untouchable concepts, but without inner pictures they would drift away again like wispy clouds. Until I could see “know” or “feel,” the question just didn’t arise to ask what had “knowing” and what had “feeling” and what didn’t.
Carol had asked questions to make people say what she wanted to hear. There seemed no point in asking questions about things you didn’t know when you couldn’t hear consistently with meaning: “Well Donna…things…and when…see…and then…you understand.” “Yeah, sure. That really clears things up. I never thought about it like that. Can you suggest any books on the subject?” (Thanks for assaulting my ears again with noise and blah-blah. God, I am a hopeless deaf shit. What an idiot. Act “normal,” just act “normal” and they won’t know.) Asking questions seemed as pointless as the totally blind person saying, “draw it for me in color,” or the totally deaf person asking to listen to the sound of your voice.
Questioning was also a strategy to avoid answering any of their questions (the jump-out-the-cupboard-before-they-open-the-door-on-you strategy). Questioning was more of a game than anything else.
Dr. Marek challenged my logic, my belief system, my world. He was tackling what to him probably seemed like language and behavior problems. In fact, he was treading upon my very perception of my self, my relationship to my body and everything around me. He was challenging my entire reality, past and present, in order to change the course of its future. He threatened to throw me headlong into areality I had never even known was there. I had given up my war, but he was asking me to disarm myself.
Dr. Marek didn’t have to disarm himself. It seemed very, very one-sided, almost foolish and irrational to believe disarmament should happen on one side only. But others hadn’t been at war. I had.
My head was swimming and I felt nauseous. A part of me must have been on the verge of understanding. Was there a whole pile of stored knowledge I had not been able to make sense of that was just sitting there waiting for a new system by which to translate and utilize it?
Writing the book had made my hold on “my world” brittle and fragile in its raw exposure. Slowly there was less and less to turn to. Having given up Carol and Willie, all that was left were things, a world of objects.
This world was the place from which I had begun. It was the place before the creation of the characters. I was like an ingrown toenail. I had thrived in the wrong direction. In order to go forward, I had to first go backward to where I had begun; as T. S. Eliot writes, “In my beginning is my end.”
In one great swoop, my perception got knocked off its feet and I fell into a perceptual black hole. Dr. Marek gave me a rule with no exceptions. He explained that things need a nervous system in order to think or feel.
Back in my apartment, I tapped the wall. Every time I held on to a curtain, every time I looked at my shoes, a new perception of objects as dead things without knowledge, without feeling, without volition, nagged at me. I felt my own aloneness with an intensity I had always been protected from. Willie wasn’t there to help me understand, depersonalize, and deny. Carol wasn’t there to make me laugh and pretend nothing mattered. Everything around me had no awareness that I existed. I was no longer in company.
I felt trapped by an impending acceptance of a new logic my mind couldn’t continue to deny. My infantile emotions could not bear it. I wanted to run back into “my world” but it had been bombed. Blocked, unused inner knowledge and understanding I had not madeuse of screamed for recognition. Upstairs in the brain department, the rusty cogs began to turn. I felt torn in two. This time, though, both halves would be within my control.
I paced like a lion in a cage. Since writing the book, I had made a rule never to attack myself physically again. Somehow it used
Carol had asked questions to make people say what she wanted to hear. There seemed no point in asking questions about things you didn’t know when you couldn’t hear consistently with meaning: “Well Donna…things…and when…see…and then…you understand.” “Yeah, sure. That really clears things up. I never thought about it like that. Can you suggest any books on the subject?” (Thanks for assaulting my ears again with noise and blah-blah. God, I am a hopeless deaf shit. What an idiot. Act “normal,” just act “normal” and they won’t know.) Asking questions seemed as pointless as the totally blind person saying, “draw it for me in color,” or the totally deaf person asking to listen to the sound of your voice.
Questioning was also a strategy to avoid answering any of their questions (the jump-out-the-cupboard-before-they-open-the-door-on-you strategy). Questioning was more of a game than anything else.
Dr. Marek challenged my logic, my belief system, my world. He was tackling what to him probably seemed like language and behavior problems. In fact, he was treading upon my very perception of my self, my relationship to my body and everything around me. He was challenging my entire reality, past and present, in order to change the course of its future. He threatened to throw me headlong into areality I had never even known was there. I had given up my war, but he was asking me to disarm myself.
Dr. Marek didn’t have to disarm himself. It seemed very, very one-sided, almost foolish and irrational to believe disarmament should happen on one side only. But others hadn’t been at war. I had.
My head was swimming and I felt nauseous. A part of me must have been on the verge of understanding. Was there a whole pile of stored knowledge I had not been able to make sense of that was just sitting there waiting for a new system by which to translate and utilize it?
Writing the book had made my hold on “my world” brittle and fragile in its raw exposure. Slowly there was less and less to turn to. Having given up Carol and Willie, all that was left were things, a world of objects.
This world was the place from which I had begun. It was the place before the creation of the characters. I was like an ingrown toenail. I had thrived in the wrong direction. In order to go forward, I had to first go backward to where I had begun; as T. S. Eliot writes, “In my beginning is my end.”
In one great swoop, my perception got knocked off its feet and I fell into a perceptual black hole. Dr. Marek gave me a rule with no exceptions. He explained that things need a nervous system in order to think or feel.
Back in my apartment, I tapped the wall. Every time I held on to a curtain, every time I looked at my shoes, a new perception of objects as dead things without knowledge, without feeling, without volition, nagged at me. I felt my own aloneness with an intensity I had always been protected from. Willie wasn’t there to help me understand, depersonalize, and deny. Carol wasn’t there to make me laugh and pretend nothing mattered. Everything around me had no awareness that I existed. I was no longer in company.
I felt trapped by an impending acceptance of a new logic my mind couldn’t continue to deny. My infantile emotions could not bear it. I wanted to run back into “my world” but it had been bombed. Blocked, unused inner knowledge and understanding I had not madeuse of screamed for recognition. Upstairs in the brain department, the rusty cogs began to turn. I felt torn in two. This time, though, both halves would be within my control.
I paced like a lion in a cage. Since writing the book, I had made a rule never to attack myself physically again. Somehow it used
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