Jim Harris
Appearances
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Like, the timescale is a little fuzzy, but not long. I think my friend came running.
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Maybe he was right by my side when I came back, and then he left to go get help. And I was there by myself for a bit, and maybe that's what I'm remembering. Like, I feel like the recall is a little blurry.
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I felt fairly calm and resolute in that moment. One thing I've learned about myself is that I tend to have a fair amount of composure in really stressful moments. And then in the aftermath, once the acute crisis has moved on, then all the flood of emotions come in. But I remember being backboarded and carried for a distance. I remember cracking jokes while being backboarded. Oh, really?
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One of the things I remember being a little like joking cynically about was the people, friends, would encourage me to make more art beforehand. And I felt like I never made time or space for it in life and didn't prioritize it. But it was something that, like, for years, people would gently and kindly give me this encouragement. It's like, you should do more of that.
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And I was, like, resistant to it and preoccupied elsewhere. And so on this backboard, I remember being like, well, I guess I've got more time for art now. Wow.
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I mean, there's probably some psychological coping there. Yeah. But yeah, I think that it seems like that gallows humor is... comes up a lot for people in really sad and gory and traumatic times.
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I don't think there was much night staff on duty. I think I got left on the, on like the rigid backboard overnight and not moved to a hospital bed till the morning.
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The medical situation was so far above my level of Spanish competency. I leaned really heavily on Google Translate.
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I think I really, out of naivete, made up my mind that I was going to have a recovery and use all the resources and all the willpower that I had at my disposal to shift the course of the outcome. And I wonder if I would have had that same sort of drive and optimism if I had known right away or knew what I know now about spinal cord injuries.
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My neurosurgeon was very circumspect in not giving me any definitive prognosis. He was like, well, we'll just have to wait and see. Like, this doesn't look great. Like, these circumstances here are really not ideal. But I was never, I wasn't told that I wasn't going to walk again.
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It was a slow shift from wheelchair to walker. And by about seven or eight months post-injury, I really could only walk a few steps with a walker at a time. I was living in an old folks home where my parents had been able to rent themselves an apartment, and I was staying with them.
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Yeah, I was the youngest person there by decades. Wow.
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Oh, that was absolutely surreal and a little bit comedic. People who have moved to this assisted living facility are all in this sort of a degenerative phase of life where they've moved to this facility to help...
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soften that landing as they lose different degrees of independence bit by bit so I was like a minor celebrity there the first time I came down through the lobby which was a real congregating area came down to the lobby with a walker instead of a wheelchair I got a standing ovation oh so people there were so sweet to me were you in a relationship at the time of your injury
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I was in a seven-year relationship that ended about two weeks prior to my injury.
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It was. It was a long and committed relationship that was really wonderful. And eventually we got engaged, and that engagement brought up all these questions of what married life would look like for each of us. And through that, we realized that we had some very diverging aspirations. At the time, I was traveling a ton and was on this very adventure-y track of traveling the world.
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My girlfriend at the time said, really wanted me around home more and was really kind of shifting more into like wanting more domesticity and safety and security that were really normal and sane things to want in her early 30s. And I was not there yet. And I didn't want to give up this life of travel and adventure and being footloose. We went to some couples counseling.
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And the nail in the coffin after a number of sessions was this therapist saying something like, you two are both pretty articulate. You're both fairly self-aware. I think you can talk through this specific instance of this disagreement. But ultimately, maybe there's some differences in values here that are going to keep coming up and keep causing conflict.
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And this is going to be something that you two keep dealing with year after year. And she's like, a lot of times in my experience, couples with these sort of differences, it doesn't work out for them long term. And then she added, maybe you guys get five more really good years out of it. And those last words just felt gutting. I remember we went to a coffee shop and cried in each other's arms.
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So we're going to just keep doing this until we can't stand each other? until we're really, really resentful and bitter. So in some ways that separation, I think there was some mutual compassion of like, maybe there's something better out there for you. And then I left on this trip to Patagonia that we'd been planning for a year and a half.
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And all of a sudden that trip took on a different sort of texture for me of like, well, now I get to go grieve and self-reflect and do this out of the spotlight of social media or shared friend circles. Like I can go have a month of something like near solitude and have really something else to focus my mind on and not have to have a Facebook breakup or something.
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That was a, maybe she was just at the end of a rope with us. I'm not sure. She's like, you guys are not getting a hint here.
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We did. We stayed close through that first year of my recovery. So we weren't dating any longer. Um,
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There was some real reassessment and introspection around whether we would be more compatible now that I was wheelchair-bound, that one of the conflicts had been how much time I was away and the sort of dangerous activities I was engaging with, these sort of dangerous mountaineering photo and video jobs I was being offered online.
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Now that I was kind of housebound, I was like, oh, maybe we're more compatible now than we were before. And then I think after some reflection, we both came to the conclusion that our initial decision to separate was probably still for the best.
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Yeah, I would sit on the ground, but then getting back up off the ground was a little bit of a struggle. It wasn't until after spinal cord injury that I was like, I have no idea how I used to stand up off the ground. This is something I'd never really paid attention to. But the way I had learned to stand up was sort of like...
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being on all fours and pushing my butt up towards the sky and getting in kind of a downward dog position and then slowly walking my hands back one at a time towards my feet until I was sort of bent over and then grabbing onto Walker or a person and standing the rest of the way upright.
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I remember trying to like have this dialogue with my body, which was something that I had become really familiar with in that spinal cord state of kind of like, negotiating with appendages and muscles that felt like they were part of me, but also that I didn't really have full agency. And there was like a, like, hey leg, can you do this thing? Can you help me?
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Can you, let's all do this together now. And movement through spinal cord injury began feeling like a lot more of a team effort versus like whatever the center of my consciousness is extending out to like my fingertips and toes. And so I remember being like, okay, okay, muscles, can we take a deep breath and can we unlock, can we stop doing that?
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And as a part of that, I was kind of trying to shuffle my feet and being able to shift body weight and flex and unflex muscles voluntarily was a way to stop these spasms from happening, to kind of stop this sort of muscle vibration sort of pattern.
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And in that process, all of a sudden I realized there were muscles that had not worked since the time of my accident that all of a sudden I could voluntarily control.
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It was mysterious, and it wasn't really even the center of the attention at the time because there was, like, this amazing sunset happening. There was a headlining act playing, like, the crescendo of their set. There's, like, thousands of people around. Like, there was, like, a lot of stimulus overload happening, right? Yeah. But I do remember having conversations about it, like,
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Hey, guys, look what I can do. And you know, my physical therapist had been assigned to my case was there and had seen my progress for months. And all of a sudden, like, look, look what I look what I can do. And she was like, Oh, did that? Did that like just start happening in the last couple weeks? And I was like, No, it just started happening like, right now.
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It did seem like it got weaker as that psychedelic experience kind of came to a conclusion, like that ability to control that muscle was not as strong as it had been a few hours earlier. So I wasn't sure if that meant that it was from the psilocybin itself or just from fatigue.
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But it really wasn't until like maybe the next day where it seemed like there might have been a cause and effect between the psilocybin dose and these muscles that still were working the next day. I was like, also still a possibility. It's all a wild coincidence.
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And that just happened to be the exact moment that some nerve pathway that had been healing for eight or nine months finally made the connection.
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Yeah, exactly. If I'm being really scrupulously analytical about it, that would be a reasonable thing to say, right? Like, I feel like I have a feeling, an inner sense, an emotional feeling or suspicion that it was related to this psilocybin experience.
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But I think kind of from a really hard rationalist science-y view, there's an argument that this was like, those were two unconnected events that just happened to co-occur.
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nerve recovery from a severe accident like mine is thought to more or less wrap up after about 24 months. And so by about two years out, whatever disability someone has is probably what they're going to be left with for life. And so that was a milestone that I had in my head. And right as that two-year anniversary hit, I was laid off from my job, and the 2016 election had just happened.
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I broke up with someone that I'd been dating, and a pet died, and it just felt like there was all this kind of like series of...
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tragedies that any one of would have been hard and then in aggregate was really destabilizing and part of that I ended up in this depressive state where it felt like compared to the life that I had led before my accident pre-injury that nothing was ever going to be that good again that I had like hit some sort of a high water mark and that things were never going to be that happy that joyful that connected that successful ever again
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And that felt pretty despondent. Like, wait, what is the point of any of this if it's just a downhill slide towards the grave from here?
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It's hard to answer what a definitive end point for that was, but it felt like a long, slow crawl back out of a hole. In some ways, I still face some of those challenges, though I don't think I'm depressed right now. But I think there was a real reckoning with some of my worldviews and values where some of the ways that I understood myself felt like I hit a dead end.
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And it's an uncomfortable shift to find new ways to see the world, new ways to find oneself.
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Yeah, I did. I started seeing a therapist. I saw a psychiatrist and was prescribed antidepressants. I was really only on them for a few months. and then weaned off of them and had begun building some self-care routines and structure into my life that seemed to support me better than those drugs did.
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It wasn't that I didn't like them. It was just like it didn't feel like a solution. It just felt like a Band-Aid of like this is absolutely helping, but this is like palatative. This isn't. something that's offering me a new way to move to the world. And being on antidepressants for life didn't seem like something that I wanted. But I do think they really supported me in
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an awful lot of journaling and reflection and contemplation and starting a personal meditation practice. I've attended meditation retreats and some spiritual retreats and like engaged with the things that would have seemed very woo to me prior to my injury. And then since then have found ways to be like, this doesn't have to be
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the only lens that I view the world through, but maybe there's some real value in having a sense of spirituality, of having a place for mysticism, of seeing the world in a way that's a little bit more alive than a really rationalist viewpoint might describe it.
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Life still felt difficult and adrift, kind of without the vibrancy or the sense of purpose and meaning that I felt like I'd had previously. So that's how I ended up. signing up to go drink ayahuasca with a shamanic group with some gentlemen who had flown up from Peru.
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I feel like I sort of had a fitful start, like my body's reaction to that ayahuasca. I didn't feel like I experienced a physical recovery from those ceremonies. The first night I came in with some jittery nerves and an awful lot of hopes and expectations and apprehensions, and nothing happened for me. And that felt frustrating and a bit alienating.
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I had the same little Dixie cup of weird tea as everybody around me, and other people around me are clearly experiencing something that I'm not. But I still feel very... very sober, very grounded in like consensus reality. Things have not shifted. I don't feel different. I feel impatient and a little let down. And I've made all this time and effort to be here. And like, it's not working.
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I was hoping for some sort of salvation and it's not here. And then on the second night of ceremony, I had experienced like 90 minutes of transcendent bliss and that didn't feel like it answered any of my big existential questions that I felt like I had walked into the space with. But it did feel like a real beacon that it was a search worth continuing, like a inquiry that was just at the start.
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I didn't. I didn't. I feel like I went, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but just had like a kind of extended feeling that was like orgasmic in some ways, but not in any sexual way. Just like a real feeling of joy and bliss in my heart and in my tummy and in ways that is... It feels vivid to think back to it and it's really hard to put into words.
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There was a solar eclipse in 2017, and a young man who I was friends with and who I looked up to drove to the path of totality. And then that night, after leaving wherever he'd viewed the eclipse from, I was in a car accident and passed away. And I was pretty gutted by that.
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And one of the things that I looked up to him for was he was part of this men's group, this closed group, where he was, I think, the youngest person by a fair margin. And I really wanted to be part of it. But they weren't interested in taking new members. They had this small collection of people.
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And so then at his wake, somebody said something to me about like, oh, I always want to be part of that men's group. And I was like, wait, he did? And the two of us started chatting and somebody else nearby was like, oh, yeah, that men's group sounds awesome. I wish I could be like, wait, wait, what's your phone number? We can do this on our own.
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Yeah, we literally called it the young men's group.
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Yeah, for a while there, it was pretty seasonal. It turns out that living in a mountain town, people really prioritize outdoor activities, especially in the summertime when it's light till 9 p.m.
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So we'll be like six months a year. We'll meet like every other week on a Wednesday night and have some preset topic that's sort of the focus of thought and contemplation and sharing and reflection and feedback.
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Yeah. I walk with a pretty significant limp. I feel like I often move like a man-sized toddler. Sometimes I feel really self-conscious about that, or really envious of seeing people who are dancing and are really good dancers. I've never been a good dancer, but that hasn't stopped me from feeling envious of the way their bodies move. I have some different sensation from one side to the other.
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where one side of one half of my abdomen and one leg has better balance and better muscle activation, but very little hot or cold sensation, very little pain sensation. And the other side has much better pain sensation and much better hot and cold sensation, but the muscles don't work nearly as well. My balance doesn't work nearly as well.
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So there's some kind of like, almost like a little bit of a yin-yang opposites because of the way Because of the way neurology routes information through a spinal cord and because one side of my spinal cord is slightly more damaged than the other.
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Mm-hmm, yeah. I've been dating somebody which is at our seven-year anniversary.
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I think maybe just about the longest relationship for either of us.
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Oh, it's great. Relationship life is so lovely. Both of us have kind of had some hard twists to our adult lives, and I think that's... helped to shape both of us into people who are interested in self-reflection and kind of interested in who we are inside and what we value and what we can really take ownership of and what we can let go of.
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And so some of that kind of introspective stuff has formed some of the foundation of the relationship. And it continues to feel really good.
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And then as I went to, like, get up and, like, prop myself on my elbows, I realized that I couldn't feel or move anything from sternum down.
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I remember the sunset that night being just phenomenal. It would have been a stunning sunset if I'd been totally sober. But in this altered state, I remember the grass looking really, really vivid and kind of having this interesting pattern. I remember the sky looking phenomenally colorful and like it had these sort of subtle patterns and clouds that seemed to have repeating shapes.
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Like inside my body, I remember the feeling of like having an increased awareness of my internal organs, like kind of like feeling my guts in a way that I didn't usually notice them. Then kind of in this altered state was like shifting my feet around and flexing, unflexing muscles.
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In that state, all of a sudden, I realized there were muscles that had not worked since the time of my accident that all of a sudden I could voluntarily control.
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Doing things outdoors with other people felt like an opportunity to have camaraderie that could feel hard for me to find elsewhere in life. There's an element of taking in some enjoyment and watching other people's capability, like watching somebody else who's good at the activity that you're doing. but also not really in a competitive setting, like most team-based sports matches or something.
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More like, hey, let's try and hike to the top of this mountain together. There's still a requirement for some self-sufficiency, but also there's this camaraderie of this shared experience that feels really potent.
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It's a really exhilarating sensation to be pulled by this invisible force of this atmosphere moving around you. Like if you've ever flown a kite, and it's maybe like a little mini version of that, and you feel that tug of the kite string. But this is a big enough tug that it can, on a slippery surface, like on snow with skis, it'll pull you across the snow.
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And so there's this moment of acceleration when the wind first catches the kite. And then there's an awful lot of interactivity where there's a handlebar that's used almost like, you know, marionette strings where the kite's very maneuverable, where you can steer it side to side.
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And so the skill set or part of the skill set is around this attention to where the wind is in relation to your body and in relation to the kite.
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There is an element of surrender to it. Like I do a lot of river paddling and river activities have a lot of that where you're like moving with the current and you can learn to You can learn to read it and use it and navigate through it, but ultimately it's kind of this collaboration between the person who's paddling, the person in the water, and then the river itself.
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And the river itself is this enormously powerful kinetic force that is fun to interact with, and it's also really humbling in a way that There often feels like a spiritual element of like being interacting with a force that's a large and powerful thing that maybe I don't have awareness of in my normal day to day.
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I was 32 years old. It was my last week of being 32. Uh-huh. The day that I had my spine was fused was my 33rd birthday.
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Yeah, exactly. It was like late springtime in the southern hemisphere.
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The kites that we had were quite small, just so we didn't have to carry as much weight when we weren't using them, and because we, like, weren't trying to do tricks or go 50 miles an hour. But the allure of being able to, like, use the wind to go 8 miles an hour... without having to shuffle my feet versus one mile an hour while hauling a sled full of gear was really tempting.
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Yeah, exactly. That's what we were using. That's what we intended to use them for.
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So we were out in a... large open pasture, and a big wind gust came up. The wind accelerated. It was enough that it lifted me off the ground a few feet. And I wasn't particularly panicked. There's like a big red cord that you can pull that will
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release some of the lines to the kite and it becomes almost just like a sheet in the wind instead of being something that's generating force and generating lift. It just becomes a big flapping flag attached to strings. But I didn't pull that cord. I wasn't panicked. I thought it was going to be okay and then I don't know what happened next. The friend that was with me didn't witness what happened.
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I woke up like regained consciousness lying on the ground. I realized right away that I was concussed, that I felt dazed and realized I had just lost consciousness and was regaining it. And was lucid enough to realize immediately that I was paralyzed.