Penny Post #15: Numb

On sensation & description.

August 22nd, 2022. I was making turkey burgers to mark the first day of our last year at the University of Notre Dame.

I started with the patties: stovetop on; pan buttered; buns toasting. I set some condiments on the counter and rinsed the skin of the avocados.

I used the cutting board and the serrated edge of a Cutco knife to split the avocado in half. Now it was time to de-pit.

I placed the pit-side of the avocado in my left hand, with my knifed-up right hand at the ready.

I descended on the pit with more force and speed than necessary.

The knife slipped on the pit and lodged itself in my palm.

If you care for more details, reply to this email.

If you care for the pictures, you might be on the wrong website.

A trip to the emergency room and several hand doctor consultations later, I learned that I severed a nerve and cut through an artery. Funnily enough, this injury is known in the medical world as “avocado hand”.

If I ever sold you Cutco knives, what I’ll say is this: I told you so.

Pennies. Rope. Flesh.

*This post in not sponsored by Cutco nor its affiliates.*

After an emergency surgery, a narcotic-induced recovery and many physical therapy appointments later, I can barely feel any sensation between the index and middle fingers of my left hand.

It’s numb.

And without sensation, there are no words.

If someone or something touches any other spot on my hand, its:

• smooth

• coarse

• soft

• hard

• itchy

• heavy

• light

• tickly

• uncomfortable

• comforting

• warm

• cold

yet without sensation, its (drum roll please)…

NUMB.

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Numb. adj: deprived of the power of sensation; verb: deprive of feeling or responsiveness.

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For me, sensation and language are causative. Without one, there exists no other.

Sensation is the way by which our body interprets the stimuli of the world around us. I’ve written extensively about the power of sensation (here, here), yet I wonder what is there to find in the lack.

How do we describe nothing?

Ancient Greek philosophers struggled with the same concepts.

Aristotle rejected zero because it was nothingness. And according to Aristotle, nothing could come to be out of nothingness. Zero, as something, is contradictory because something does not equal nothing and if zero is nothing (meaning zero is no unit), zero is the opposite of something: nothing.

To be fair, I barely understand the paragraph above either. For expertise: look here and here.

The Babylonians first used zero as a placeholder for absence.

Does the absence of something equal nothing?

The sensation in my hand went from something to nothing and as I’ve been assured by my doctors, it will never go back to something.

I will never regain sensation between the index and middle fingers of my left hand.

I will never find enough words to describe the lack of sensation: because there are none.

We are experts of our lived experience.

We are experts of our sensed lived experience.

Yet we are left speechless, wordless, in a void to anything beyond our sensed lived experience.

All for a damn turkey burger.

Until next time,

kgr