Where Life
Is Rolling
After the book, there was no sense of relief.
Rather, there was silence, in which everything else became audible. The idea of
a marathon—around which plans and expectations had been built for a while—began
to fall apart. Not dramatically, without loud gestures—it simply became clear
that this was not the right vector for now. Perhaps not a cancellation forever,
but a pause—a pause that was honest.
Meanwhile, life continued moving in a very
material direction. I bought an apartment. Not as a symbol of success, but as a
necessity for stability. A place where one can exist w
ithout explanations.
Where the walls know more about me than most people do.
A
Wheelchair Attachment: Expanding Space
Over time, the wheelchair stopped being a
static object. An attachment appeared—a technical extension of body and will.
It gave speed, range, and a sense of route. With it, the city became not a set
of obstacles, but a map of possibilities. Spontaneity emerged: you can simply
go out and ride, without calculating every meter in advance.
The attachment changed not only the mechanics
of movement, but also the inner state. A sense of control and autonomy
arose—one that is hard to overestimate. This is not about escaping reality, but
about engaging in a dialogue with it on equal terms.
Travel
as a Form of Thinking
Traveling in a wheelchair is a special way of
seeing the world. The road becomes more attentive, slower, deeper. Details come
into focus that usually slip by unnoticed: street inclines, surface textures,
people’s reactions, the rhythm of space.
Each trip is not only a movement through geography, but a shift of the internal point of assembly. New cities, new routes, new situations teach flexibility and trust in oneself. Travel ceases to be an escape and becomes a mode of presence.
Everyday
Joy
Joy in everyday life is not always loud.
Sometimes it lies in the fact that the day worked out, the route was passable,
the conversation warm, and the body cooperative—as much as possible. These
moments do not require heroism, yet it is precisely they that form resilience.
In this sense, the wheelchair disciplines
attention: it teaches you to notice the good immediately, without postponing
it. Because “later” is an abstraction, while “now” is always concrete.
The Life
of a Wheelchair
Over time, the chair accumulates history.
Traces of trips, minor breakdowns, modifications, improvements—all of this
turns it into a chronicle of life. It knows more routes than many maps, and
more pauses than one might think.
The life of a wheelchair is a life in motion,
even if that motion outwardly seems limited. It contains dynamics, choice,
risk, and the joy of discovery. And in this sense, it is no less full than any
other.
The
Transformation of the Marathon Idea
The idea of a marathon did not disappear—it
changed form. A physical race gave way to intellectual and engineering
movement. The focus shifted from muscular endurance to endurance of thought.
Thus emerged the idea of an exoskeleton as a continuation of the body—not
biological, but constructed.
The exoskeleton became not a compensation for
loss, but a new project of movement, in which body and technology negotiate
rather than compete.
Neural
Network Coding and Models of Movement
Work with movement moved into the space of
neural network coding. An interest arose in modeling motion in
three-dimensional space, in describing gestures, trajectories, and forces
through mathematical structures. Movement became a problem of data
representation.
Vector embeddings of an n-dimensional space
made it possible to think of the body as a coordinate system rather than a set
of limitations. Even if the central nervous system cannot be restored to its
original state, it can be bypassed, supplemented, redefined through algorithms
and external interfaces.
Creating an exoskeleton in this context is an
act of programming movement. Not an attempt to “return things to how they
were,” but the creation of a new way of being in space. Code becomes the
mediator between intention and action. And in this, an unexpected freedom
appears: movement is no longer rigidly tied to biology.
Even a damaged CNS is not a final point. It
becomes source data for another architecture—hybrid, distributed, engineered.
Stabilization
and Rollback
What also matters is that the body ceased to
be exclusively a territory of losses. Multiple sclerosis stabilized. The EDSS
score rolled back to six points. This is not a victory in the conventional
sense, but a stability on which one can build.
Stabilization created room for planning. Not
out of hope, but out of fact: the condition is no longer declining, which means
time appears. Time for projects, for technologies, for complex ideas that
require not a sprint, but prolonged attention.
Instead
of a Conclusion
If this essay speaks about anything at all, it
may be about the fact that movement is not always directed upward or forward.
Sometimes it turns inward—deeper, into the inverse space of one’s own
experience. The book became one form of this movement. The apartment, another. The
chair, a third.
Life
does not necessarily roll downhill—sometimes it rides. And at this stage, that
is enough.
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