I have spent quite some time of this afternoon investigating 'kuru', the degenerative disease you get if you eat another human brain (maybe). It is incredibly disgusting, intimidating, raw, and frustratingly simplistic. "Like mad cow disease" an echo is heard, while I wikipedia and re-word and click on links, like an information pro, on a third cup of coffee and severe dislike for other chores at hand (or other part of a body, as hand is frozen and uncompromising).
I am brought here by something else, Twitter, somebody, who cares. And I am left unaffected. An island uninfluenced by shock or horror. Probably numb because i'm detached. Probably numb because I'm not alive. Precision in understanding material reality today, is not on the cards. I have impressed myself, impressed you, impressed and improvised further impressions and amazement at this distance. So far away it seems illogical that I am indeed part of this pillowy and well-stuffed puppet looking up information like a pro. A professional observer of one's own presence from an inevitable physical distance. Sometimes I have this thought, and check for mirrors in the rooms I'm in. It is usually a surprise to realise there aren't any mirrors, and this perception of two (the anti-philosophical paradox of my being) is merely due to seeing my body as separate to feeling where I am and who.
And recently, with all the voices that get louder (recognised your encouragement to continue not eating, grandma; and remembered your disbelief in my overall adult-life abilities, parents of my adolescence; and repeated my own internal melodies till i got sick of them and was actually sick), with all the points I make about chaos, and all the restless fights I have with people I adore, about nothing, i have began to doubt the reality of existence. What if, what if I am not alive.
The instant I am about to make a bad judgement street-crossing, where I will skip-jog next to an unbackpacked teenager (going out to buy something?) really quickly near the station, when the traffic is peaking and the traffic signature is offensively clear.. That instant is a leap out of my body. The next instant however, is where "all the magic happens" (and yes this was in a mocking nasal voice of a posh English PR professional woman, pretending she is a famous person on MTV Cribs, because all these voices are of course based on my references and experiences). As soon as I get to the other side, I begin doubting whether I ever made it. Whether I am indeed from that point on alive or if the life I will continue from then on will forever be something only for me or in me or out of me.
I shake my head violently a few times, aching to hurt, to embody the pain and be embodied by my casing. A fan of ritual, I repeat ('come on come on come on come on' and 'OKOKOKOK') inside, given the sophisticated High Functioning label i'm wearing with all the pride, and proceed to .."act like it's real". In the OCD and Depersonalised and Depressed and Disordered and Scared and Lonely and Lonely and Lonely heart that lives in the head in the body, or wherever, in the vicinity of me (I?) the process of acting like things are real is the same as smiling when a cue to smile has been presented, or like answering a maths question, or like brushing teeth when a new partner brushes teeth, or like asking politely if it's OK to smoke, when friends who don't smoke are eating. Until I'm back home, the matter of my reality, or material consistency if you like, is a matter-of-fact repeated chewing gum I try my hardest to believe.
And in the meta-meta-meta-cycle of reprossessing, I decide that the verification of my reality will happen again at the next time I catch myself feeling happy or alive.
An explosion of colours, at every intimate realisation of my boundaries, when rubbed against trust and adoration. It is perceptual and experienced, and not only an idea (concept?) of what is true and what is there. I get lost in the uncertainty of what I am, like the next person, however the uncertainty of wherever I am (or not), is completely mixed up with the fact i feel thoughts and physical boundaries and ideas and being and not being, with my flesh, as much as with my mind.
Exhaustedly, I exhaust my options and reset to feeling cloudy, something I've chosen for myself, as it makes me feel safely like I am not going to have a breakdown any minute now and will need urgent attention, hurting and breaking the hearts of all the people I value as the Most Precious and thus doing the opposite of my absolute wish: to keep them happy and safe from my demons (from me?). I adopt the relaxed body posture and the complete disclosure of anything serious, at all times.
Somewhere between reading about food, food blogs, looking at images, eating blogs and images; somewhere between food, body ideas, body distortion, feeling alive, or outside my body, or too tightly packed in with no room to breathe; somehwere between reading, or hyperventilating, or crying because a spoon is offensively out of order and therefore proof i cannot possibly be real and my friends are all imaginary; somewhere along those lines, i stumble or trip over my own feet and breathe out. Kuru. it is disgusting.
but you know what? particularly of interest to lill' ol' GR me, 'kuru' is a type of greek cheesepie. More synchronised, you die.
