She

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

chapter twenty-six

  NOW HER EYE SEES

  “HOW’S YOUR AURORA home unit working for you?” Orit, her therapist for the last three months at the Spenta Empowerment Centre, asks.

  “I tried to use the high-alpha s-s-session. But I became tired, and I felt overwhelmed as the session went on.”

  “That’s to be expected. You’ve only been using the unit for three months. Don’t be hard on yourself. Remember there’s still lots of work to be done on raising your alpha frequency. Keep running the main alpha program, and you’ll get there.”

  She nods as she says, “Alright, I will.”

  “For today, we’ll start with a high-beta session. Dr. Luce feels it’s time to work on the problem-solving frequencies. Would you like me to explain to you again how this works?”

  “Yes please.” She feels stupid having the same thing explained to her over and over. She’s gone along with the illuminated therapy that Spenta offers, not thinking about it yet hoping in the recesses of her being that it’ll work. But then this week she started to sense changes. She cannot specify them, except that her speech is evening out faster, yet somehow her core being is strengthening, the cotton batting round her mind shredding. And for that reason, she’s at last a tiny bit curious about how this therapy works. Each time Orit explains it — and when Dr. Luce explained it at her first session — a little glimmer opens up and adds to previous glimmers of comprehension.

  “As you know, Akaesman secretes a light-sucking miasma that allows him to feed on energy from your neurons. They shrink and shrivel up; the white matter thins. And then the blood supply is cut off. One theory is that the blood supply actually pools and destroys neurons nearby, causing a cascade kind of effect, before the blood vessels block themselves off. After he drenches one area in this miasma and siphons off all the matter and energy, except for a certain subset of neurons he leaves alone, he extends himself into another. In people who don’t fight or seek help, this takes a matter of days.

  “An alternative theory is that, like an octopus, he extends tentacles into different areas over the whole of the brain, excreting his miasma through the tentacles and then sucking back up energy from the neurons he touches, leaving a few key ones alone that will obey his will. He becomes so satiated that he kind of sits there like a fat pig digesting his engorgement, making sure you’re changed permanently into the kind of person he wants you to be before exiting. He has to stay longer than seven days in people who seek help and resist him, like you, to accomplish the same thing. We’re not exactly sure how he works. All we know is that in some autopsies those areas of the brain look exactly the same in every invaded person but different from the general population. On your full-head EEG they manifested as sleeping, that is, they were producing delta waves. On a really good scan, like a PET scan, which Ontario only allows cancer and cardiac patients to use, you can see that those neurons aren’t working.

  “Illuminated therapy works by breaking up the miasma and lighting up new pathways. That way we restore those cognitive functions and physical regulation of your body that Akaesman took from you. To prevent him from shrivelling up the new pathways or neurons, we teach you to distinguish between yourself and him, that way you learn to resist him directly. And when you resist him, he can’t secrete miasma because he has to use his energy to fight you. While he’s doing that, it becomes easier to strengthen your cognitive functioning like concentration and memory, which will give you more confidence and energy, which allows for more healing, and so on in an increasing cycle of you being able to fight him until one day you can eject him.

  “The Aurora home unit is part of that therapy. We use the same technology here to artificially stimulate the brainwaves we want to see before moving on to the active part of the therapy when you’re hooked up to the computer.

  “I understand that you were offered Srukar. Not all our clients receive that gift or, more like, perceive it. That gives you even more strength and internal support to fight him. You just need to learn how to use that gift and recognize its value.

  “As Dr. Luce may have mentioned in your first treatment, we also suggest other activities that will help you to distinguish between Akaesman and you. We feel you’re ready to embark on one.”

  “Oh.” She’s not sure she is herself. But if they say so …

  “Dr. Luce wants you to buy a point and shoot camera.”

  “A point and shoot? But I’ve never taken photo-photographs before. I left that s-s-sort of thing to Jim. And Grandmother refused to take photos. She’d hire someone to take f-f-formal portraits. I don’t know how to work a camera.”

  “Don’t worry. A point and shoot is easy. It’s like its name — you point, then shoot. Henry’s outlet store down on Queen Street sells cameras at a discount. They’ll help you find one you can learn to use easily. The idea is not to take great photographs but to use the camera to learn to see.”

  “Learn to see? Um, but I s-s-see.”

  “Yes, but there’s more to seeing than just looking. When you take a picture, you’re forced to examine what you’re photographing, to think about what it is you want to see in the picture. Take that library kitty-corner to us. When you take a picture of it, your eyes won’t slide by it like when you’re walking past. Instead, you’ll see what it’s made of, what shape it is, if there are cars passing by and blocking your view, or if you’re close, how much you can see of it, if there are people entering or exiting it, if they’re students. You see what I’m getting at?”

  “I guess. I think.”

  “The camera will force you to perceive not just see. As you exercise that skill, it will expand beyond taking pictures. You will start to perceive inside yourself who is you and who is Akaesman. And once that happens, you’ll be able to resist him better. Also, and this is a big also, you’ll have fun with it. Fun is good! It takes you away from anger and irritation. Anger cannot coexist with laughter. Anger and irritation are his means of asserting his control when you’re not compliant. So becoming less prey to that and enjoying a new hobby is a good thing. Think of it as you’ll be fighting him in another way. He needs you to be angry. And you need a new hobby. Christmas is only two weeks away. It’ll be an early Christmas present to yourself and a treat for having come this far!”

  She’s a bit doubtful, but she’ll go along with it. So far, their suggestions are working. The Aurora home unit sure does make her feel less like a zombie and more human. For that alone, it’s been worth it. She’s not looking forward to Christmas either, so maybe this will take the stress out of it. She’d really like to enjoy a holiday for once. It seems like another lifetime when she last did.

  On that thought, and with Orit helping her, she leans back in the zero-gravity chair. Orit gives her the reflector wrap-around sunglasses of the Aurora unit with their four tiny LED lights behind a blue plastic shield on the inside. She slips them on, and then she feels Orit putting on the ear phones. Soon pulses of light fill her closed eyes with colours of pink and yellow and violet, while thrumming fills her ears. She no longer falls asleep during these twenty-minute sessions, but her whole body still relaxes. Today her mind also comes alive. Thoughts blow in to her blank mind; ideas, concepts swirl and expand.

  Suddenly, the lights and sound are powering down. Orit removes the glasses and phones, has her sit in the computer chair, and cleans her earlobes and the top centre of her scalp before pasting electrodes on. Orit starts an HRV session and leaves the room for a moment while she breathes in and out in a slow sine wave and watches her heart rate moving up and down in sync, feeling calmer, feeling settled. Five minutes later, Orit comes back in and stops the session. They move on to a bowling game. Her favourite.

  “Okay, today I want you to keep your beta waves above this line and your delta waves below this one. The idea is to enhance your beta-wave activity while suppressing delta-wave activity. Ready to begin?”

  “Yes. Will it be for three minutes, like the other sessions?”

  “Yes,” Orit
answers and then clicks on the play icon.

  She concentrates on the screen, which shows a bowling ball at the top of a lane, moving toward ten pins. She must somehow will the bowling ball to move forward and knock down the ten pins. When she does that successfully, the game resets itself, and she must repeat the procedure.

  At first, the ball starts and stops, as delta waves rise and beta waves remain stubbornly low. But gradually the ball rolls for longer and longer. By the time the three minutes are up, she’s ready for a nap, but she’s gotten the ball to roll in one smooth move from the top of the lane to the pins. She has three more games to play before her time is up. In between games two and three, Orit plays Blokus with her to improve her visual-spatial skills. She can’t cheat at this game, and she always loses. But she loves these minutes of having simple fun with another human being.

  Too soon her time is up. She staggers home in her usual exhausted state where she guzzles her post-Spenta can of ginger ale before parking herself in front of the television with warmed-up leftovers.

  The next day, after the rain has stopped, under a cloudy sky, she dutifully goes down to Henry’s outlet store and buys a cute, small silver point and shoot. Back outside, she aims it aimlessly at stores and the Metropolitan United Church and presses the button as the store clerk had shown her. She scrutinizes the photos on the camera’s screen and isn’t too impressed. Well, she’ll show Orit tomorrow what she’s done and figure it out from there. She shoves the camera in her pocket, pulling out her iPod Touch first. She scrolls through her favourite play list till Alanis Morissette’s plaintive You Learn belts out from the earbuds, getting her feet moving again.

  Orit had told her as she was putting her coat on about a photography website called “Flickr.” She’s not sure about joining an online group. She had a friend who disappeared for hours in a chat room. But Orit persisted, had said that it is a good way to meet people through a shared hobby. “You need to make new friends,” Orit had said, concerned about her social isolation.

  She mulls over Orit’s suggestion, thinking that it’s true she hasn’t been able to make new friends since her old friends dropped her. And although the church is a place of comfort and the Bible study something to look forward to, she hasn’t made any friends through it, not the kind you call up on a whim or go out for coffee with or share your deepest thoughts. She’s not sure if that’s something odd or the norm for church friends. She shrugs, oh well. She has to get home. She’s whacked and wants a nap.

  That night, energy surges through her. Eschewing television for the first time in years, she turns on her computer and surfs to Flickr. It takes her two hours to figure out how to join up. Something doesn’t want her to join. Her forehead pains at the end of it, but she has a Flickr account. She writes down her user name and password and posts it on her monitor. She looks forward to the day when she can once again memorize a password easily and not need to have it in plain view for all to see. Well, Smokey to see because who else comes to her place other than Grandmother? Oh yeah, her homemaker. Well, she’s too tired to figure out where to hide it. Later. She’ll also have to wait for another day, maybe the weekend, before she can start learning about Flickr. She no longer chafes at how long she takes to learn something, do something. She’s learnt patience, that everything takes her a week and a month to do. Signing up in one day is pretty good. She stumbles up to bed, Smokey following along behind to watch that she gets into bed before trotting back down to the living room to play with her fabric snake.

  As she lies there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, that glows faintly from the streetlights sneaking in through the shutters, she reviews the last two days. She can’t wait to tell Orit all that she’s done in such a short time: bought a camera, learnt how to take photos, signed up with Flickr. She speaks out loud, imagining that beautiful visitant, whoever she is, standing there in front of her, for she feels too shy to speak directly to God:

  “I did a lot today. I resisted that f-f-fatigue that makes me want to lie down and not move, and I went downtown. I wasn’t sure I could make that trip and back and buy a camera. And on such a crappy day too. But I did. And I did more. I even took pictures. I signed up for F-f-flickr. And I just noticed that I’m three-quarters through my song, my songwriting course. I’m probably like the slowest student he’s ever had,” she smiles wryly. “But he’s cool with it. It’s so, so nice not having s-s-someone judging you, saying get on with your life. Just encouraging you and cheering you on and telling you you’re doing great. I think I’m starting to do more. Maybe this illuminated therapy really is working.”

  You are in my care.

  She smiles and closes her eyes, not noticing that for the first day, for the first night in years she isn’t irritated.

  ~~~*~~~