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Sunday 2 May 2010

Neurasthenic


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File:Sinoatrial node high mag.jpg




Tex used to suffer from chronic headaches. In fact, these have continued to the present day. He often refers to his headaches by saying, "my nerves are hurting me." "Nerves" Tex imagines as white or pink threadlike structures, an idea he acquired one day at the dentist's, where he was shown a picture of the "nerve" of a tooth. Once, having a headache in his sleep, he dreamed of his "vagus nerve," that is, of the nerve that "wanders" -- referring, it would appear, to a white thread that could have somehow pushed its way into his head from below and now might be walking around inside his head and in this way causing his headache.

Her secrecy and her darkness which he sometimes refers to as "the sedge" and "the moss," are the qualities that drew Tex to Stacey. The idea of a hillside being "fledged" with foliage, and especially the idea of such a scene falling into shadow as the sun drops peacefully below the top of the hill, holds a special appeal for Tex, and though he has never told her any of this, privately Stacey has sensed his interest, and colluded with it in ways Tex has never become more than dimly aware of, nor will ever entirely understand.




File:Himmelberg Tiebelquellen Moosboden  28062009 61.jpg



Fibres of the vagus nerve (right/bottom of image) innervating sinoatrial node tissue (central and left of image): high magnification micrograph image by Nephron, 2009
Moss-ground, Tiebel wellspring, foothills of Praekowa Mountain, Himmelberg, Carinthia, Austria: photo by Johann Jaritz, 2009

3 comments:

Elmo St. Rose said...

neurasthenia:a syndrome marked by
ready fatigability of body and mind
usually by worry and depression,and
often by headache and gastrointestinal and circulatory
disturbances.

seasick: the vagus nerve
cardiopulmonary arrest straining at
stool:the vagus nerve
emotional faint: the vagus nerve

the histology of the vagus nerve
at the sinoatrial node...that's
right, with every beat of your
heart

as for Tex, I feel for him and he is obviously a sensitive fellow.
the cure??

medicine or art of some kind?

Curtis Roberts said...

It is a great and much appreciated gift to have new poems, stories, photographs and other images to read each day, live with and ponder.

TC said...

I feel a strange nostalgia for the days of aspirin commercials in which this product was vaunted as the remedy for "neuritis and neuralgia", conditions which, as a small child, I imagined as concurrent with adulthood.