Sunday, January 22, 2012

Pondering Phantasms: A Repurpose of Passages [listen]

I first encountered the specter when I was a fledgling theorist (in search of a philosophy) at a conference in Central Europe. At the start of my visit, I erred as have a few arrogant foreign early 20th Century archeologists have before mysteriously disappearing from a tomb dig site in Egypt--I angered the spirits. Fortunately for me, I was on a plane the within a week possessing only certified souvenirs: conference swag, städtisch logo t-shirts, and a contemporary perfume bottle for my mother. I noted the encounter in the poem Utterances in the Night.

I had not such another encounter until I was in Tribeca, New York City. I had a "hands-on" experience with a bogeyman. Nascent was I with this otherness. Otherness, for me at the time, was an academic term used to describe the culturally disenfranchised. However, the 'otherness' I was attempting to disambiguate was a physical being in the abstract sense—perhaps more like an alter-ego, something like a conscience anthropomorphised: The Last Night I Dreamt of the Bogeyman (p. 13-14).

Clinically, this type of anthropomorphism could be termed as a hallucination, due to, in my case, a sleep disorder. Was my throat occluded by my tongue, thus blocking airflow to my brain, causing heart palpitations, raising my pulse rate--a seizure perhaps induced by hazardous medication(s): Hags and Nightmares. Sleep Paralysis and the Midnight Terror. The Hidden Shadows.

As I have witnessed when my eyes were wide open, the appearances of the Velvet Shadow were beginning to harass me when I began my diabetes treatment. The diabetes unfortunately was a symptom of a greater ghost provocateur: Cushings Disease. Although curable, the spiking hormonal imbalances allowed me to envision uncanny motion-stop impressions surreally over-voiced expressions: On Being Patient #2: Strike or Spike, part II; On Being Patient #3: Reversion Triggers, part I; On Being Patient #6: A Philosopher's Progress: (dis)Organization; On Being Patient #13: Recuperation: the Recovery of a Keen Being.

A recount on the recall, a revisitation, and a hormonal addendum, I curl up in bed, pondering my “sightings,” thinking funny thoughts--maddening, even as I walk stiffly, not sternly, painfully stout, frank in my steps from the office to the car, back to the castle which I refer to as home, then dinner, later withdrawal--haunted by my writings.