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Holding opposites, and not being tempted to reduce it to one of them.
The complexity means that while the sun is shining and birds are singing, war is raging, people are dying (in December 2023 we know that too well)… and I am still feeble.
I am frail because I am still struggling – that is my state even if you would like a simple statement like “I am doing better” (so you can move onto other subjects and be truly relieved)… but my off-balance state – showering, cooking, daily victories, are exhausting tasks and challenges – implies that whatever I end up saying has to make sense to you; all of that represents some kind of front, hiding a complexity nobody has time for.
And there is still that sporadic “private sensation” – how to describe the “flutter” inside my head during the night – what to call a most unusual sensation inside my skull/cranium/head (which word to use?) – everything seems as unreliable as the flicker of a switch.

Light and darkness are in constant dialogue – when to open one’s mouth?


When you open your mouth makes a huge difference as to what you say. Five minutes later, you may say something quite different.
Are we just fleeting snapshots of ourselves?


I learned as a young man this quote by Victor Hugo (“Les Mis”!): “Vivre c’est lutter – To live is to struggle.”
Every day the words resonate in my head, but then maybe – don’t tell anyone – I am digging around to create more space in my hole – bonjour Henri Michaux!
Writing here is part of that way of dealing with what is.
But there are many layers of silence and solitude in there, and these words do not change that reality.

Words are only ABOUT it.
IT cannot be shared.
Please be here AND everywhere all of the time!

 

It does not make sense to reduce what was created following my first brain-bleed, the School of No Media to a few words, nor to any words for that matter… but a friend asked for a summary.


The shortest version:

With incantatory redundancy, the repetitive and predictable behavior of words (and images & sounds) act as formulas and cliches to make sure that the tautology (“it is true because it is true”) –  a form of personal and collective idol-worship, – will function ad infinitum.
All of this, along with the fact that we disguise our addictions as interests, became very clear after spending three weeks in an ICU, unable to communicate.
Unlearning, if possible, seems the only life-affirming goal. —-> http://SchoolOfNoMedia.com
 In the tradition of Abraham, the iconoclast… Pier Marton…”  — Sander Gilman
« Tout le malheur des hommes vient de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.» All of humanity’s trouble stems from not being able to remain at rest in a room. Blaise Pascal 1623-1662

The longer version:
Everything can be traced to a 2008 hospital ICU where I was unable to communicate: I could neither speak nor even scribble anything.
For almost three weeks, I was just a pair of eyes … Afterwards, “human activity” became as abstracted as the flow of ants appears to most of us: both somewhat erratic and having its very particular logic.
From that point on, the glance of a donkey – one specifically stepped on my foot on a narrow mountain path in Bolivia – was more eloquent than most words spoken.
An animal’s eyes, its presence seems richer than what it could say, were it to speak.
Already in the hospital, it was clear that whether a doctor, a nurse or a janitor were “present” while being with me, made a huge difference in how I perceived the interaction. Animals seem always present but humans are prone to a form of absenteeism (MIA), hiding behind words.
Speaking of which, it is not just words but images too that have a tendency to “make it look” (ha!) as if they are revealing reality, but instead, in most cases, they cover up reality.
More importantly, what we refer to as we speak, by using words, are ready-made concepts and ideas. Everything, like in a predetermined script, just falls into place and no moment is perceived on its own. All we are doing are reinforcing existing clichés. We live inside a tautology: it is true because it is true ( validating the existing system, the doxa). The ancient mould (both meanings!) just awaits our own prescribed movements.
Yes, I know: lives can be saved because of words, and writers and poets create unique sparks through their wordsmithing, and lofty or even glorious emotions can be reached through the arts, be that as it may, as the saying goes…

Bloody Thoughts

“I hold up what I know with what I do not know.” – Antonio Porchia

Rose-colored glasses await most of us who “want to feel good.” Reality though cannot be summarized by words, emoji, images, you name it.

Still:

When I fell on my bicycle, I was on my way to a pharmacy to get my Covid booster. About a month and a half later, during my “recovery,” after consulting with my GP, I went to get that particular shot, this time by walking one hour… and right by my side, this luxurious dwelling caught my eye.
I took it – stupid humans – as a kind of omen. The circle was completed this time, I did get the booster, and the “visuals” felt like a gift.

Luxurious setting, quiet street, REAL estate (as it is called!).

WORDS PLAY WITH US ALL THE TIME: (f)ALL RISK(s?)

Whether I keep updating these comments or not, depends on a few things:

1. I need to keep having something to add.

2. “Surviving” goes further… There is a blood clot in my brain. I can feel it as a particular pain in my head, sometimes more present than not.
Does it grow, is it stable? Is my blood pressure affecting it or not? It is clear: I need calm.
And sometimes, when I lie down everything spins…  Something else to get used to?

Another CATscan will reveal a variety of truths?


My GP’s Notes Around Our Meeting

An epitaph? Not very original…
Not knowing much about the future – “the curtain may drop at any time” – means not knowing much. It means that making plans & making statements is just about impossible.
Again I go back to Socrates: if I know anything, it is that I know nothing.
Good luck to everyone: please be as kind as possible with each other (and I mean animals and the planet – we are “them” too)!

Wounded

Wounds, there are many types, are like cracks.*
Some are visible, some are not. From the outside, one can misjudge the situation.
Only since the concept of “PTSD” became a reality, the remnants – what remains of trauma – can be considered “devastating” (i.e. complete “destruction” is present).
If its presence is felt, nothing normal  makes sense: conversation seems trivial and is of no use.
In certain circles, it is often discussed that you can take the Jews out of slavery, but you cannot take slavery out of the Jews.
Maybe Cervantes’ “giving time to time” does not apply here?
*Please don’t give me Leonard Cohen’s “and that’s where the light comes in” –  the crack is a break.


As I said in 1975 or so in a video piece: “what you see is not…”

My dear mother said, after learning two more languages besides her native language, that she spoke “only foreign languages.” Even her ties to the language of her childhood had faded away.
The state of being estranged is hard to convey to people who expect language to be used in the most conventional way.
Distance becomes the only way to communicate at those times. As the surrealists pleaded back in the 1920’s: Let the infinite in!

OVERCONFIDENCE!

I am responsible…
All accidents feel very stupid: if only I had done this, gone another way, etc…

In my case, I was possibly too joyous – something was excessive – I decided to take a speed bump without slowing down, why not? This was a glorious day… (cf. Fall Season post).

The key issue here is that I am responsible for being at the bottom of this hole – how it feels (bad and depressing, if I am using words – not a necessity at all!) – and I am responsible for getting out.

I will be “there” for quite some time.

Fortunately, I listen to myself (as that other dumb cliché says!): sleep a lot, walk outdoors every day, and eat and drink (water) so as to regain the great weight I have lost.
Even though I write all of this down, there is absolutely nothing to say!
BUT
I remember Jean Améry (Hans Meyer) pondering what the intellect(ual) can bring to torture (cf. At the Mind’s Limits).
Keep writing, and maybe like in a good conversation, you will discover something you  had no idea…

I remain in silence as long as possible. Silence has a great many layers…
[I dread noise – why do planes fly at 10:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.?]

I want “reality:”
words that don’t feel like they come out of some ready-made wishes, and clichés.
Music that is sparse and knows its limits… but what is reality, that elusive concept (cf. my School of No Media)?

The new stats I am watching…

Almost three weeks later, I am home!
Being home, means one’s effort to be can BE that much more REAL than in a setting where’s one future is totally dependent on a bunch of strangers, who all play their part. “Public self” has a great many limitations.

Facial hair, because for quite some time, there were other concerns.

The good
– I get my dreams back (I had not realized I had not dreamed in the hospital). It is like a friendly blanket, another “me” meeting me, regardless of the dreams. Officially I am told: REM sleep is back.
– I am like a sponge with silence: give me more!
– I sleep a lot, more than eight hours per night.
The hard
– My previous brain-bleed (cf. this site) is of no use. There is no comparison. I am even more so on my own, and more specifically: I have no idea which way is up. There is no path, no ledge onto which I could ponder anything.
The concept of healing or of any kind of roadmap is unavailable. I am there,where there is no “there.”


Making it home means one has done enough “genuflections” (passing the tests to demonstrate one is functional enough). I remember in rehab a four hour psychological evaluation starting at 8:30 a.m. where one element included the need to recall more than once a list of a great many disparate objects, and keep a friendly attitude. Towards the end of that morning, without any break, I asked if I could play on my phone some background music (Satie) to soften the hardship of these non-stop exercises. I was allowed to do so.


If one’s relationship with oneself is barely alive:
To speak (= to have to conjugate verbs) means affirming one’s ”I,” one’s identity.
When someone else wants any kind of attention – could be something as trivial as a “how are you?” – it is impossible to respond properly.  There is nobody home, nobody who could  properly answer.
If one is unpleasant to the outside world, it is because one has not yet established some kind of self.
It is impossible to speak without a well established subject, That’s why one shouts (as a way to say most indirectly: “I am not ready to engage in a conversation of selves!”).


And loud sounds and noise make themselves known as disturbances, absolutely invasive, and preventing any link to self.
Is that kind of hypersensitivity a phenomenon I should expect? Like a great many other questions, I am in the dark.

SURPRISE: “here is your book to take home” 271 pages…

Hmm… I have brain injury?! No doctor, no nurse, no one has brought up the subject, but “here is a book to read as we send you home.” – the fact that I have not read any book for quite a while seems irrelevant to them.
Unfortunately, this is representative of the way “I was handled.” I had to gather information, right and left about my condition.
Notwithstanding the actual care (surgery, wound care…)  and “vitals checking,” it has felt like I have been on my own.

I spend two and a half weeks in a hospital setting…
It is “hell” – there are so many kinds.
This one is made of:
– I am moved from one room to another but… both rooms, both men/neighbors are screaming day and night, and moaning. I cannot believe I am supposed to heal in that environment. I slowly learn that  I am in the “trauma unit,”  where trauma is king.
– I speak to three “case-managers” – someone should be supervising my healing.  All three tell me they will get back to me, but they don’t.
– By the time I leave, I have managed to communicate what I would consider to be eatable by me.
The kind of depersonalized bland cafeteria food I was given feels like being fed by a conveyor belt in a stable. I cannot imagine any kind of senior housing or nursing home food… And the lack of actual privacy.

Dinner = white bread with processed cheddar cheese.

– The morning “doctors rounds” end up being a predictable daily disappointment: I never get a sense of an overview, nor of what is a stake. They do show up, doctor and residents, but before I can have any concrete conversation,  they “have to run elsewhere.”
Every nurse seems to come from a different country – one small way to escape and to find stimulation where I can.

Picture without the screams & moaning & bed-alarm by the next bed…

P.S.:  A friend told me that this reflects the state of the health system in the US. A doctor I spoke with later confirmed that.
NOT to take it personally! [reminds me of Ajahn Sumedho‘s important book: Don’t Take Your Life Personally.]


ADDENDUM!
Just learned much later, that I was in a geriatric trauma unit, nobody told me at the time… but that explains the two different rooms with two screaming neighbors. They should have done some kind of assessment, and possibly put those two together!

Magyarul: vagy irok, vagy sirok (either I write, or I cry).
OR
Being K.O. is not O.K.

This note was produced after many much valued friends asked me how I was doing. It is inserted here, even though it is only after being home that I realized that communication was going to require many more skills than in normal times.
First I apologize for any impatience on my part. I did what I could.

In the middle of a struggle, one is generally unable to speak, making any kind of statement is impossible.

Repeatedly I am asked how I am doing (“ça va?” in French, “hogy vagy?” in Hungarian).
In 2008 I had to placate someone who kept asking how I was doing (again, “ça va?” in French)… and ended up screaming “No, it is not going well!” (“ça va pas!”).

When you are going from moment to moment, if you are going at all, the concepts of “pain, progress, healing…” are absolutely irrelevant.
At those times, you know nothing

More importantly, one may end up being unpleasant to the outside world because one is still trying to create a link to some kind of self.
It is impossible to speak without a well established subject. That’s why one shouts.  One is asked something impossible: to speak means affirming one’s ”I,” one’s identity.

For those friends who have many questions to ask, instead:  please listen to what it is the only person is going through – only silence and time will allow for the reality of that moment to appear. Cervantes said it this way: Give time to time.

“A long and slow convalescence” means there’s no need to keep asking questions. Presence is 200% of the gift you can provide; as I often say:
                           presence is your infinitely precious present (or gift)!

More succinctly, in the context of pain: BEING IS NOT SPEAKING
(OR ONE IS ONLY PLAYING WORD-GAMES & IGNORING THE COMPLEXITY OF REALITY).

OR
Tout ce qui n’est pas cri est trivial.
The poverty of language; if I don’t scream, I am using platitudes.
The French writer, Antonin Artaud, addressed all of this throughout his life.

Your can only protect yourself that much, but it is clear that I would not be here without a helmet.

In Robert Frost’s footsteps (“Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.“), I would add that whether one is doing well or not is not the way to ask questions, if one wants to ask the important questions.

Nota Bene: Pain has nothing to teach. There is no “teaching moment” in it. And, possibly everything is only valid until the text time you encounter (the same!) difficulty again.