All my cells thirst

“I’m slipping, I’m slipping away
like sand
slipping through fingers. All
my cells
are open, and all
so thirsty. I ache and swell
in a hundred places, but mostly in the middle of my heart.”

— from Rilke's Book of Hours, I 23, translated by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy chrysalis

I found this snippet from Rilke's Book of Hours on a literal snippet of paper tucked between two dictionaries on my study shelf (I was looking for my Esperanto and Klingon dictionaries, if you must know). I have no idea where I came upon it, on the back is a photograph of a caterpillar chrysallis and something about undifferentiated cells. No idea, either, when or why I might have clipped it, nor how it had found its way onto that shelf of rarely consulted references (when was the last time I used Klingon?).

Meanwhile, unknown to me, cells in my substantia nigra were slipping away, like sand through an hourglass. Dying. When were a third of them gone?  a half? I didn't know. I didn't notice, until I did. Most of them are now gone, swept away by whatever molecular cleaning crew keeps station in my midbrain. 

I imagine this little spot in my brain, gradually growing dark. The lights flicking off one by one. Meanwhile all my cells thirst for what was being poured out, longing for the messages that once flowed on a tide of dopamine, but no longer come.

I ache, in my body, in my soul...and in my heart...for what I lost, all unknowing.

---

Estimates are that between 60 and 80% of the dopamine producing cells in the brain are dead by the time symptoms of Parkinson's disease manifest. The substantia nigra is just above the brain stem, deep in the middle of your brain. The tissue that comprises the substantia nigra is darker than the rest of the brain's tissue, hence the name.

Rilke's original German has no reference to cells, but speaks instead of senses thirsting in different ways: “Ich habe auf einmal so viele Sinne, die alle anders durstig sind.”