Shards of Glass
I’m prone to a pulmonary illness. My airways become easily inflamed. Extra mucus is produced inside the bronchi, which hinders respiration. Airborne agents trigger the lining of the bronchi. Acute asthma attacks require emergency response. Symptoms are alleviated with the inhalation of pharmaceutical chemicals which open the bronchi. Thanks to these devices, I can perform my duties, which require focused attention and vigilance. Inhalers save lives but do not heal. There is no cure provided by Western medicine.
All my life had been a single relentless attempt to flee an unremitting malaise: suffocation. For many years, I had to submit to the whims and commands of an uncertain health. It is impossible to enter a dialogue with a physical illness. There is blindness and obstinacy to pain. I had to endure its monologue, sustain its cruelty, submit to its tyranny, and with the support of analgesics, survive its assault on my humanity. It was a losing war interrupted from time to time by a precarious truce.
But the cough persisted in spite of medications and treatments from pulmonologists. Something alien and evil was blocking the airways, and the cough was an attempt to dislodge that irritant. Each sickness sends us a summons disguised as a question.
There is a psychogenic theory I find inspirational. It postulates a return to the airless conditions of the womb where oxygen is provided to the embryo through the mother’s blood, not through the lungs. In the months of gestation, the lungs are undeveloped and primitive. Breathlessness is associated, therefore, with prenatal existence. It reestablishes that fusion with the mother. The human fetal larva is a sea creature. Is asthma a nostalgic longing for that amphibian aquatic state? During a flare-up, I literally drown in my own pulmonary mucus. It is a submersion in the liquid realm of bodily fluids and secretions. Back to the amniotic sea, therefore. Is it a latent wish to return to the mineral brine inside my mother’s womb? It is a hypothesis of great mystical beauty. My imagination allows me to adorn and embellish reality.
I fabricate theories and axioms to entertain myself. It gives a colorful meaning to the enigmatic chemistry that rules our life.
The Vault of Memory
It’s wrong to think that events stored in the vault of memory are preserved for all time, only to be uncovered by the ardent seeker. Many reminiscences, the majority of them are deleted. There are no traces of them as if the episodes they illustrated never happened.
How can we account for such acts of vandalism in the inner archives of the self? The only way to explain such massive destruction of accumulated data is to blame the neurochemical storms that play havoc in the meteorology of the brain. Memories are chemical structures subject to molecular upheavals. In this alchemy, change is inherent. That’s why writing a diary is an endeavor to preserve events, to crystallize them into sentences and paragraphs, and by exposing them to others, they can live in other minds and survive the passage of time.
Panacea
Alvard shanghaied me for a drink one night at Bar Lamia. It was Alvard’s favorite joint because of the variety of single malts they offered. Many patrons were fashion models, Wall Street executives, media people. Alvard never approached women at the bar. He didn’t look for romance. He reminds me that the two greatest philosophers of love, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, never loved a woman, preferring relationships with prostitutes. Alvard preferred brief liaisons with women of the night.
He was talkative that night at the bar. His mood was up.
“You know, my skin condition. I finally found the right treatment. She’s Chinese, did her medical studies at Beijing University. I’m telling you, she has manna in her hands,” he claimed.
He paused and took a sip of Bowmore.
“You should try her,” he said.
“Is she your new belle-de-nuit?”
“Oh no, she’s strictly massage.”
“You’re feeling better?”
“Never felt better. She must be a reincarnation of Bien Que.”
“Who is he?”
“The first doctor in Chinese medical history. They called him ‘the doctor who brings back his patients from the dead.’”
“Sounds like voodoo.”
“I don’t give a damn! As long as it works.”
“Doesn’t sound very scientific,” I said.
“Give her a try, for your asthma. You will be in good hands. Excuse the word play. Just pay her a visit. Just imagine a future without your inhalers,” he said.
The Confessions of Wounds
Although a journal is mostly for private consumption, it will fall predictably into other hands. Behind the mask of privacy lurks an exhibitionist. Because the log is a depository of secrets, there is a good chance they’ll be divulged. A secretary was originally a piece of furniture made of wood, a writing desk with locked drawers designed to shelter the private correspondence of government officials or the intimate letters of aristocratic women. The confidante who managed such a precious piece of furniture, the keeper of the keys to drawers, was called a secretaire, the guardian of the secrets. But as etymology reveals, the word secret derives from the Latin word secretus, meaning “separate, hidden,” and the French word secreter, which has given the English words “to secrete” and “secretion,” means “to discharge, to seep, to excrete what is hidden.” Thus, a secret is meant to be discharged, released. There’s an uncanny paradox embedded in that word. Every diary is a prolonged confession to be leaked.
The Art of Breathing
There is another interpretation of my malady. To breathe is to allow the outside in, to accept the intrusion of reality, to condone the invasion of our body. We breathe when we enter this world. We speak of our first breath and our last breath. Cioran said, “Only the idiot is equipped to breathe.” Based on this cynical remark, I dare say, “The real gives me asthma.”
But I think the real disease is life itself. Is my diary an analysis of an illness camouflaged behind a pulmonary condition?
When Crustaceans Love
I drove to the address on Fifth Avenue. I walked for a while on the wide pavement, examining Armani windows. That evening air had an odor of burned plastic and sweat. My breathing was labored. I had my inhaler in my jacket pocket just in case. I stopped at Le Pain Quotidien on Broadway and ordered a coffee with a petit pain au chocolat. I sat down on the long communal table and sipped my brew. An elderly man, dressed fashionably, was sending an e-mail to someone called Sebastian. That’s a name one doesn’t hear anymore since Suddenly Last Summer, that play by Tennessee Williams which was turned into a movie with Montgomery Cliff and Elizabeth Taylor. My oblique gaze read: “It was going to end anyway, and you knew it, there’s no solution.” He was breaking up with his beau. Was it a suicide note? Should I engage in a therapeutic dialogue, flash my medical credentials, and save his tortured life? He beckoned the waiter and ordered a tarte aux framboises. French pastry saved the day.
I rang the ninth floor. The elevator ascended, straining and whining. On the landing, there were three doors like in fairy tales. On one door, a Chinese word was painted in red in a flamboyant calligraphy.
The bell