Using Arthur Adamov

In reading the incredible testament called The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin, especially the chapter on Arthur Adamov, I came upon a quotation that seems familiar in its details. It was regarding the playwright’s neurosis but could have easily been used to define my own physiological and thus, psychological, reactions to Temporal Lobe Seizures, which I have at least monthly, if not more.

Adamov wrote this in his book called L’Aeu, translated as The Confession (Pairis: Editions du Sagittaire, 1946, p.p. 25-6):

“Everything happens as though I were only one of the particular existences of some great incomprehensible and central being… Sometimes this great totality of life appears to me so dramatically beautiful that it plunges me into ecstasy. But more often it seems like a monstrous beast that penetrates and surpasses me and which is everywhere, within me and outside me… And terror grips and envelops me more powerfully from moment to moment… My only way out is to write, to make others aware of it, so as not to have to feel all of it alone, to get rid of however small a portion of it.”

(ART: In the Throes by Linda O'Neill, Migraine Masterpieces 2003 - Nat'l Headache Foundation))

Returning of an old fashion sense of euphoria

Lying down in the same location on my couch, incarcerated by a heavy rainfall & harsh barometric pressure, occurring about the same time of day as a prior such seizure, I saw the identical woman, done as a portrait, I had seen before in a previous attack. In part it seemed very much as Déjà vu, - a sudden reoccurrence of a former temporal lobe outbreak’s manifestation – while also feeling new, very raw, & now, on its own. I was entirely overwhelming for a few gatherings of seconds. Luckily, not even a minute transpired.

And with its passing, an old fashion sense of euphoria returned. In the old days before the advent of the grand mals & pharmaceutical dependence, I would use their pleasing after-affects to spur me on; but in modern times, medication has been eliminating the positive effects. It was nice to have something good come out of the chaos in a way I have always cherished. At the far end, there was the familiar nausea, which was brief.

Later, on my dusk wander about the country road bordering my wooded dwelling with my little dog, I continued to feel the elation – impeccably Joyous!

Thankfully I embrace anything, which favorably progresses my creativity & life. I am graceful to have a full tank of appreciated inspiration, finding it as a kind of consolation prize for surviving yet another seizure.

(Art by Kris Lewis)

A Migraineur’s Eyesight is Affected Internally, Producing Hallucinations

To be honest, I'm in total ruins. The barometric pressure is repressive & worsening every day. Today was the Gawd-awful - IS. More thunder is roving my way. BUT even when the storms are afar, the pressure has gotten me. August is officially my most hated month. It's always bad.

Before K@trina, I hadn't even taken a walk really around the woods in 2 weeks, then suddenly that hurricane was upon us & all changed forevermore.

I really had some weird hallucinations occur when on my dusky wander. At one point, I wasn't sure if I could get back. THIS is why I don't do drugs anymore & won't DO pot to counter this, because I already have too many unrestrained, compromised moments when things become psychedelic.

Like the morning a couple days back, before dawn, looking at the nearly full moon & it suddenly exploded. I mean the whole Death Star thing erupting & vanishing. Then it was back, but pulsating, the sky was in on it too as were the treetops. This is migraine related.

On a walk the other day, I looked up to watch a scattered flock of small birds heading westerly overhead & everything exploded in pain & shapes & colors. Check patterns, zigzags, curls, & waves. The most dramatic hue was an electric purple. I was truly alongside Lucy & her sky of diamonds & many other things.

My eyes & face feel like they have been burned. My head feels too heavy for my neck. Other aches gain in my shoulders & torment my spine.

I feel like I should open the vacuum-lock on the portside & allow myself to get sucked out into space without any gear on...

Maybe not.

BUT at least I've read Oliver Sacks' Hallucination & know all these things are physiological, not in my mind, so I can take them as an objective observer instead as a subjective victim.

This is day 7 of such gaining disaster...

("Visual Disturbance" Art by Joyce Ryan, Migraine Masterpieces 2003 - Nat'l Headache Foundation)

Eroded by Continued Barometric Pressure

Hullo, Weather Demons?
Could you PLEASE give me a break?
How 'bout tomorrow?
I'd like to have a life besides
being incarcerated by barometric repression.

(Art from Liberty Meadows by Frank Cho)

YOU also ARE Subject to Disease...

Migraineur Jounral: Day Six (of Storms)

Got up after another brutal rash of storms to feed my dog her later breakfast (late due to my being unable to rise because to the bad weather) & was hopelessly confused, helplessly other-worldly, somewhat trapped in a fogbank where I could visually see the mist, & found it excessively difficult to speak on the phone when I called my chiropractor's office. This put me on the alert for a major seizure. But when overwhelmed by such barometric upheavals, one can't stay upright long, so I surrendered to the inevitable, which might bring up such a dastardly grand mal...

Went back to bed after the second wave of the deluge & lightning show started & dreamt I did have a grand mal seizure & the evidence was marked on my inner forearms in deep bruising.

Fortunately I can report: NO SEIZURES (yet).

Sadly, nowhere to escape it seems: not in reality or in dreams.

MIGRAINEUR JOURNAL: DAY FIVE (of storms)

From 11:30 am until 3:30 pm FULL of deluging rains,
roving lightning & ear-harming thunder. We're in a
calm before another large front inundates this area.
Five days without relief. My head is exploding...
There's the raindrops on the roof, there's the
thunder pursuing, drawing closer.

Tomorrow supposed to be worse for weather
us here in Southern Louisiana...

(Art © 2012 by j. m. Scoville)

Bad Weather with More on the Way

I'm all beaten up from three days of storms - like I've fallen off the tailgate of my Dad's old pick-up truck, hitting the dried field hard, bouncing around, bruised. But there is no physical injury when getting barometrically creamed.

And a full week of such brutality is predicted. I can't drive again due to be so assaulted... I need to make a run tomorrow, but I'm not sure I can.

(Art © 2012 by j. m. Scoville)

"dumbly"...

I was talking to my Pennsylvanian kith via the phone lines on Saturday & I had to apologize, because I couldn’t recall when he had graduated high school, wanting to gauge his journey through pop culture, which is greatly influenced by our childhood & teen distractions. Of course, it was the same year I graduated: 1980 – but on the other side of the country. It is embarrassing as well as frustrating how my disabilities hurdles such knowledge out of my memory & they are misplaced, sometimes entirely lost. Afloat, this is my curse.

But is it a curse? To not remember everything anymore, it's easier to achieve emptiness that the Zennists & Taoists suggest in their riddles. Maybe this makes my spiritual path easier.

Maybe not.

The path... We struggle, we ache, we forget, we can't, then can. To wash my body becomes a sacred act.

In the Making of documentary for The Mahabharata, the French/German actor who plays Arjuna said that performing in a language other than his natural tongue makes each word precious. Familiarity since first learning to speak has eroded the uniqueness of our own language. But, having migraines & seizures, clicking off the power from time to time or electrifying my lobes, I find this is true with English. Words are incredible jewels again, ones I hold up to the light to see through them. But on the far side of this realization, newer learned words fall entirely away, leaving my thesaurus a major part of certain re-writes.

Held up yesterday for inspection, I only knew the sound of the name “Kyle”, uttered by a neighbor child who wears it, and was unable to spell it. I found it in a Baby name book after I had exhausted the options before surrendering to simply scrutinizing all the common "K" names.

This is my life. Damned & blessed in the same hug, kicked and nurtured in the identical kiss upon my smoldering forehead reacting to too much barometric upheaval unleashed by the Gods & Goddesses of weather & brain. Cerebral awareness dissolves in my palms & I am left "dumbly"...

(Art © 2011 by j. m. Scoville)

The Mahabharata and I

Last night & early this morning I finally watched what has been a quest since before I even met my ex-wife (circa 1991) in a film that lasts 2 hours & 50 minutes, taken from a 9-hour play written by Jean-Claude Carriére & directed by the renowned stage director, Peter Brook (who also translated the work from the French). Yes, now I comprehend the significance as it becomes a symbol of my own journey since first hearing of it & seeing one of its 3 parts on Oregon PBS. The Mahabharata is legendary beyond its Indian mysticism for me currently due to this distance I have traveled to finally view it – 12 arduous years (much like the story’s five Pandavas princely brothers & their shared wife Draupadi, wandering the desert for 12 years before a 13th year entirely in secret).

I have tried over the years to watch it but no rentals had it. Not even Movie Madness in Portland, Oregon, & not Netflix until only recently.

Now, I feel I have passed through to a new juncture, expanding into a fresh, new-fangled sequence of my life without the sorrow of loss suffered in recent years. I can move forward.

Here is a quotation from the play, taking place at the end of the great 18-day war, when the Pandavas have defeated their rival cousins, Kaurava, spoken by the dead sons' mother, Gandhari (blindfolded to match her king husband’s blindness):
“Krishna, you didn’t keep your word. You took part in the battle with weapons more terrible than all the others. You rejoiced in our misfortune; you watched my son die like a spectator. Krishna, I curse you: one day, all that you are building will crumble; your friends will be massacred by your friends; dry blood will coat the walls of your dead city where only vultures reign; your scattered heart will mourn; you will leave, solitary; a passerby will kill you.”

And in Krishna’s death, I can go off into an undiscovered life…

Abnormal....

Leadbelly's Old Man Blues