Smilephantomhive
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- Aug 11, 2015
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Seveneves Confessions Harry Potter
Whoops.
Whoops.
I just finished reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, and I absolutely adored it. It's about parallel universes and travelling from one to another (for if you're interested).
I'm generally not attracted to 21st century writings, but this one was the exception. Now to catch up with my 300-item list of "sci-fi/fantasy classics" I've never got the chance to read. I've started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and a friend is torturing me to start the Dune books. Let's see how it goes.
Although I fretted and fumed, that in fact is what we did for months. Twice a week Eve came in, curled up in her corner, and sat without speaking. Occasionally she'd raise her head and look at me with eyes that seemed to be pleading for something. But if I spoke, she quickly buried her head again. I couldn't tell at first if she took comfort from my presence next to her, since she made sure there was at least a foot of physical space between us.
'Stallbig. Fraymore ball duff mon ling, doo. Desimore. Banadore lymink shraboleen. Dorf.'
Not one of her phonetic concoctions amounted to a word, not even mistakenly. She had created a language specific to her isolation, and so specifically for her isolation that she had assiduously avoided even an accidental swipe at any combination of vowel and consonants someone else might understand. I listened for more, and I got more. It was remarkable. She could talk paragraphs of what anybody else would consider nonsense syllables. I didn't think there could be that many nonsense syllables.
The period of gestation from conception to birth is therefore one of the most important in the overall scheme of the formation of personality. Not only is the fetal consciousness an uncritical observer and recorder of all the mother does, thinks, and feels, but it is also engaged in a sort of deep rumination over all the still-unfinished business of other lives. The contents of these ruminations will constitute his or her ongoing karma post natum. These two streams of consciousness, unmediated by any discriminatory ego, form the matrix of the personality later to emerge.
Not just single thoughts but whole scenes between mother, father, doctor, and others are likewise imprinted in the unconscious of the fetus with the effect of reestablishing patterns that are later often to become debilitating complexes. A woman whose husband drunkenly abuses her during pregnancy may think or say 'He's disgusting. WHy doesn't he leave me alone? I hate sex like this'. This leaves a residue for later confusion and disgust around sexuality in the unborn child's unconscious.
I have seen therapy work. I have seen people pierce their delusions, throw off their obsessions, conquer their phobias. Again and again I have seen a person release himself from a desperately unhappy life and learn the language of an alternative one. Over the past 35 years I have seen this particular miracle happen hundreds of times.
But does it last? Do the changes hold? Or when my back is turned, does it all unravel? Does the power of those hundreds of thousands of hours that preceded therapy reassert itself and take back all that we have fought for?
I was stunned. Paul was now 84 now. He must have begun working on his dissertation in his mid-twenties, 60 years ago. I had heard of professional students before, but 60 years? His life on hold for 60 years? No, I hoped not. It couldn't be.
Whether I will live a long time or a short time, I'm alive now, at this moment. What I want is to know that there are other things to hope for besides length of life. What I want to know is that it isn't necessary to turn away thoughts of suffering or death but neither is it necessary to give these thoughts too much time and space. What I want is to be intimate with the knowledge that life is temporary. And then, in the light (or shadow) of that knowledge, to know how to live. How to live now. Here's the thing I've learned about cancer - it shows you mortal illness and then spits you back, back to the world, to your life, to all its pleasure and sweetness, which you feel now so much more than ever. And you know that something has been given and something has been taken away.