Happy New Year, ya turd tossers, gutter muppets, and list lickers. I hope you got what you deserved this holiday season. Welcome home to your House of Loathing.
I am relatively new to
’s work over there on . However, what I have found in her writing, and what you will find here, is a scientific outlook that does not abandon the heart. Her work is both frank and hopeful and strives not just to indulge the darkness but to also find a damn light switch.In these last few hours before this year dies and the new year is born, there’s nothing I’d rather read than an oncologist describing the visceral in-between of life and death. Here’s
on Death and Physics.The first time I faced death and saw life actively slip away was during my residency. I was in my early twenties and doing a rotation in the infection ward where there were many drug addicts with hepatitis C and HIV receiving care for the multiple complications they had related to their drug abuse or their infections. Most of them were alone all the time.
There was a homeless man whom I was shocked to discover was only in his late twenties. He was just skin and bones and had a huge belly occupied by his failing liver and ascitic fluid, as if he were pregnant with the unwanted child he professed himself to be. He was there making small talk with us when we did the rounds, always talking about the future, when “he got better”, and how his social worker was in contact with him to see if he could get back into the rehab program and maybe find a shared flat. All the time, every day, a little bit thinner, slightly more yellow, hiding the tremor of his hands. His conversation was sometimes slurred, sometimes clear, but never really connected with what we were telling him.
One morning, he was unusually awake. He was sitting upright on his bed with his legs folded in a sort of “Buddha” pose, an atypical position for him, who usually met us laid back on the bed, like a “Roman”, with one arm folded over his head, the other stringing along his impossibly thin ribcage holding onto the nurse alert button, one leg folded under the sheets and the other perching listlessly out of the bed, dangling like the leg of a marionette. That morning, on the other hand, he had been watching TV, and he told us all about the men’s finals in the high jump and their marks, and then he spoke about the performance of a particular Spanish athlete who had done very well that day. He was lucid and articulate and talked like he knew (and maybe even enjoyed?) sports.
The next day, we were doing rounds when a nurse asked us to come into his room as quickly as possible because his condition was rapidly deteriorating. This was all to be expected because he had irreversible liver failure and rampant AIDS. A senior consultant took over and gave orders on how to proceed. All the time I was there, I could not help but wonder, “How is this possible? He was better yesterday, ‘fine’ even”. And then I saw him actively die. I saw how his pupils, at first pinpoints through the stress generated in the battle for life, suddenly grew larger, his gaze stopped staring and became cloudy, his shallow, rapid breathing stopped in the middle of a gasp, and his skin abruptly lost the glow of life. His body was no longer his body. It was just a carcass. I could feel the tension of the moment dissipate, blurring into the walls and the floor, slipping through the glass of the shut window from which the sun was streaming in. Or maybe it was not just the tension of the moment.
Since then, and being an oncologist, I have had many other close encounters with death. Enough to understand that the actual act of dying in itself is a nauseating, mysterious and awe-inspiring thing in equal proportions. I have never died myself, but in having witnessed death many times, the best way I can describe it is that there is something palpable about life abandoning a body. Something physical, as in physics and the first law of thermodynamics. Where did it go? That thing that held everything together? It is as close as I have gotten to truly believe in the existence of souls. The feeling lasts only a few seconds, right before people start to weep in the realization of death, and nurses come in to tidy up the cadaver. You have a few seconds to whisper to yourself, “Where are you going?” because a moment ago, life was so tangible that that energy must be going somewhere. Where does it go? Does it hurt to detach the soul from the body? Because it feels so physical, as in tangible. And so abrupt, like stripping two things glued together for so long; one doesn’t know when one starts and the other finishes. If death pulls fast enough, maybe the tearing apart will be clean. The soul cannot travel with bits of flesh still stuck to it. The flesh cannot rest with strands of soul adhered.
THE FLESH CANNOT REST WITH STRANDS OF SOUL ADHERED. Goddamn that sentence needed an encore. Thank you Ana!
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House keeping time.
I have been receiving some inquiries lately as to what exactly I am looking for regarding submissions to this series. In short, there really aren’t any goddamn rules. That’s the whole point of this thing.
I am truly thankful and overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I’ve received lately. That being said, I don’t want this to turn into one of those things where people get all worried about the goddamn rules and requirements and send me third-person biographical statements and use words like to whom it may concern and tell me where exactly they received their soul-sucking MFA. All I want is your hate and your heart. Blast from the hip and see what you hit.
If you are still unsure as to the nature of this perverted little beast, I have expressed this sentiment in more words here.
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Now that the yuck is out of the way, I do want to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to all you freaks who’ve indulged and supported this wonky little corner of the internet this past year. You guys are truly the tits, and I can’t come without ya.
As always, and maybe this time after clicking the link above, send your tales of love and loathing to daisycashin@gmail.com
Hello, world. Love ya.
Good stuff and... Love you more :)
Oh wow, this is so great