…it seems to have hindered his capacity for self-expression. “My head was so full of words that I often had trouble forming simple sentences out loud,” he writes, “and my
speech became a curious jumble of obscure words and improper syntax.” But Shea seems to have loved this experience of verbal overspill — he underwent the prolonged brain-shiver that comes when thousands of unfamiliar meanings pour in without stopping. “It felt wonderful,” he says.
That is Ammon Shea talking about his experience reading Webster’s Second in his book about reading The Oxford English Dictionary, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, from NYT’s Sunday Book Review. But what it is reminiscent of, for me, is a time a few years back, not wonderful at all, when out of the blue this happened to me, and I was not reading a dictionary. I have been reminded recently of that unhappy, frightening bout of bad health, which was on my mind strongly yesterday when I returned to this blog and updated the “About” page. It almost — almost, not quite — feels like another lifetime ago.
What will the book be like?
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The IM Nation
I would be the one to discover this. For reasons too complicated to relate, I found myself wandering through a description of Van Gogh’s life only to discover that he may have suffered from a malady called hypergraphia, or the compulsion to write associated with temporal lobe epilepsy, and bipolar mania. I just love it when I find a new neurological disorder, especially one that applies to me.
As I look back on 1700 case notes for the year, plus long emails, long essays, long postings, poems, and fragments, I find a finger pointed at myself. My case notes are too long and thus I am always behind. My emails keep me up at night because they are so long. I awake depressed and sleep deprived. “Oh, no! I’m still me,” I say as I stare at the ceiling. I have an alter-ego that writes whenever it pleases him. I often pause and write a poem for the hell of it–say, about kites and their relationship to betrayal. I am at work now and shouldn’t be writing this. I have a 370 page biography so far and I haven’t even gotten to my marriage. I may have to skip 17 years just to get to why I moved to New York.
My emails and the work that is often attached to them have drawn no comment, have elicited a short response, and some have been published. One person that understands me asked me to write an essay for an art show that I had never seen. He described the show and it took me about an hour to write the piece. He published it in the artist’s catalogue. I was thinking about Odin that day so somehow he became part of the artist’s work.
Sometimes people write back and say they don’t know what I’m talking about. They ask that I speak directly to the matter. All along, I thought I was.
Casting aside my psychiatrist’s projections that I am arrogant, narcissistic and passive-aggressive (isn’t he supposed to be treating me for this? $300/hr), I find myself resigned to hypergraphia, and self-diagnosed at that. Most dreadful of all I have told people the same story twice and changed the ending in two separate emails. I don’t care. I cast blame on benzodiazepines for retrograde amnesia. The person is still not speaking to me. [I did get an MRI of my head just to make sure my bad memory wasn’t organic]
The truth is that most people don’t have time to write lengthy emails. I don’t have time, but it doesn’t stop me. However, I have encountered a fate worse than mine. I am referring to the writers that respond with an IM message: “Thanks for the story. Liked everything, but the ending.”
I have discovered we are an IM Nation, and I believe we have become dumber for it. It leaves us with too much time to do things that are unnecessary. There I go, being arrogant again. I cringe to think that John Adams would have written his wife a letter that said: “Love ya. Wish you were here.” Even worse, he would have text messaged her: “Lve U. Wish u wr here.”
I have no end to this posting. Well, I could/should IM you: “Have character defects, unrepentant, am an Outsider.”
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