Re: disability: I was capable of a 55:05 5k freestyle swimming and now my best is 300yds with open turns. I suppose disability is relative, yet many people can’t swim a 200 and they aren’t disabled. I say consider early and late Picasso. I can’t swim 200 at my 5k pace, and, I should add, it’s not exactly my body, it’s my mind. I can’t paint all that well and there are no early works of mine.

Here’s the point: whether art or science, I believe disease should be tracked and participated in not only by doctors and medical staff yet also by the patient.

I have only what I publish at strigsci.com and my index card file cabinet is empty despite years of medicated study; crazy, strange or even offensive as my notes about things like 9/11 might have been as I experienced my first decade of illness and sublimation from 1998 on. And it wasn’t easy graduating from UMass by 2004 with my bachelor of science in natural resources and the environment.

I’m not saying abstraction is the only way. I’m saying that I for one didn’t anticipate much of my present when I thought I controlled my past. And, the future therefore remains my fantasy.