… If you want to go to church, to the theatre, or to the restaurant, you must call a gondola. It must be a paradise for cripples, for verily a man has no use for legs here.
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Venice was a paradise for my cripple.
For the first time, Tito could move around freely, by vaporetto.
Contrary to Mark Twain, he also used his legs.
Accompanied only by someone we hired to help him up and down the bridges, Tito went for daily four-hour walks with his walker, passing churches, theatres and restaurants.
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According to Mark Twain, Venice by night seemed “crowned once more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago.” In the shadows, it was easy to imagine the city with its Desdemonas and its Shylocks, with its “plumed gallants and fair ladies,” with its “noble fleets and victorious legions returning from the wars.”
By day, though, Venice showed only signs of its fall from power. Mark Twain described it as “decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and commerceless — forgotten and utterly insignificant.” In the glare of day, the Queen of the Adriatic looked like “an overflowed Arkansas town.”
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Tito walked through Venice exactly as if he were walking through an overflowed Arkansas town, oblivious to Venice’s glory or its fall from power. What mattered to him was being able to walk alone. Paradise was a place in which Tito could walk without my help.
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In the previous image: Tito and Nico during a flood in Venice.
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Christopher Nolan had cerebral palsy.
He published his memoir, Under the Eye of the Clock, when he was only twenty-two years old.
When his book won a prize, he remarked: “You all must realize that history is now in the making. Crippled man has taken his place on the world’s literary stage.”
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I was also working on a memoir about Tito.
My plan was to end the memoir with the story of an ascent of Mount Everest, which Tito would conquer three hundred and fifty-nine steps at a time.
My crippled man would take his place on the world’s stage. History in the making.
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Christopher Nolan was born mute.
During his early years, he could communicate only by looking up. When he did that, his parents knew that he was saying “Yes.”
That’s right: all he could say was “Yes.”
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When he was eleven, Christopher Nolan’s father strapped a “unicorn stick” to his head.
From that moment on, Christopher Nolan began to communicate in writing, tapping with the stick on the keyboard of a typewriter.
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(Picture Credit 1.21)
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In the previous image: Christopher Nolan and his father, Joseph Nolan.
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In his memoir, Christopher Nolan described how the other boys at Mount Temple School in Dublin saw him.
They called him “weirdo,” “eejit” and “mental defective.” They wondered “if the cripple wore a nappy.” They discussed his “lack of intelligence.” They decided he shouldn’t be in a normal school.
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Christopher Nolan’s isolation at Mount Temple School inspired R.E.M. to write a shamelessly sentimental song, asking: Why the other kids were always looking at him? Why did they laugh at him? What could he say? What could he do?
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After seeing him every day, the boys at Mount Temple School eventually got used to Christopher Nolan.
It was the same with Tito.
The newsagent in Campo San Vio saw him every day. The old greengrocer saw him every day. The barber saw him every day. My wife’s friend saw him every day. The man with the two dogs saw him every day.
The inhabitants of our overflowed Arkansas town got used to Tito.
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My plan to conquer the world with Tito three hundred and fifty-nine steps at a time soon collapsed.
Now my one goal was to limit myself to a small area that went from the Ponte dell’Accademia to Campo della Salute and was bounded by the Grand Canal and by the Fondamenta delle Zattere.
Tito had memorized all the uneven paving stones in our “town.” His knowledge of those uneven paving stones kept him from falling. Instead of forging new paths, I wanted him to forge only old paths. Instead of entering unknown territory, I wanted him to enter only known territory.
My world now ended wherever Tito’s steps ended.
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As Gertrude Stein said of Ezra Pound: “[He] still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village,” and the same was true of me.
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In the previous image: Tito on the Fondamenta delle Zattere.
During the autumn and winter, he could walk to school on his own, using the Venice Marathon ramps, which the city council kept on the bridges especially for him.
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At Mount Temple School, Christopher Nolan studied with members of U2.
They dedicated a song to him, entitled “Miracle Drug.”
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The song is a homage to the medicine that eased Christopher Nolan’s spasticity, helping him to type with his head.
The name of the medicine: Lioresal.
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In “Miracle Drug,” U2 quote from the Gospel according to Matthew: “I was a stranger and you took me in.”
The quote comes from the passage about the Final Judgement in which Jesus Christ, like Josef Mengele, sends off to the right those who deserve to be saved and to the left those who deserve to burn in everlasting fire.
According to U2, the scientists and doctors who developed Lioresal deserved to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
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Tito never took Lioresal. He never took any medicine. No one was capable of developing a medicine that would prove useful to him. Christopher Nolan’s miracle drug was developed ninety years ago. People with cerebral palsy are still being treated with drugs developed ninety years ago.
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(Picture Credit 1.22)
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In the previous image: Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Lou Costello is transformed into a laboratory mouse.
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Two years after Tito was born, scientists at the Medical College of Georgia placed stem cells in laboratory mice with induced cerebral-palsy symptoms and succeeded in achieving a partial improvement in their motor skills.