84
MY BRAIN IS a flaking diamond, signifying rupture and unease. That is what I’m led to believe.
During the operation, two surgeons will take opposite ends of a coping saw and cut on the diagonal. They’ll isolate the temporal lobe, the temporoparietal, the temporoccipital, the amygdala: the icon of my behavior, approximately invisible in the company of the other brains. They will ride one horse on the carousel of their attention, and they will look only when they are passing at the correct point, but lacking nerve endings, a brain cannot feel. These doctors will worm their way through my memories, trespassers, passing through, agog at what should have been fatal decades, like rooms in an abandoned house. At any moment my circuits could wake up and engage, form the intrinsic ties they have always tied, push back and reciprocate. The building of my body could come alive. Each expert will touch pieces they don’t understand and classical time will lose meaning, as they spend almost a day pushing around up there, finally burning out.
I feel the need to trust their opinions, so that I can let someone else take control and try to fix things, but I cannot stifle the belief that it is me who best appreciates how my mind works, and it is me who best comprehends what I can live with and without.
In the morning, I tell them I refuse the surgery, and the doctors advise against this, saying my medicine has worn off, that the nosedive of chemicals has forced me into this decision. They tell me to wait an hour and see if I feel differently. But when should one make such a choice? On the drug-addled invention of a brain, or the scrambled twitch of a seizure? An ambulatory audience of physicians tells me who I am. After each of their efforts to convince me, I refrain.
85
ON THE EIGHTH DAY, Julie wakes up. I see her again, behind her eyes. Confusion and worry accompany her, but she is there. She is more exhausted on this day than the ones preceding it. It’s as if, in waking, she’s finally able to rest. I leave her alone. I go back home to see how it feels without her there.
I call Connie. I tell her Julie will be released. The surgery has been canceled. Connie pauses, as uncertain as I am that any choice could be correct.
I go online and research temporal lobe epilepsy. I learn that it’s possible all brains have scarring. I learn that the damage might never express itself. People live their whole lives without knowing it’s there. Temporal lobe epilepsy is a new diagnosis. The symptoms historically prompted the identification of any number of other disorders. I read about scientists claiming that Poe, Carroll, Van Gogh, Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard—all of them—are thought to have suffered from the same brand of dysfunction. The evidence pointing to these classifications have been culled from their writing and artwork. The diagnoses form in hindsight, with only imagination as substantiation. The whole thing feels less like a mystery unraveled and more like a story being made up as it goes along.
I look up the allergen my body is reacting against: rye fungus, ergot. Formed on grasses and cereal grains, it lies dormant until spring or heavy rain create the proper conditions to trigger its fruiting phase. Ergot alkaloids cause a wide range of effects: restricting circulation and misdirecting neurotransmitters. Ergotism as another name for what is suffered when the mold has been ingested. A burning sensation that shows up in the limbs, the result of the constriction of blood vessels. Hallucinations and convulsions, nausea and loss of consciousness. Ergot extract is used to treat migraines and induce contractions and control bleeding and Parkinson’s until hearts start to leak. The span between hurt and help is not a span at all: a fine dotted line. With no way to be sure, people bind all sorts of frenzy to ergot. Saint Anthony’s fire in the Middle Ages, the Great Fear in the French Revolution, the hysteria of the Salem witch trials: everyone always looking for a solid answer.
I shut my laptop, and when my mind quiets with this new information, I hear the hum again, that chanting monotone that has no answer.
One can only identify something known; the unknown goes unseen. For every person diagnosed correctly, ten must be waiting for doctors to look past the possibilities they’re already aware of. For every symptom on a patient’s list, there are five that haven’t been noticed and five gimmicks. For every ten times you think you see a person for who they are, there is one instance in which you correct yourself and realize she is so much more. What other disorders and conditions and diseases might look like what we’ve gone through? Medicine and rest seem unreliable solutions now.
I am tired, though. For now, I decide I must stick with the answers that have been handed to me. I stop looking for more.
I head to the basement with my camera. I set up my tripod in front of the hole in the wall where I knocked out the stain. The mold still clings to the edges of the plaster. This home comprises a collection of openings. Each provides access to our lives. Terrifying clues propose who we are and what consumes us.
I want to ignore these items and move on. I want to point at Julie as the problem and forget all the other evidence. I want to forget that I tore our home in half and couldn’t stare at a work of art while remaining conscious. I want to blur this underscore of knowledge. I want my wisdom to attain a terrible flexibility. I want Julie to see how I’ve changed my mind. Incisive focus is no match for the dumb relief of a powerful resolution.
To be absolved of someone else’s sin while still wondering what evil lurks within you. To name fate with nouns instead of adjectives.
I take more photos. I say, “This is only one way it might be,” thinking of all the other ways. I’m either telling a lie or there are so many truths.