In his dreams, he twirls and swirls with his toes kissing the Earth.

毎晩 空を羽ばたいている人を 私は知っています

Everything has motion, he claims, even a body as paralyzed as his own.

彼は夢の中で クルクルと舞い

This man is my father.

彼のつま先は 大地にキスをする

Three years ago, when I found out that my father had suffered a severe stroke in his brain stem,

全てのものに動きがあるんだと 彼は言います

I walked into his room in the ICU at the Montreal Neurological Institute and found him lying deathly still,

麻痺してしまった 彼の体さえも

tethered to a breathing machine.

この男性は 私の父です

Paralysis had closed over his body slowly,

三年前 私の父は

beginning in his toes, then legs, torso, fingers and arms.

重い脳卒中を発症しました

It made its way up his neck, cutting off his ability to breathe, and stopped just beneath the eyes.

発症したのは脳幹部でした

He never lost consciousness.

モントリオール神経疾患研究所の

Rather, he watched from within as his body shut down, limb by limb, muscle by muscle.

ICUにいる父の病室に入ると

In that ICU room, I walked up to my father's body,

人工呼吸器に繋がれて 死んだように動かない

And with a quivering voice and through tears, I began reciting the alphabet.

父の姿がありました

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K. At K, he blinked his eyes.

麻痺は ゆっくりと 父の体を支配しました

I began again. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I.

指先から始まり

He blinked again at the letter I, then at T, then at R, and A: Kitra.

足､胴､指､腕

He said "Kitra, my beauty, don't cry. This is a blessing."

そして首までたどり着くと

There was no audible voice, but my father called out my name powerfully.

呼吸する力を奪い

Just 72 hours after his stroke, he had already embraced the totality of his condition.

ちょうど目の下で止まりました

Despite his extreme physical state,

だから意識はあります

he was completely present with me, guiding, nurturing,

むしろ 体が動かなくなることを

and being my father as much if not more than ever before.

内側から感じていました

Locked-in syndrome is many people's worst nightmare.

麻痺が手足から筋肉へと 進んでいくのを

In French, it's sometimes called "maladie de l'emmuré vivant.

麻痺が手足から筋肉へと 進んでいくのを

Literally, "walled-in-alive disease."

ICUの病室で 私は父の体に近づくと

For many people, perhaps most, paralysis is an unspeakable horror,

震える声で 涙をながしながら

but my father's experience losing every system of his body was not an experience of feeling trapped,

アルファベットを呟きました

but rather of turning the psyche inwards, dimming down the external chatter, facing the recesses of his own mind,

A､B､C､D､E､F､G

and in that place, falling in love with life and body anew.

H､I､J､K

As a rabbi and spiritual man dangling between mind and body,

“K”を呟いたところで 父が瞬きをしたのです

life and death, the paralysis opened up a new awareness for him.

私はもう一度繰り返しました

He realized he no longer needed to look beyond the corporeal world in order to find the Divine.

A､B､C､D､E､F､G

"Paradise is in this body. It's in this world," he said.

H､I

I slept by my father's side for the first four months, tending as much as I could to his every discomfort,

今度は“I”で瞬きをしました

understanding the deep human psychological fear of not being able to call out for help.

それから“T”､“R” そして“A”

My mother, sisters, brother and I, we surrounded him in a cocoon of healing.

Kitra

We became his mouthpiece,

父はこう言いました 「キトラ､美しい娘 涙を拭きなさい

spending hours each day reciting the alphabet as he whispered back sermons and poetry with blinks of his eye.

これは神様からの恵みなんだよ」

His room, it became our temple of healing.

声は出なくとも

His bedside became a site for those seeking advice and spiritual counsel, and through us,

父は私の名前を 力強く叫んだのです

my father was able to speak and uplift, letter by letter, blink by blink.

脳卒中を発症して たった72時間で

Everything in our world became slow and tender as the din,

父はすでに全ての状況を

drama and death of the hospital ward faded into the background.

受け入れていたのです

I want to read to you one of the first things that we transcribed in the week following the stroke.

このような不自由な体になっても

He composed a letter, addressing his synagogue congregation, and ended it with the following lines:

父は存在感を示し

"When my nape exploded, I entered another dimension: inchoate, sub-planetary, protozoan.

私を導き､勇気づけ

Universes are opened and closed continually.

もしかすると これまで以上に

There are many when low, who stop growing.

父親らしい姿でした

Last week, I was brought so low, but I felt the hand of my father around me, and my father brought me back."

閉じ込め症候群とは

When we weren't his voice, we were his legs and arms.

多くの人々にとって 悪夢のようなものです

I moved them like I know I would have wanted my own arms and legs to be moved were they still for all the hours of the day.

フランスではこの病気を

I remember I'd hold his fingers near my face, bending each joint to keep it soft and limber.

“maladie de l'emmuré vivant”

I'd ask him again and again to visualize the motion,

「生きながら壁に囲まれた病気」 と呼びます

to watch from within as the finger curled and extended, and to move along with it in his mind.

多くの人々ー ほとんどの人にとって

Then, one day, from the corner of my eye, I saw his body slither like a snake,

「麻痺」とは 表現しようのない恐怖です

an involuntary spasm passing through the course of his limbs.

しかし体の全ての機能を失った父が 経験したのは

At first, I thought it was my own hallucination,

しかし体の全ての機能を失った父が 経験したのは

having spent so much time tending to this one body, so desperate to see anything react on its own.

「閉じ込められた」という 感覚ではありません

But he told me he felt tingles, sparks of electricity flickering on and off just beneath the surface of the skin.

むしろ内なる心に目を向け

The following week, he began ever so slightly to show muscle resistance.

外部の雑音を遮断し

Connections were being made.

心の奥の声と向き合ったのです

Body was slowly and gently reawakening, limb by limb, muscle by muscle, twitch by twitch.

心の奥で

As a documentary photographer, I felt the need to photograph each of his first movements like a mother with her newborn.

新たな人生と体に 恋をしていました

I photographed him taking his first unaided breath,

宗教指導者や 精神世界の存在として

the celebratory moment after he showed muscle resistance for the very first time,

心と体 生と死を行き来し

the new adapted technologies that allowed him to gain more and more independence.

麻痺は父に 新たな気付きをもたらしました

I photographed the care and the love that surrounded him.

神を見つけるには

But my photographs only told the outside story of a man lying in a hospital bed attached to a breathing machine.

肉体を通した世界は 見る必要はないと

I wasn't able to portray his story from within, and so I began to search for a new visual language,

悟ったのです

one which strived to express the ephemeral quality of his spiritual experience.

「パラダイスはこの体の中にある

Finally, I want to share with you a video from a series that I've been working on that tries to express the slow,

この体の世界にあるんだよ」と

in-between existence that my father has experienced.

私は最初の４か月間 父の横で眠りました

As he began to regain his ability to breathe,

父の不快感を取り除き

I started recording his thoughts, and so the voice that you hear in this video is his voice.

助けすら求めることができない

You have to believe you're paralyzed to play the part of a quadriplegic.

人間の心の奥にある恐怖心を 理解しようと

I don't. In my mind, and in my dreams every night I Chagall-man float over the city twirl and swirl with my toes kissing the floor.

できる限りの事をしました

I know nothing about the statement of man without motion.

私は母と兄弟姉妹たちと

Everything has motion. The heart pumps. The body heaves. The mouth moves. We never stagnate. Life triumphs up and down.

癒しの空間で父を包みました

For most of us, our muscles begin to twitch and move long before we are conscious,

私たちは父の声となり

but my father tells me his privilege is living on the far periphery of the human experience.

毎日 何時間も アルファベットを唱え

Like an astronaut who sees a perspective that very few of us will ever get to share,

父は心の声でつぶやき返し

he wonders and watches as he takes his first breaths and dreams about crawling back home.

瞬きで詩が紡がれました

So begins life at 57, he says. A toddler has no attitude in its being, but a man insists on his world every day.

父の部屋は 癒しの聖堂になりました

Few of us will ever have to face physical limitations to the degree that my father has,

父の傍らには 暖かい言葉を求める者達の

but we will all have moments of paralysis in our lives.

癒しの空間となっていき

I know I frequently confront walls that feel completely unscalable,

私たちの力を借りて

but my father insists that there are no dead ends.

一文字一文字

Instead, he invites me into his space of co-healing to give the very best of myself, and for him to give the very best of himself to me.

瞬きをするごとに

Paralysis was an opening for him.

人々の心を満たしました

It was an opportunity to emerge, to rekindle life force, to sit still long enough with himself so as to fall in love with the full continuum of creation.

私達を取り巻く全ての物が ゆっくりとやさしくなり

Today, my father is no longer locked in.

病棟のざわめき､人間ドラマ､死が

He moves his neck with ease, has had his feeding peg removed, breathes with his own lungs, speaks slowly with his own quiet voice,

かすれていきました

and works every day to gain more movement in his paralyzed body.

父が脳卒中で倒れた翌週

But the work will never be finished. As he says, "I'm living in a broken world, and there is holy work to do."

私達が初めて文字に起こしたものを ご紹介します

Thank you.

父はシナゴークの信徒に宛てて