Self-Examination

Behold.

I am not aesthetically pleasing. I had a sharp face with a large nose. Now everything broadens. I am nondescript. My hair was fine, grows coarse; was brown, grows grey. My lips split in the winter of 1980 and the dark scars remain. My right shoulder is lower than my left; the muscles holding it in place were warped when the ligaments tore in 1985. My neck hurts all the time because of this, my tendons and the sternocleidomastoid have hypertrophied over 25 years.

My fingers are like mushrooms, knobby, at odds with each other. Cupping my hands for water merely spills it inefficiently. I bruised knuckles, twisted joints, hit walls with fists one time too many. I wrote too much, and the contact points of pen and hand are shiny with elision. I have not wrinkled yet; I fear I am too parched to do that, the small scars of glass and stone like pebbles in a pond of rippling skin.

My hips creak alarmingly; I sense the firing of my knees a scant second before they sound off like pistol shots. The X-rays show no permanent damage from shoulder to ankle; even the childhood asthma and TB have left no trace. I stand relatively upright, having learnt to hide my deformities.

My legs are different. Each knee has different contours, is an imperfect reflection of its twin. My big toes are bunioned at the joint, swelling most in the afternoon, desperate nodes of compensation for flat feet. More scars line my shins and ankles, the legacy of barefoot games and bad healing. I used to have a mole beneath one sole, but it too has gone away with time.

The toe I broke, should a more alert reader inquire, still stands aloof from its peers. It had a taste of near-freedom, and now sulks and twinges in remembrance of the past.

And this is all I see, but how can I describe what I feel of me? "Much has been lost, and there is yet much to lose." "We are not now that strength which in old days..." "I am old." But it is not me that I fear, nor yet the failing of the light, but that I will be trapped in the ruins as they collapse one day.

I have gained four kilos, almost nine pounds since I was a teenager. It has not settled well. It is the same with all the books, nearly 15,000 of them; all the thoughts, far more than that; all the knowledge, so useless at times; all the memories that I kept in the hope that they might some day be something in reserve.

I thank God I have friends. Perhaps something of me will survive because of them. Perhaps they will remind me who I am, and who I might yet be. I choose, at this point, to end the examination before it does more than scratch the surface.

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Candidate takes himself too seriously. Fortunately, he does not know the rubrics by which we judge him. Then again, he would probably laugh them off. He is quite convinced that God heals all scars, and has faith that he will pass because of this. Since this is the case, I concur with the opinion of the preliminary panel. Keep his status unclear until some future time. He has been a naughty man.

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Planting rice is never fun.