Disability and Illness in Arts-Informed Research: Moving Toward Postconventional Representations
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Chapter 3:  A Kind of Response
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A Kind of Response

We do not have to establish the primary principle: that the thought of the heart is the thought of images, that the heart is the seat of imagination, the imagination is the authentic voice of the heart so that if we speak from the heart we must speak imaginatively.

—Hillman (1992, p. 4)

Theory, at best, is a flexible wondering about the world. Théoria, from the Latin, involves “a looking at, a contemplation, speculation” (Guralnik, 1982, p. 1475). What are we looking at, and what is looking at us?

I sit in my rocking chair and close my eyes for a moment. Hear my chair echo my age, the sounds of two bodies, wood and bone laughter. Open my eyes; a ray of light reveals a cascade of dust motes.

When I speak, I awaken to a vagueness, which creates distress, my body is heavy. I have become thick and dull with the loss of the presence of words. I mourn their ruin and my indifference.

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Language and words lose their way in my anaesthetised body. Racing to the library, I choose three of the weightiest etymological dictionaries