal that will spin out in twain with you, should you skid on over and slide and slide and slide.

House leans on his cane, standing. The wrong side. The unlucky left side. The unaccustomed leg that kicks out at a red light. But damn, having the cane clipped to the distant memory of saddlebags where it lies sheathed in wait for the brandishment and the joust is just that tiniest inch more freeing than seeing it clumsily flung into the passenger seat so that it can't stick itself under any clutch pedals or go spiraling out the window.

Bravado, of course. House performs each mechanical accommodation like he's a man who doesn't hate himself and his history. Like being bitchin' is all it's ever been about.

And it is, of course. Because once you go bitch, you never go stitch. You'll never truly convalesce in a hospital gown again.

All of it, the posturing and the process, has been about the reckoning of a man robbed of faculty against a world that knows he will still find a way to do anything. A world that, without much active interest, dares him to sit, because sitting is always an option. But standing may not always be.

When he gets on, mounts the steed, he acts as fastidious footman to his leg. When he gets off, nails the dismount, he takes a couple of stabilizing hops to put distance between him and the bike, and then it's back to the cane.

Not that sitting on a bike instead of in a car is ever all that full-body relaxing for anyone, he reasons. But you know. Something about it is euphoric, handfuls of strings floating away attached to their rightful balloons, when he directs Cuddy to flex his hypercompetence for him with his chin in her shoulder and his elbows in her waist.

(When you own a Honda Repsol and a Dodge Dynasty both at once, you can flirt with both ends of the spectrum: racy and boxy, bound together. Having your own personal wonder woman drive your dusty blue discontinuation of a last-century car is no manner of thrill compared to a vehicle that necessitates the leather jacket the way Bruce necessitates Clarence, but you must pursue the consumer car, even still, for the domestic union of the woman and the man.)

Nothing is only a game. Nothing is free. Nothing is thoughtless.

(Let Arlene Cuddy sanctimoniously strike him if he ever again approaches Lisa with the gall to be thoughtless.)

Death, the ultimate peace by way of ultimate nothingness, denies him complacence, when it occurs to this his component. He cannot sit still, whether his left leg jiggles notes of sympathy or his right leg writhes through its own mournful, detached discomfort.

If he sits, he lies. His feet must be up. If he walks, he runs. He must get there soon. If he thinks, he talks. He must chase himself to the finish.

(If he approaches the carillon, he must play music. If he approaches the whiteboard, he must play ball.)

If he stops, he dies. He loses focus. Likewise, he loses his presence and his consciousness, until only the restless knife remains. He must not sit. He must not rest. He must run, and jump, and fly the way a one-winged angel flies; he must beat his bodily pain to the punch.