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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] carried in for the stove. The injury festered. Neither iodine nor antibiotic ointment seemed to help. I looked for a bit of splinter but could find nothing. I noticed that I was uncomfortable sitting because of rectal pain, a weird and disturbing symptom. I had a vague feeling that something distressful had happened to me, but no clear memory. In the ensuing days, I experienced more bouts of fatigue. I would be working and suddenly I would get cold and start to shake. Then I would feel so exhausted that I could not go on, and crawl into bed quivering and miserable, sure that I was coming down with the flu. I took my temperature during one of these experiences and found that it was 96.6 at the outset and 98.8 at the height of the "fever." Afterward it dropped to 97.0 Nights I would sleep, but wake up in the morning feeling as if I had been tossing and turning the whole time. I ceased to dream, and sometimes had difficulty closing my eyes. I felt watched, and kept hearing noises m the night. Mornings I would wake up with the feeling that I had been somehow on guard. My disposition got worse. I became mercurial, frantic with excitement about some idea one moment, in despair the next. I was suspicious of friends and family, often openly hostile. I came to hate telephone calls. I could not concentrate even on light television programs. After writing "Pain" I found that I could not sustain enough attention to work for more than five or ten minutes at a time. An attempt to read Gerald's Party by Robert Coover left me profoundly confused. I kept reading and rereading the same few pages. I switched to a less challenging novel, but it was also totally incomprehensible. I had been reading some sermons of the thirteenth-century mystical philosopher Meister Eckhart, but this study had to be abandoned. I could no longer follow my own thinking, let alone that of the authors who interested me. It was a fearful, haunting discovery. Page 13 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html On the afternoon of January 3 we were skiing when I got a pain behind my right ear. It was a sensation similar to what -happens to one's jaw when Novocain wears off after a session in the dentist's chair. My skull ached and the skin was sensitive. In the middle of this sensitive area my wife could see a tiny pinpoint of a scab. I believe that the combination of the infected finger, the rectal pain, and the aching head were what finally brought my memories into focus. The confused swirl resolved into a specific series of recollections, and when I saw what they were, I just about exploded with terror and utter disbelief. One of the memories would come into my head, linger there a moment, then leave me with my heart pounding, gasping, sweat pouring down my face. I thought that I had lost my mind. For half of my life I have been engaged in a rigorous and detailed search for a finer state of consciousness. Now I thought my mind was turning against me, that my years of eager study of everything from Zen to quantum physics had led me into some strange and tragic byway of the soul. As soon as I had them in focus, my memories became perfectly vivid-as vivid, say, as childhood memories become when one chooses to draw them out of the mental file where they are hidden. I sat at my desk, trying to make sense of what could not make sense. I thought, quietly and calmly, You may be going mad, or you may have o brain tumor. You've gut to find um which it is and take whatever steps are necessary . And then I rested my head on the desk, and, quite frankly, cried. For a couple of days I lived with it. Maybe the "symptoms" would subside. Then, quite suddenly one afternoon, I recalled the smell. Their smell. It came back to me as clearly as if I had inhaled it not a moment before. More than anything except discovering that I was not alone with my experience, that totally real memory saved me from going stark raving mad. In the first week of January, a local newspaper published accounts of an object or objects being sighted in our area. This story appeared m the January [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |