Insights

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.”

“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.

AND…

Posted by piermar2 on December 12, 2023
Posted in: Culture, Insights, Uncategorized.

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!

 

Thanks To Friends!

Posted by piermar2 on December 10, 2023
Posted in: Insights, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized, Website.

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

Primal Initiation

Posted by piermarton on December 11, 2016
Posted in: Culture, Insights, LifeAfter, TheMindChallenge.

“NO!”
— the shout that started the process of “recovery,” my “reincarnation” (coming back into my body/life) —
After weeks in an intensive care unit, I finally came back to life when, from the deepest place in my body, I found myself shouting “No!”

We are born…
And our brain is shapeless. Words and concepts have not yet colonized it.

There is a “self” (should we even use that word?) that exists that is pure perception.
In that state, nothing is stored for recycling.
You live…
It is neither “life,” nor “art,” nor “experience.”
You live.

Then come those who say: “tell us all about it! Make sense, let us know, make us understand!“

However hard this hospitalization is/was, it is a trip… an initiation into something that cannot be communicated.
Just like anything worthwhile.
Just like becoming a shaman.
OR
You can view this as a Torah(Teaching) Scroll where you will spend the rest of your life
trying to interpret it – my advice, as Susan Sontag says, don’t.
It is what it is.

ALONE.
AND UNIQUE.

In the extremely long road of recovery – one does not recover – everything appears as what it is: a series of addictions.

An Unlearning MindMap – Honoring the Emptiness

Posted by piermarton on May 29, 2016
Posted in: Books, Culture, Death, Graphics, Insights, LifeAfter, Tips.

– from the School of No Media site –

In parallel to the Chinese Yin and Yang principles, our digital reality is composed binary digits – the bits – composed of ones and zeros, yet our culture seems to emphasize only the ones, only the fullness
— at the expense of our emptiness —

As per the hourglass visualization, the clarifying process of decantation takes time, yet dramatic events like death or disease can speed up the unlearning phase.
Regardless of our books, our words and our philosophies, death – the so-called “great equalizer” – will create an outstanding silence.
What traces will be treasured by the next generation?

An Unlearning MapThe essence of normalcy is the refusal of reality. Ernst Becker

Enough said. The School of No Media says “Shut Up!”

Posted by piermarton on May 29, 2016
Posted in: Culture, Death, Insights, Post-Op, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized.

Words, these words too, hide so much more than they reveal.

In an effort to unmask this, I did this long interview for a Bolivian paper: The Void and its Pressure.

Just a few excerpts from the beginning:

  • At their core, words are frozen experience and as such monuments, they function as mere reference points. No matter what others may say, we remain bound by our life’s path.
  • The topic at hand is oblivion…
  • I should mention that I belong to Abraham’s ancient iconoclastic tradition and that this is only one way to react to our boundless arrogance.
  • Civilization as a whole produces a deafening disturbance we remain unconscious of until the end of our lives.
  • During encounters with death or, in less tragic ways, when we feel dwarfed by our surroundings, radical changes can take place…

More importantly, the School of No Media (I am its Unlearning Specialist), is my direct response to the arbitrary concepts/words we surround ourselves with – something I would not have been privy to, had I not been without words in I.C.U. for those “hellish” three weeks.

Yes, beyond stuff, culture & media, words & concepts…
Can we get there? Very easy: the next car accident will get you there fast.
Or, you may simply sense a regular form of vertigo as you ponder the implications behind what the Laniakea or the Eukaryota imply for us. More information on the School of No Media site.

What I represent. © Marton 2015

Solitude – Claudie Hunzinger

Posted by piermarton on November 20, 2014
Posted in: Delirium, ICU, Insights, LifeAfter, TheMindChallenge.

— As I have written elsewhere and will keep repeating, in spite of all appearances, “you’re on your own.” —
— The isolation of being in nature, or lost in ICUs can lead to a very similar wisdom —

Another way to be and to think — Une autre manière d’être et de penser

Claudie Hunzinger - Photo Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger – © Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger est écrivain et artiste. Elle vit en Alsace dans les montagnes des Vosges depuis 1964.
Wikipédia (en Français)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION BELOW

Interview sur Hors-Champs (France Culture)

Question (Laure Adler): Une dissolution?
Réponse (Claudie Hunzinger): C’est quelque chose comme ça la solitude. Il y a quelque chose d’infiniment merveilleux qui peut vous attirer très loin, qui est le fait qu’on se quitte soi-même. Quand on est seul, on perd son identité. On se déploie dans tout ce qui vous entoure, on devient ce qui vous entoure.
On peut devenir la maison si on est à l’intérieur, on se dilate et on prend toute la place; c’est un peu une expérience très “Alice,”
Et si on est à l’extérieur, on devient absolument ce qu’on voit. On devient l’air, on devient les forêts, on devient l’herbe, et c’est un sentiment très puissant, très reposant aussi.
L’élément humain… on devient un élément étranger, et quand je quitte la montagne et que je me retrouve à Paris, il me semble que j’entre dans l’élément humain, et que l’élément humain est un élément étranger. Que je suis, que j’appartiens à la montagne, que j’appartiens aux bêtes, que j’appartiens aux plantes, et que je me rétrécie que je rentre en moi-même et que je suis en face de ce micro…


Question (Laure Adler): Quand vous dites que la montagne vous appartient, elle vous appartient sensoriellement? Elle vous a capturé?
Réponse (Claudie Hunzinger): Sensoriellement. J’en fais partie. C’est quelque chose qu’on sent, c’st quelque chose qu’on remarque. C’est un bien–être.

“Le désir doit rester une fenêtre ouverte sur la nuit, sur sa foule d’étoiles.” La Survivance (2102)

Les Promesses Tenues de Claude Hunzinger –  © Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger is a writer/artist who has been living in the mountains of Alsace since 1964.

Question (Laure Adler): A form of dissolving?
Answer (Claudie Hunzinger):  It is something like that, solitude. There is something infinitely marvelous that can draw you forth very far in the sense that one leaves oneself behind. When we are alone, we lose our identity. We spread out into everything that surrounds us, we become what surrounds us.
We can become a house if we are indoors. We blow up and take all of the space; it is a bit like an “Alice experience.”
And if one is outside, one becomes absolutely what one sees. We become the air, we become the forests, one becomes the grass, and it is such a powerful feeling, very relaxing too.
The human element… we become a foreign element, and what I become when I leave the mountain and I find myself in Paris, it seems that I enter the human element, and that the human element is a foreign element. That I am, that I belong to the mountain, that I belong to the animals, that I belong to the animals, and that I shrink and re-enter inside myself when I face this microphone…

Question (Laure Adler): When you say that the mountains belongs to you, do you mean that you do on a sensory level? It has taken over?
Answer (Claudie Hunzinger):  On a sensory level. I belong to it. It is something one feels, something one notices. A well-being.
“Desire must remain a window open onto the night, with its multitude of stars” La Survivance (2102)