"Instead, I was carried to the infirmary, where they fed me crushed ice for my ravaged tongue, and bland chicken-noodle soup with crackers that I could hardly get down. After this seizure, aside from from aching joints, aside from my burning, bitten tongue, I felt more ethereal, deeply frightening sensation, a shattering of an organ without a name. I lay there thinking of Irving swiveling his huge hips, of the flattened sandwich, of the way I'd lost my head, and I began contemplating a different path. But it is one thing to understand, and another to overcome.
In the crank-up hospital bed with its crib side panels, I sketched out a campaign of self-improvement. I made iron resolutions, swearing off the trance of flames and lies of shining convenience. I got high just thinking about hard work, climbing the corporate ladder, wearing the a blue suit in a city where no one knew who I was. But my inflamed tongue was a thick, foreign thing in my mouth, and I feared it would never be able to shape true words now that I wanted desperately to speak them." -Michael Blaine
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/274
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