by Laurie Sheck
Today, continuing to sort the hospital’s books and documents for storage (though I would rather not think of how soon we have to leave here) I came upon Spratling’s Epilepsy and Its Treatment—the word destroy everywhere present:
As I looked at that word, and, according to Spratling, all the things it obliterates: color, constancy, peacefulness, attachment, a feeling of the real, something quiet in me—I didn’t know what to call it—felt like a face in a world-prison where I walked but could never be seen. And there were many others like me—but each was on a separate path and none could see the others.
His words slammed a hard, black door inside me. I knew he wasn’t right. I could see the logic of what he said, but logic isn’t justice. Though at first I grieved over what I’d lost I also knew (had no choice but to find out) that disordering can lead to a further, stranger order more prismatic and vulnerable, and in it there are questionings and reachings…so much still un-summarized, un-named,…new colors opening…
Each time I read to her I see this. Maybe breakage is the core of meaning.
xx x And Myshkin tries to know the world but it keeps breaking inside him—“everything was strange, I was crushed by the strangeness” xxx He understands Nastasya will be hurt by Rogozhin who wants her only for himself though he knows she doesn’t love him xx and Myshkin can’t find a way to stop this xxx Maybe you’re awake now maybe you are thinking of them also xx And Nastasya’s father’s house is burning in her mind and her solitude her need for money her scorched orphanhood her hatred of her fate her desire to not hurt Myshkin all of it red-hot and burning xx Why are there so many fires in Petersburg so many forms of destruction xxx but when winter comes the poor have no heat no one can save the freezing baby xx xx Reticular formation xx myoclonic activity xx Is this why Myshkin shivers often
This morning I had another seizure. It was as if for a moment—or was it a few hours, I don’t know—all space suddenly stopped, and I saw the flightless bird catching fire in a red-black sea. I didn’t fall, my limbs barely shuddered, but my mind and body stiffened, imprisoned in a vigilance much harder and larger than myself. Everything alert but also blind.
When it was over my mind was a stage-set, my hands a marionette’s, yellowish, waxen, unreal.
What if chaos isn’t quickness and movement after all, but stillness, empty space? An abyss freezing in its own confusions. A disarrangement, a shattering, but frozen solid.
If there is no way to say “I”…if one doesn’t belong to oneself, not really…
It’s said that within the human brain not one of its billions of neurons actually touches another. That they’re linked by wire-like signals traveling through the spaces in between, and those signals are fragile, discontinuous, unprotected, rawly open to chaos and disruption.
If the brain is isolate at its core…if isolation and disruption are built into the very structures and mechanisms of thought…
x xx
I remember she wrote: A feeling of No earth No sun No moon.
But I am ver very tired now. Always afterwards it’s like this. As if a great wave has lifted and then dropped me. I want only a tall glass of water.
I was walking along a shore I didn’t recognize. From the edge of my sight, a distant figure moved closer. Its eyes were dark and much too large. Then I saw they weren’t eyes but two black lenses. The head turned quietly, it was the epileptic. He held a book in one hand, and with the other reached to remove one black lens so he could read it. But his hand was stiff and small as if someone had whittled him carelessly, too deeply. His eye was bruised, the pupil greatly enlarged.
I didn’t speak and though he looked at me it seemed he didn’t see me.
xxx There is a place inside the brain known as the Nucleus Solitarius—did you know this xx—I pace inside my room and think about this lonely name forgive me xx How long has it been since I last saw you? The twelve trees in the courtyard lightly swaying The lagoon stock-still yet wandering xxx Your window dark but maybe you can see my lighted window xxx “Electric wires with silver contacts are applied to the sleepless patient’s brain surface or scalp” xxx “Even in the later stages there can be intermittent periods of lucidity” “The first human EEG was recorded by Hans Berger in 1924—”
In these hours when you’re not here sometimes Dostoevsky’s life comes back to me I don’t know why xx xxx he was born in the Moscow Mariinskaya Shelter for the Poor but maybe you already know this xxx his father was Resident Surgeon there xxx the whole family of ten crowded into two small rooms on the hospital grounds where he and his elder brother slept in a corner behind a makeshift screen xxx xxxx Years later his father was murdered by his servants but I’m getting ahead of myself xxx What I wanted to tell you is when he was 10 the family acquired a small country house in Daravoe and it was there an old peasant man, Marei, suddenly reached out his hand and stroked the boy’s face for no apparent reason xxx Dostoevsky wrote of this years later “It seemed I’d completely forgotten, but in prison the memory came back to me and helped me to survive.” xxx xx But why did Dostoevsky’s father’s servants pour liquor down his throat until he drowned xxx And where are my cattle they are so trapped inside their need their hunger xxx This rock ledge coated with fresh snow xx—Maybe in this darkness you can’t find me—
xx But why did Marei stroke the child’s face xxx Did he sense some need in him some sorrow xx The cattle move so quietly in their separate language xxx in these hours I will never understand xxx
As her mind moves further into places Spratling didn’t understand and wrongly labeled, I sometimes worry that our reading troubles and frightens her, but mostly I believe it helps her—that as we read Myshkin is there with her, and Dostoevsky, the white field, the cattle. No earth No sun No moon Instability Disorder but Myshkin listens as she says this and she feels him listening. And his listening is what’s real. She knows he’s beside her. Like the feeling I call “fire” that crawls or floods in me before a seizure (but in fact there is no word for it, or even its true color) isn’t the real composed of countless things I can’t name or even see. And as I read Dostoevsky’s book with her, and also read it on my own, it seems he finds the many wordless, invisible things and speaks to them and in their own way they speak back. Each night as we read, I’ve never felt closer to what’s real. His book is beautiful the way human thought is beautiful—how it hurts and disorders itself and finds new hurts, new orders…and doesn’t find…and loses, and brightens and gets lost…and finds and throws away…looks for and discards and darkens…too many routes to follow…it doesn’t care about routes, doesn’t care about following…forgets about following…“and fell from a great height…he did not say anything but listened intently…and was with children, always children…her eyes gentle…do not ruin the strangeness”—
Dostoevsky spent 4 years in a prison camp did you know this? I try to think of what it did to him what it took from his mind from his body what it gave Your window dark across the courtyard the branches of twelve trees between us xxx On the night of April 22, 1849 he was arrested for sedition xxx accused of having been involved in secret discussions to overthrow the enserfment of the peasantry Three officers in light blue uniforms searched his apartment confiscated his papers xx But he confessed nothing Refused to be “destroyed by an empty word” After that came solitary confinement in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress 7 months on an island on the Neva his cell window smeared with oily paste to prevent any daylight seeping through xx Then one morning he was ordered to dress quickly and was taken to Semyonov Square where he was informed he would be put to death but was sent instead on a long journey over snow to Siberia to the prison camp in Omsk He was allowed one letter: “Dear Brother, Today we were taken to Semyonov Square where we were read the death sentence, then allowed to kiss the cross, and given our white death-shirts to put on. I was the 6th in line for execution, standing in the 2nd row, and had no more than a few minutes left to live. Then suddenly a retreat was sounded. It was announced that His
Imperial Majesty was granting us our lives. Apparently this had been planned all along.”
The cows are cold on their hillside I need to find them a dry place, a salt lick, water—
You have been gone for many hours xxx our hour of reading went so quickly but there are things I would still ask you even though like me you have no answers xxx Why are isolation and separateness built into the human brain xx And chaos xx misunderstanding xx Dostoevsky’s narrator says “We find it difficult to explain what occurred…it must seem very strange and obscure to the reader…” and could not endure…and would vanish… And on page 362 (I remember this from when I could still read) somebody says “there is something in every person which can never be communicated to another…and we die with it inside us.” I wonder if you feel this also xxx And why does the narrator refer to himself in the plural as if he weren’t trapped like all of us inside his separate mind xxx The white emptiness between the letters in each word—what lies there xx I have asked you so little of yourself who you are or what you’ve seen xx forgive me xxx x your window dark now xxx The lagoon a shadowed elsewhere pulsing—
But why am I suddenly so cold xxx My legs too heavy as if shackled And everywhere outside me there is snow now so much snow “Strange facts are before us in abundance” Dostoevsky’s narrator says xxx I remember when you read this xxx I wonder where you are and when you’re coming xx I don’t know when I last slept it must have been so long ago—the protection of closed eyes that softness xxx Protein Activation Post-Synaptic Excitation xxx After the ride from the prison they gave us white death-shirts to put on—
Marei’s hand touches my face but then it’s vanished xx I have been in Omsk for nearly 6 weeks There are 150 of us crowded into a single barracks Not a minute goes by that I don’t hear another’s breath There’s ice on the windows one inch thick xxx I’m told I will be here for 4 years xxx synaptic instability sleep spindles prions On our journey we made one stop in Tobolsk where even the town bell is in exile from Uglich where it was publically mutilated and flogged xx found guilty of ringing for seditious purposes xxx Its sentence is eternal silence xxxxxx Often I am back in Semyonov Square as the guards untie the blindfold from Petrashavsky’s eyes but then fumble clumsily and can’t secure the shackles on his ankles He is so grateful and amazed to be alive that he eagerly leans down and with great dexterity shackles his ankles himself xxx xxx I don’t know if you came to me tonight or what pages might have passed between us xxx Is Myshkin still remembering the marketplace at Bale xxx Or maybe his hands are trembling often he can’t stop his hands from trembling “The slower form of the illness can take several years to run its course. It is not unusual for the afflicted to act out their fantasies and dreams.”
At daybreak we are led over miles of snow to the riverbank It is hard to walk in fetters over snow We are told to dismantle an old barge frozen into the river’s ice while still salvaging the crossbeams intact We try again and again but each time we lift the beams they crumble xxx I begin to understand how the seemingly benign can be terrifying like the repetition of hands to no meaningful purpose xx I once read that a form of torture consists of forcing the subject to pour water back and forth from one jug into another for many hours of many days The pointlessness will cause him to go mad xxx There are so many ways for one person to bring harm to another xxxx Reality is infinitely various when compared to the deductions of human thought xx The cows are far away in their white field xxx I wonder where you are xxx Why no one hears them
This morning I was taken to the military hospital a mile and a half from the prison For weeks I have been having seizures xxx Dr. Troitsky speaks kindly Says I can stay here for three days I am given long stockings underlinen a night cap slippers From the next bed Ustyantsev tells me of a convict who scrapes plaster from the wall then rubs it into his eye so the doctors will believe he is still sick and won’t send him back to prison Last week they cut a deep slit into his neck then threaded it with linen tape they pull back and forth through the wound to keep it open They believe this will cure him Ustyantsev says this treatment is also used on horses xxx But if Marei’s hand could come to me now could reach clearly for me now…xxx And REM sleep is also known as Fast-wave sleep—long deprivation can induce hallucinations xx xx Yesterday after Mihailov died naked and stick-thin in the bed three feet away from me the smith was called to saw the fetters off before his body could be lifted xx Already it is spring now Outside the window many wildflowers are blooming xxx xxxxx Reality strives for diversification it cannot help it xx Sleep spindles xx Prions xxx Reticular Formation xx Dr. Troitsky’s steady voice xx he slips into my bag a pencil a blank sheet of paper
Several times each week Commander Kirilov enters the barracks in the middle of the night to check if we’re asleep on our right side or on our left then wakes us and insists we sleep only on the left Even at night we wear 5lb shackles on our ankles xxx We lie on bare boards covered only by our sheepskin prison coats too short to cover our feet Clumps of black beetles crawl across the rotting floor The temperature is 40 below xx I tell myself hard labor makes me strong the fresh air will strengthen my lungs but I continue having seizures The other prisoners shun me because I am “a member of the ruling class” “the iron beak that has tormented and torn us apart” Though this frightens me I know I mustn’t show it Any sign of weakness and they’ll rob or beat me xxx For work I turn the metal lathe pound alabaster shovel snow—
Last night after I left her, I dreamed I picked up Dostoevsky’s book, but it was covered with black cloth and suffered a seizure in my hands. How could I not have noticed this before?—that in a sense the whole book is one long seizure. I’ve been reading it for weeks, holding it in my hands close to my eyes—and yet I missed this. Beneath the black cloth I could feel the spreading heat of its suffering, the light a dazzling hurt inside it.
Pilate sat with his dog in the cold moonlight, the air flooding with the scent of roses. He didn’t know if he was on his terrace overlooking the flat plain, or in exile in some foreign land, or maybe in a prison by the sea. It had been decades since he’d spoken. “There is no safety of the mind,” he thought, his temples pounding in the blood-red light. He couldn’t tell if his head was bare or covered. Red wind made small incisions on his skin. Then he thought further: “In Sanskrit safety means whole, and in my language it means intact, undamaged, surviving, extant, still holding. Xenophon wrote: ‘to be safe of mind, to be wise.’ So to say a safe mind is to indicate a mind that is sane. But I think that is a vain, ridiculous wish”—he wanted to rub his right temple, but his hands hung heavily at his sides—“thinking is never safe, there is nothing more perilous in the world.”
The red air turned suddenly pale, the roses faded—
Each day as I sit here opening her notes, thinking about where we have been and where we’re going, I can’t help feeling I’m wading into a widening sea from which I may never return or catch my bearings. Most nights I go to her and read, but who am I reading to? Her face the same as before, her still-careful arrangement of our chairs. None of that has changed. But somewhere inside she is watching the shackles cut from a convict’s dead body, her brain is flooding with seizures and bright light, there’s a white death-shirt in the wind behind her eyes. Always before, I thought of a face as singular, sharply boundaried, and even if resembling another, still inevitably distinct from any other, and the history of a life as the story of one single, irreducible life. But now I don’t know. When the red fire moves through me it moves through more than who I am—for a long time I’ve sensed this. I’m not sure any more what a voice is, or the body that contains it—
HOSPITAL OF SAN SERVOLO, VENICE, ARCHIVE ENVELOPES NO. 912 AND 913, FOR STORAGE IN BOX 19
# 912:
PATIENT POPULATION:
Between 1725 and 1812, 1130 patients are admitted:
731 are eventually discharged
24 escape
105 are killed
4 commit suicide
# 913:
CHARACTERISTICS OF EPILEPTIC PATIENTS
December 1847–January 1848
Lately I have the sense that she’s holding the whole book in her mind (she must have read it many times), and that when we’re not reading she’s traveling within it. She barely mentions the blurring pages anymore, or straining to see them. And tonight, right after I arrived, her eyes looking slightly downward as usual, her voice soft as usual, she asked if we could hear 221. She’d never asked for a page number before.
I opened the book and saw the passage:
He fell to thinking, among other things, about his epileptic condition, that there was a stage in it just before the fit itself (if the fit occurred while he was awake), when suddenly, amidst the sadness, the darkness of the soul, the pressure, his brain would momentarily catch fire, as it were, and all life’s forces would be strained at once in an extraordinary impulse. The sense of life, of self-awareness, increased nearly tenfold in these moments, which flashed by like lightning. His mind, his heart, were lit up with an extraordinary light; all his agitation, all his doubts, all his worries were as if placated at once, resolved in some sort of sublime tranquility, filled with reason and ultimate cause. But these moments, these glimpses were still only a presentiment of that ultimate second (never more than a second) from which the fit itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable.