NPPF More On Seizures - LATH

[sZ]

>From Book 7/Chapter 2 of _Look at the Harlequins!_

     At  the  start  of  the  great  seizure,  I  must   have  been  totally
incapacitated, from top to toe, while my mind, the images racing through me,
the tang of thought,  the genius of  insomnia, remained as strong and active
as ever (except for the blots in between). By the  time I had  been flown to
the Lecouchant Hospital in coastal France, highly recommended by Dr. Genfer,
a Swiss relative of its director, I became aware of certain curious details:
from the  head down I was paralyzed in  symmetrical patches  separated  by a
geography of  weak  tactility.  When  in  the course  of that first week  my
fingers  "awoke"  (a  circumstance  that  stupefied  and  even  angered  the
Lecouchant sages, experts in dementia paralydea,  to such a degree that they
advised  you   to  rush  me   off  to  some  more  exotic   and  broadminded
institution---which  you did) I  derived much  entertainment from mapping my
sensitive spots which were always situated in exact opposition, e.g. on both
sides of my forehead, on the jaws, orbital parts, breasts, testicles, knees,
flanks. At an average stage of observation, the average size of each spot of
life never exceeded that of  Australia (I  felt gigantic at times) and never
dwindled (when I dwindled myself) below the diameter of  a medal  of  medium
merit, at which level I  perceived my entire skin as that of a leopard
painted by a meticulous lunatic from a broken home.
     In  some connection with those  "tactile symmetries" (about  which I am
still  attempting to correspond  with a not too responsive  medical journal,
swarming  with  Freudians),  I  would  like  to  place the  first  pictorial
compositions, flat, primitive images, which occurred in duplicate, right and
left of my traveling body,  on the opposite panels of my hallucinations. If,
for example, Annette boarded a bus with her empty basket  on the left  of my
being, she  came  out of that bus  on my right with a load of  vegetables, a
royal  cauliflower  presiding over the  cucumbers. As the  days passed,  the
symmetries got replaced by more elaborate inter-responses, or reappeared  in
miniature  within  the  limits  of  a given image. Picturesque episodes  now
accompanied my mysterious voyage. I glimpsed Bel rummaging after work amidst
a heap of naked babies at the  communal  day-nursery, in frantic  search for
her own firstborn, now ten months old,  and recognizable  by the symmetrical
blotches of  red  eczema  on  its  sides and little legs. A  glossy-haunched
swimmer used one hand  to brush away from her face wet strands of  hair, and
pushed with the  other (on the other side  of my  mind) the raft on which  I
lay, a  naked  old man with a rag around his foremast, gliding supine into a
full moon  whose snaky reflections  rippled  among the water lilies.  A long
tunnel  engulfed  me,  half-promised  a  circlet of  light at its  far  end,
half-kept the promise, revealing a publicity sunset, but I never reached it,
the tunnel faded, and a familiar mist took  over  again. As was  "done" that
season, groups of smart idlers visited my  bed,  which  had slowed down in a
display hall  where Ivor  Black  in the  role of a fashionable  young doctor
demonstrated  me  to  three actresses playing  society  belles: their skirts
ballooned as they settled down  on white chairs, and one lady, indicating my
groin, would  have touched me with  her  cold fan, had not the learned
Moor struck it aside  with his ivory pointer, whereupon my raft  resumed its
lone glide.
     Whoever charted my destiny had moments of  triteness. At times my swift
course  became  a celestial affair at  an  allegorical  altitude  that  bore
unpleasant religious  connotations--unless simply  reflecting transportation
of  cadavers  by  commercial aircraft.  A  certain  notion  of  daytime  and
nighttime, in more or less regular alternation, gradually established itself
in  my mind as my grotesque adventure reached its  final phase. Diurnal  and
nocturnal effects  were  rendered obliquely at first  with  nurses and other
stagehands going to  extreme lengths in the  handling of movable properties,
such  as  the bouncing of  fake starlight  from  reflecting surfaces or  the
daubing of dawns here and there at suitable intervals. It had never occurred
to me before that, historically, art, or  at least  artifacts, had preceded,
not followed, nature; yet that is exactly what happened in my case. Thus, in
the mute remoteness clouding around me, recognizable sounds were produced at
first optically in the  pale margin of the film track  during the taking  of
the  actual  scene  (say,  the  ceremony  of scientific feeding); eventually
something  about the running ribbon  tempted the ear to replace the eye; and
finally hearing returned--with a vengeance. The first crisp nurse-rustle was
a thunderclap; my first belly wamble, a crash of cymbals.
     I owe thwarted obituarists, as well as all lovers of medical lore, some
clinical elucidations. My lungs and my heart acted, or were induced to  act,
normally;  so  did my  bowels, those buffoons  in  the cast  of  our private
miracle plays. My frame lay flat as in an  Old  Master's Lesson of  Anatomy.
The prevention  of bedsores,  especially  at  the Lecouchant  Hospital,  was
nothing  short  of  a  mania, explicable,  maybe,  by a  desperate  urge  to
substitute pillows and various mechanical devices for the rational treatment
of an unfathomable disease. My body was  "sleeping"  as a giant's foot might
be "sleeping"; more accurately,  however, my condition was  a horrible
form of protracted (twenty  nights!)  insomnia with my mind  as consistently
alert as that of the Sleepless Slav in some circus show I once read about in
The Graphic. I  was not even a mummy; I was--in the beginning, at least--the
longitudinal section of a mummy,  or rather the abstraction of its  thinnest
possible  cut. What  about  the  head?--readers  who  are  all head must  be
clamoring to be told. Well, my brow was like misty glass (before two lateral
spots got cleared somehow or other); my mouth stayed mute and benumbed until
I realized I could  feel my tongue--feel it in the phantom form of the  kind
of air bladder that might help a fish with his respiration problems, but was
useless to me. I  had some sense of duration and direction--two things which
a beloved creature seeking to  help a poor  madman with the whitest of lies,
affirmed,  in  a  later  world,  were  quite  separate phases  of  a  single
phenomenon.  Most  of  my  cerebral  aqueduct  (this  is  getting  a  little
technical) seemed to descend wedgewise, after some derailment or inundation,
into the structure housing its closest ally--which  oddly enough is also our
humblest sense, the easiest and  sometimes  the most gratifying  to dispense
with--and, oh,  how  I  cursed it  when I  could not  close  it to ether  or
excrements, and,  oh (cheers  for  old  "oh"),  how I thanked  it for crying
"Coffee!" or "Plage!" (because an anonymous drug smelled like the cream Iris
used to rub my back with in Cannice half a century ago!).
     Now comes a snaggy bit: I do  not know  if my eyes remained always wide
open "in a glazed look of arrogant stupor" as imagined by a reporter who got
as far as  the  corridor  desk.  But I  doubt very  much I could  blink--and
without  the  oil of blinking the motor of sight could hardly have run. Yet,
somehow, during my glide down those illusory canals and cloudways, and right
over another  continent,  I did glimpse  off  and on,  through  subpalpebral
mirages, the shadow  of a hand or the glint of an instrument. As to my
world  of sound, it  remained  solid fantasy.  I heard strangers  discuss in
droning  voices all the books I  had  written or thought  I had written, for
everything they mentioned,  titles,  the  names  of characters, every phrase
they  shouted  was preposterously  distorted  by  the  delirium  of  demonic
scholarship. Louise  regaled the company with one of her good stories--those
I called  "name hangers" because  they  only  seemed  to reach this or  that

point--a quid pro quo, say,  at a party--but were  really meant to introduce
some high-born "old friend" of hers, or a glamorous politician, or  a cousin
of that politician. Learned papers were read at fantastic symposiums. In the
year of  grace  1798, Gavrila Petrovich Kamenev,  a gifted  young poet,  was
heard chuckling as he composed his  Ossianic pastiche Slovo o polku Igoreve.
Somewhere in Abyssinia drunken Rimbaud was  reciting  to a surprised Russian
traveler the  poem Le Tramway ivre (...En  blouse  rouge,  ?  face en pis de
vache,  le  bourreau  me  trancha  la t?te aussi...).  Or else I'd hear  the
pressed repeater hiss in a pocket  of my  brain and tell the time, the rime,
the meter that who could dream I'd hear again?