The fever is gone, for now? But it kept me good company last night. I was somewhere with Cixous, a place I recognized but had never paid attention to before. She writes:
"Fever, which is unbearable, is a defensive phenomenon. It is a combat. It is the same thing for suffering: in suffering there is a whole manoeuvre of the unconscious, of the soul, of the body, that makes us come to bear the unbearable.... Where does this manoeuvre lead us? For example to not being expropriated; to not being the victim but rather the subject of the suffering."
In bed, last night, I am in that place of illness, holding my own vigil, a vigil to me, in that space of perfect physical stillness, as my mind races warp speed. I am a contradiction. I am unwell, but undead. I am dead still, yet still alive with the battle raging inside me. I know whose place this is. I decide to pay attention. In one last heroic effort, I take a rickety walk downstairs, find the tape recorder, and bring it to bed with me. aparitions. visitors. gifts. offerings. Scenes that come and go almost in the same instant, daring memory to capture them. Tonight, I don't want to lose them.
I don't remember much of the night. But I am playing it back now, listening to the stillness, and the pain, reliving the dream as it happened.
