Tag: illness

“All I know is the text” – Samuel Beckett

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, awareness, being, Books, Complexity, Confusion, creative writing, Experience, hope, human, identity, Language, Maurice Blanchot, Reading, Samuel Beckett, thinking, Writing3 Comments

“A voice comes to one in the dark.  Imagine.

…Deviser of the voice and of its hearer and of himself.  Deviser of himself for company.  Leave it at that.  He speaks of himself as of another.  He says speaking of himself, He speaks of himself as of another.  Himself he devises too for company.  Leave it at that.  Confusion too is company up to a point.  Better hope deferred than none.  Up to a point.  Till the heart starts to sicken.  Company too up to a point.  Better a sick heart than none.  Till it starts to break.  So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that” – Samuel Beckett, Company

“The words spoke by themselves.  The silence entered them, an excellent refuge, since I was the only one who noticed it.” – Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day

So, speaking of himself, I only noticed it.

The small furry animal, almost humming in its purr, he had chance, so he thought, to please, to comfort, with a pet, a scratch, an acknowledgment, tender, while it butted and marked itself against him.  The illusion.  A kind of company in itself (or to).

The ungrammaticality of occurrences.  Of happening.  What happens to be.  Or is not.  When speaking to himself.  Without voice.  I was the only one, as far as I am able to tell – if in fact this is telling – who noticed it.  It seems words speak of themselves.  From elsewise and through whom.  He says, speaking of himself (or to).  Without voice.

Devising.  Illusion.  I devise, he says, speaking to himself, of himself, without voice.  Seeking – is he? – Am I? – Seeking…company?

A small child (another illusion, devised) passes by, walking a young dog and waving a nod of sorts – I don’t remember which, he says, but I returned a gesture and obtained a moment of calm in the chilly Autumn breeze.  There was a sun full of color due to the leaves in their change, and fall, and flutter (due to the nothing-shaped wind).  But what seemed a moment of warmth, of calm, devised by a child with a dog and a friendly (fearful) gesture, he thought (speaking of himself without voice), I was the only one who noticed it.

I take to reading then – others speaking of themselves without voice (or beyond it) – in order to devise… company? he wonders of himself, to himself.  For when reading, it surely seems the words are speaking only of themselves, no matter who pens them.  Such the character of the texts he chooses (I thought of myself, to myself, or an other I devised as myself, like puppets).  And in part read and read for the experience or feeling that I alone notice it.  That I might in fact provide the company I devise, yet hardly able to tell since I have not penned the words but merely notice – borrow, listen? (there are no voices) – the words seem to speak of themselves.  Without voice.  (He said of himself, devising).  Something like company.  Perhaps.

Even in the color-filled sunlight of Autumn days, I at times experience myself as being quite deeply in dark, he says speaking of himself, myself, devising voices, soundless, out of words that seem to be speaking only of themselves and their variegated histories and usages, and billions of potential speakers and hearers and interpreters – creators and devisers – filled with ambiguity and application.  Here with me on shavings of dead trees, providing stark living contrast to Winter’s day-night.  I get confused, he says speaking of himself.  Confusion too is company devised, up to a point, I suppose.  Obviously “fusion-with” implies an other, perhaps enough, I said, speaking to myself, without voice, here on dead leaves in black scars.  In mutilation.  Transgression.  Inscription.  Perhaps the words will speak of themselves and some other “I” will claim to be the only one that notices.

A strange delusion of company indeed.  He says speaking of himself, devising a voice, its hearer, and an himself as participant and therefore a company to keep.

Reading: “only a detour is adequate” (Agamben), and “in pursuing meaning we are pursuing our limits” (Allen), and was perhaps meaning a synonym or metaphor, simile or metonymy for company he thought, speaking to himself, without voice.  But with an illness, diagnosed by doctors – those scientific political powers responsible for providing facts or devising happenings, pronouncing occurrences – so in any case he is not alone, being-with his illness, I thought, speaking to myself in an absence of sound.  The words spoke by themselves.

Other things as well: the furry animal, its humming purr, its actions; the trees, the leaves, the wind, the light.  The child, the dog, the gestures.  The books, the authors, the words themselves.  Divisors of voices, of hearers, of selves.  Sick hearts, confusion, and company.  Am I the only one who notices? he says speaking of himself, speaking of himself as another.

So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that.” – Samuel Beckett

 

 

Recuperating, Rejuvenating…bear with us

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Traces2 Comments

Infernal Inflammation of Logorrhea a la Influenza

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes4 Comments

Human flu is a term used to refer to influenza cases caused by Orthomyxoviridae that are endemic to human populations (as opposed to infection relying upon zoonosis). It is an arbitrary categorization scheme, and is not associated with phylogenetics-based taxonomy. Human flu-causing viruses can belong to any of three major influenza-causing Orthomyxoviruses — Influenza A virus, Influenza B virus and Influenza C virus.

The annually updated trivalent influenza vaccine contains two hemagglutinin (HA) surface glycoprotein components from Influenza A virus strains and one from B influenza.

Most human flu is a non-pandemic flu that is slightly different from the main human flus that existed in last year’s flu season period. This type of flu is also called “common flu” or “seasonal flu” or “annual flu”. It causes yearly flu epidemics that are generally not deadly except to the very old or very young.

Human flu symptoms usually include fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, conjunctivitis and, in severe cases, severe breathing problems and pneumonia that may be fatal. The severity of the infection will depend to a large part on the state of the infected person’s immune system and if the victim has been exposed to the strain before, and is therefore partially immune.

All of these symptoms are characteristic of numerous infectious agents, so many that most diagnoses of human influenza technically are diagnoses of influenza-like illness (ILI) and most cases of ILI are not due to influenza.

 Wikipedia, 2012

Influenza Virus

[peeling paint off a pencil used for teething]

in a fluey oblivion – that weakness and stingy tingly skin surface of hurt while the bones diseasing ache and organs rot following torrential attack of the virus.  Just that sort of glaucous gaze, while wishing I could be contributing meaningful language into the world of humans, duly rearranged toward some import, feeling the passage of a bright cold day filled with wealthy hours bulging with productive possibilities, eyes stung unable to tighten to focus or move without sand, arrow along anywhere, body bereft of batteries soughing along, draped, crumpled, wrenched, deflated here and there throughout the house, asking again and again like a cyclone of pencil marks – sentencing – within a gluey glaze of cranium bathed repletely in symptom-smattering chemicals scrambling and defracting synaptic sparks – “what do we think we’re doing when we want to – write/paint/draw/dialog – express/describe/inscribe/communicate?”  “When we want to?”  Why do the hours pain so when they disappear in illness or hurt, confusion or despair, inability?”  “What have we proposed to ourselves or one another that we might be offering were we not undone?”  Whirling conflation of such creamy viscous thoughts like mumbling mush, crossed inquiries, towers of babbling echoes just seeping stains, unable to vomit or defecate, trapped between intestinally sluicing back and forth as if clarity or some stint of reason could make sensible hope and power, as if, on a normal day with faculties and physiology aligned I might dialogically inscribe some arrangement/re-arrangement of terms and rhythms, sounds and sense that would change, remake, foster, enable or disable to some extent deemed important – but would I?  Have I?  When?  How?  In the ocean of stories, atomically-termed universe, paltry chicken feed of the barnyard of my pen on paper – what difference outside of me has any word meant lined up just so next to this on or that how it pieces my own world together like a context the two tiniest slits of my perspective, shaping and giving shape to all the data or input, experience or information swilled together like steel shavings to an electromagnet brushing a factory floor – what difference though – really – to spouse or children, you or universe, god or war?  Absent depression or dismay because virus + medication is muffled even beyond apathy adding discomfort not soured in the brain but citrus mixed with dairy curdled without complaint what is it I think would have been made if sick days didn’t intervene, interfere, intrude, interrupt, would it have been better than this – this nothing but record of viral mania reformed by terminal translation : linguistics, semiotics, indices and signs available in repressed unhinged layerings of smoke across the pages?