DO WE NOT BLEED

Posted by piermar2 on July 28, 2025
Posted in: Culture, Death, Family, Insights, LifeAfter, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized.

— AND THERE ARE MANY WAYS OF BLEEDING —
I almost “lost it” and needed to reflect.

KEY CONCERNS (in no particular order):
Treason, home, recognition, vulnerability, racism, no descendants, softness, the edge of being involved in life, culture, science, my many books & treasures, my current work…
Being an exile – having to flee after having being attacked for being “a Jew” (in post-war Paris/France) – in the shadow of “much targeted killing” and my grandmother gassed in Auschwitz, having had to go from teaching position to teaching position to none, and a father’s under-appreciated major artistic body of work, to safeguard and valorise it…
And plants, animals, insects, humans, land & seascapes – and what we can’t see – all interconnected like family.
And noise & pollution as poisons, like human-centered stupidity.
Deep ecology, the intelligence of kindness (which reminds me of a gentle & kind nihilism).

A lot has been said a while back in an interview I gave in a Bolivian paper (The Void and its Pressure).

This is NOT a commercial website – I make no cent from using your precious image. Please ask gently if you do not allow this. Chukran.

the end of speech

Posted by piermar2 on June 20, 2025
Posted in: Uncategorized.

It seems that, at some point,
(unless one is interacting with medical staff/experts)
THERE IS NOTHING TO SAY
[there may be another picture replacing this one at some point, but who knows?]

NO! (again)

Posted by piermar2 on March 30, 2025
Posted in: Uncategorized.


Between the multiplicity of symptoms/ailments, the lack of effective healthcare, it is absolutely impossible to engage in conversations, nor to even answer the question “how are you?”

The only place to be, so it seems, is
TOTALLY SILENT.
— after having said all of this —

[I am writing an important and related text called NOW HERE on my main site]

Bloody…

Posted by piermar2 on February 5, 2025
Posted in: Death, Doctors, System.

Avec le sang, pensa-t-il surgissent souvent quantité de désagréments…
With blood, he thought, often tons of unpleasant things seem to surge…
— Henri Michaux (Un homme paisible/A quiet man – mentioned earlier)

This is not about brain-bleed – sorry – it is about my prostate bleeding, but the link to blood is clear.

[Yes, following a prostate reduction, after riding my bicycle for more than an hour, I had bled before. This time, after riding only twenty minutes I started bleeding, and instead of stopping twelve hours later, it has been more than four days, and it is still bleeding, with clots obstructing at time the urine flow]

Hence, and to bring up a larger issue, one I have already brought up earlier, it is about the fact that one can be fully insured, and have “decent doctors” and yet, to use a worn-out expression, one can fall between the cracks.

Or, be bleeding for more than 24 hours – and have a blood-clot obstruct the flow of urine for 15 minutes – and the system is not set up so you can actually speak to a doctor to have a sense that one is “in good hands.”

Yes, some emails were exchanged through MyChart. but the major questions – should I be getting to a hospital or not – were not answered… until in the evening finally, an assistant called back to say “go to an ER.”
Too many efforts on my part (a great many phone calls & messages…), for such a poor return.

Toilet bowls eyeballs (+ blood clots)

The end-result of such a day is that after feeling like a beggar all day for trying to get some clarity and actual guidance, and NOT getting it, the end result is that one knows all too clearly that…

… THE SYSTEM IS NOT WORKING.

And that one is just another insignificant pawn in this – is it deadly? – comedy.

Off-Road -> The Cracks

Posted by piermar2 on March 13, 2024
Posted in: Culture, Doctors, Insights, Post-Rehab, TheBodyChallenge, TheMindChallenge.

No Man’s Land (Beyond Regular Communication)
[Could be “no woman’s land” and “no child’s land” – and all of the other animals, plants (I was just told of  Stefano Mancuso’s work), and what we, in an easy way, call “nature.”
A lot of people do try their best to do their very best. This is not what this is about.]


We speak, like on a freeway, we honk, wave, flash our lights and move forward, until… we don’t.
It is NOT “the road less traveled” – it is just “something” less talked about. Something we cannot “just discuss” – even friends listen without necessarily getting it, so yes doctors and nurses, surprisingly even less.

Beyond the words, beyond the diagnostics, the visual evidence, the charts and the scales, there is something else.

That is where I am, and what I want to address as pointedly/directly as possible.
I have heard a great many stories of patients going from doctor to doctor, from specialist to specialist, and the great many tests performed.
In my eyes, there is a very clear place that has to do with the fact that
whatever one describes is not properly heard.
Is it a lack of communication skills, the amount of time allocated for the exchanges, the poverty of the means to assess “what is wrong” and the fact that the symptoms may be too complex to fit a regular exchange in a doctor’s office?

To be continued – there is much more to this.

For those who many be interested in this: the Glasgow Coma Scale rates me a 15 (Mild) but because of a so-called   “Complicated Head Injury,” I end up in the Moderate category.
What’s good about this? It allows me to acknowledge as per French rabbi Delphine Horvilleur’s recent book title, “comment ça va pas?” – how is it not going?.
Maybe all we need is some kind recognition, the details to be elaborated somehow, IF the right context exists somewhere, for that kind of  exchange/communication.

LET IT BE ALWAYS BEYOND THE REACH
like an asymptote, but with fellow passengers onboard
ACKNOWLEDGING “THAT”

The nowhere that’s here.

Posted by piermar2 on February 16, 2024
Posted in: Culture, Insights, LifeAfter.

At some point, speaking leads nowhere.
Communication has reached its limit.

It is not about speaking different languages but there is a limit to what words can convey.
When the symptoms change from hour to hour, and the “how-are-you” assumes a response, to coin an answer leads to something that is clearly not valid anymore, and a waste of time.

How do we point to air, to what is too subtle for words/speech?

“Being, presence… ” is all that is needed.
But of course, like with most important things in life, those words are only pointing fingers, not the “thing itself.”

Did I forget to say goodbye?

Posted by piermar2 on January 30, 2024
Posted in: BrainScience, Death, LifeAfter, TheBleed.

None of this is a call for help, nor is it any kind of alarm.
It is just another reflection about a particular state.

While I can write, I write – there may be a time when writing is no longer available.
Am I trying to be ahead of my time? I remember thinking very clearly that “the true avant-garde is death” – that’s what I thought  in my twenties
This is not the topic here.

It has to do with the fact that there is a possibility that what one calls “brain fog” appears, and remains.
I had a few hours of it today & I wondered how thick it would get. And how persistent it would be.
But here I am, typing all of this down: the panic may not be warranted, but my concern is as thick as the isolation I found myself caught by.

It is not a matter of politeness.

Part of this thick haze consists of the distance between the medical words (the diagnostics) I hear, and the subtle yet concrete fluctuating sensations I am feeling.
All of this comes and goes, and I remain. For now.

“LIMPING” – towards Conversations with a big C.

Posted by piermar2 on January 25, 2024
Posted in: Insights, LifeAfter, Post-Rehab, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized.

What do we do after a major crisis? We are here but we are also somewhere else.
What remains is a state where simple answers do not exist anymore.
Someone asks “how are you,” and it is absolutely impossible to answer – cf. below Robert Frost on voting.

Language as a whole seems to belong to a “universe of scoundrels.” Not that anyone has any bad intentions, but non-conscious exchanges – when normalcy is assumed (which is most of the time) – turns the limping into some kind of consolation dance.

“Insouciance” or “what-me-worry” was left behind.