Almost done testing the Perl (3)
If I haven’t broken it.
Almost done testing the Perl
If I haven’t broken it.
The cover art on The
Eraser is exactly the sort of thing that plays havoc with my
vision. (When you unfold the sleeve it turns out to be a picture of London underwater.) I've cycled
through all the highly paid specialists and the consensus is: 1) probably not
related to migraine or other neurological conditions; 2) maybe an inner
ear thing?; 3) maybe it will go away at some point? The cluster of
symptoms is identical to what these
people report (the first two, before the weird and frightening stuff farther down) or the less severe version described
here (again just the first couple of posts). At its worst, when it was
preventing me from reading, it bore some resemblance to the congenital
condition described as Irlen
syndrome, which is held at arms' length by the medical establishment because it
seems suspiciously like a way to make a fortune selling colored
glasses.
Conclusions? First, Modern Medicine does not seem to know very much about
the vestibular system. Second, my best guess is that it's a relatively rare
and underdescribed consequence of mild damage to the inner ear; it may not get
better in the near future, but it also seems unlikely to get worse. So that's all
right, and I am finished talking about it now.
The Eraser? I admit I'd be sad if Radiohead split and all of
Yorke's records sounded like this from now on; but the record is pretty cool in
itself, much better than the strangely unengaging B-sides that Radiohead
has been putting out lately. "And It Rained All Night" sounds like one of the PJ
Harvey duets off Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, and "Skip
Divided" will be in my head for a while. When you walk in the room, I follow you
around like a dog, I'm a dog, I'm a dog, I'm a lapdog, I'm your lapdog. Good songs for airports. They'll be coming on the iPod to Berlin.
In the sickroom. The walls are blue, the earth is blue, the air is blue.
The nausea is blue. We lie very still and have conversations with
ourselves.
Is there no private language?
Hey, you made it through the secret passage. It will move again; what I
want is to keep the blog at a subdomain atem.metameat.net, for
reasons German and Egyptian, but my usually excellent hosting company has
not gotten back to me about this. (Update: they came through.) In any
event it will be quiet, with room
for a few friends, and we can listen to the rain and marching boots
outside.
Happy August, welcome to the flora and fauna and undiscovered riches of
August, the pristine waterfall, the authentic cuisine, the overgrown
architecture of vanished civilizations that trembles on the
horizon as you jounce by on your rented burro. Here's where we start:
The best episode
from Wittgenstein's biography.
Fans of Pica should go here.
I believe there is no private language.
Then what?
Something else. Not homologous to speech, not a
tool for manipulating the world. An ebb, a crest. The ability to move
or the inability to move. The particulars of the gut. The ache of drawing
breath.
Almost done testing the Perl (2)
If I haven’t broken it.
