Illness
For the past ten days, I have been ill. I have not been able to teach or write or read much. But I have been able to observe. Thanksgiving found me, as it usually does, in NY with my in-laws. Perhaps I should have stayed home to nurse my illness; instead, I traveled. I was not fully there—or more to the point, I was differently there. In mid-illness, I lost my voice. For days, at various tables—food, talk, laughter, wine abounded—and I sat, mute, watching. I am often the observer, but generally by choice. This time, I had no choice.
When I returned home from the festivities, more symptoms appeared—the details don’t matter. I am more interested in how my perception changed. I still went through the motions of daily life, but in an altered sort of way.
Rita reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill.” Here’s an excerpt:
“Ordinarily to look at the sky for any length of time is impossible… Now, lying recumbent, staring straight up, the sky is discovered to be something so different… that really it is a little shocking. This then has been going on all the time without our knowing it! – this incessant making up of shapes and casting them down, this buffeting of clouds together, and drawing vast trains of ships and wagons from North to South, this incessant ringing up and down of curtains of light and shade, this interminable experiment with gold shafts and blue shadows, with veiling the sun and unveiling it, with making rock ramparts and wafting them away… One should not let this gigantic cinema play perpetually to an empty house.”
I wonder if that is the artist’s calling—to document what “has been going on all the time without our knowing it.” And perhaps illness can serve as one of the gateways.
Comments
Jane, I like how you recognize that illness creates an “enhanced awareness” of inner qualities—throat and lungs and how Woolf recognizes that illness creates an enhanced awareness of outer qualities—the “gigantic cinema” of the sky. Your reference to the quotation “veiling the sun and unveiling it” reminds me how arbitrary and convenient our notions of reality and truth are.
Jan Nov 30, 01:31 pm
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Yes, and doesn’t illness also make one more of an acute observer of one’s own body? Not simply the overall “assessment” — I’m ill — but an enhanced awareness of how one’s throat, or nose, or ribcage, or inside the lungs feel. Ill, we observe what’s inner, as well as what’s outer, as you so concisely capture.
I haven’t read Woolf’s essay, but I love this phrase: “veiling the sun and unveiling it.”
Jane Kokernak Nov 29, 09:02 am