Literary Chaos Magazine

An Online Journal of Experimental Fiction and Poetry

I Surgery

by Dan Jackson

Tuesday, November 22

What started as a dull pain hurts more and more. But I have to press on. I told my mother, simply, “I’m not coming to visit you.” In hindsight, I see the problem starting to show itself. When I referred to myself, I would use a contraction—it seemed to round the edges off the pain. A mild pain, still—nonetheless a pain. “Last time it was too difficult for me. You were obsessing over the divorce, and I just don’t think I could stand it. I don’t have the answers to the problems of your life.” It was within these phrases that I started to notice a sharpness to the 1^st person object-pronoun “I.” I assumed it was guilt—a mental phantom. Some sort of balancing mechanism intending to soothe my ego. But each time I spoke, the pain became worse. Until, finally, “I come every year and I help you paint and clean and fix-up your unfixable house; we make miserable dinners out of your microwave, watch same old worn videotapes, and I…” This is where I buckled over from the pain. I couldn’t stand it anymore. “What I’m saying…” I said, but this hurt too, the contraction was little help. “I…am sick,” I said. “You should see a doctor,” my mom said.

I went to see the doctor. The doctor told me, simply, that my I had been inflamed to the point of no return, and that it had to be removed. I asked the doctor, how could they do this? How did this happen? How could I live with no I? The doctor said that the removal, though not common, was a simple operation and would require me to stay only a few days in the hospital. He said that current research suggests that this mysterious affliction is genetic in nature, but that certain environmental factors bring it about. He said that I could live a normal, happy life without it, but I would have to rely on indirect and possessive pronouns to express myself after the surgery.

For years I had suffered with headaches, backaches and bouts of insomnia. Retrospectively, all these ills can be linked to my inflamed and hemorrhaged I. I avoided contact with people for many years, and when I was in contact with people I drank a lot of alcohol—the former tactic was to avoid using the stinging pronoun, the latter was for negating it. I rue the idea of never being able to properly express myself again, but this ruing is counterbalanced by my anticipation for the relief. In other words, my I has made my life hell; but I am apprehensive about an I-less future.

My doctor, Frank Wilkinson, has suggested that I write as much as I can, even though it hurts more and more every time I put an I to the page. The doctor says that there are few personal accounts of I-removals on record, and it would be useful of me to do this. Besides, this is my last chance to exercise my I; so even though it’s ultra-sensitive and smarting after each use, I should use my I as much as I can before I lose it forever. But more importantly—I’m deciding this presently—this account should be for posterity’s sake. Although, I wonder if I should edit out the parts where I talk about my mother. No, it may well turn out that one or many interactions with my mother are to blame for the need for the removal of my I. As the doctor said, the nature of the affliction is genetic; yet environmental factors bring about the symptoms. Does that mean my mother is the mother of the disease? If it’s genetics does that mean that the disease is me as much as my green eyes? Is it like my asthma—where perhaps a combination of inherited characteristics (such as phlegmy lungs? narrow bronchials? I don’t know.) conspire with the environment (polluted air, my mom smoking when she was pregnant? I don’t know.) to create the asthma—it’s not AIDS. It’s asthma, a condition—a tendency for the lungs to spasm and flush with phlegm when—when? When triggered. That’s when. So I can conclude from the cryptic remarks of the doctor that my affliction is a condition. Not a virus. My I inflamed, but but but something triggered it…did it not? I feel I need to do more research on genetics and diseases. But I wonder if it is a matter of philosophy. I have the blessing and the curse of a roving mind. My college education was unfocused. I accumulated mediocre marks in a broad assortment of survey courses. So: Philosophy. Descartes, I believe, proved that he existed to himself. A tautology—but I believe one can live in a tautology. He went on to attempt to prove other things, but my professor convinced me little beyond Descartes knowing Descartes. In fact, little in philosophy convinces me (Though I find the mode of thought spectacular and, despite or because of its inutility, the noblest and most profound pursuit of a mind.) I tend to brood quite heavily, like the greatest and the worst of philosophers—to no avail—and I often think about the “I.” Rather I think of me. Not “I.” Perhaps reality is found in the grammar. Me is the subject pronoun and I is the object. I have never believed in objective reality (and therefore maybe you can understand why I believe philosophy to be useless.) And therefore in my Bazarovian nihilism I have denied my own essence and it hath withered to nil. That’s a vulgar simplification! Or rather it’s not a simplification as there are rare simplifications—as true simplifications are the domain of Genius: F=ma, E=mc² Rather it’s a lie—as all speech and thought is. I do have an I. (And yes, underlining does seem to cause even more pain.) It is essential that I have an I for thought and speech. (Mostly speech for I want a coffee. I need my Honda fixed. I want to touch you.) But in my solipsism my I has become my me, and vice versa. Everything in my mind is myself in context to myself. By and large I lead a sedentary, mental life, by no means profound—nonetheless, my life as so far has been meted in mental footsteps in the musty cavern of my head. Humble, dry echoey footsteps. (Or footfalls. But I hate that word. It sounds like a three-year-old’s word. (Mommy I make foot-falls!) Or a poet’s word.) The I and the me are parallel echoing footsteps whose reverberations cancel each out—huh? Maybe, it’s just that my I knows itself in relation to me. It’s my intimate, almost masturbatory tautology. But the vulgarity of my words (and thought)! If only some greater mind could have been afflicted with my disease! For I am no philosopher. I am no hermetic solipsist. And for the death of the gods’ sake, I am no nihilist! Cloistered, self-absorbed—yes, but I do love! At the very least, like Bazarov, I have love for my mother—and perhaps it is to the Psychologists that we must turn to. (And I am confident that before the excising scalpels are set down to be cleaned, rubbered-hands will usher my newly I-less self to the offices of the psychiatrist. Sat down in his sweating, leather chair and subject to his penetrative gaze. They have never helped me before, and there is no philter to recover me from my loss of my direct pronoun. Just their anti-depressants, and how do I know these newfangled antidepressants weren’t the cause of the loss of my I in the first place?) It’s not quite something I can articulate—or rather, not something I want to. (And to confront the nihilistic issue head-on, I want to say that the only things I believe to be real are gut reactions, sexual impulses and familial bonds and fixations. And because of this belief, I can’t exist comfortably in the cerebral realm of Academia and Philosophy. And I have no patience for office life—I am useless to our society. And I will soon be useless to myself as my I will be removed!) My mother is the closest person in my life—it has not always been that way, but my friends have all created lives, mutating into strangers—following the flowchart of progression of the modern individual—a chart I decided early on not to follow out of infantile stubbornness—and this stubbornness, this mode of thought has become who I am. Not merely a modus operandi, this stubbornness is as much a part of me as my green eyes. And this stubbornness is the mother of my life—not my actual mother. But my mother—since my parent’s divorce I have tried to be “there” for my mother. I helped fixed her new old unfixable house. I stayed a time with her last summer before setting out on my own again and it was there that my pains surfaced. During a Humphrey Bogart movie, I think. Treasure of Sierra Madre, maybe. Me, Momma Sierra and Bogey. Oh, let me think. She was bored—she always fell asleep during that one. That grim one was one of Dad’s favorites. How could she fall asleep? Such a great movie. The pains were pronounced—it was a mild pain that was like indigestion, and I attributed it to my coffee intake. Or sometimes a pain in my back I attributed to my poor posture or a throb in my chest I attributed to anxiety—but the pain became pronounced that summer. But I’m repeating myself. Tomorrow I am going to be briefed by some officials at the hospital concerning the details of the surgery. I will report tomorrow. Now, use of the pronoun has become painful. If I rest I (oof) hope you-know-who can continue.

Wednesday, November 23

The meeting was more an interrogation. There was a specialist in cognitive disorders who had an exhaustive set of questions. Not questions, recitations. Excuse me. I was exhausted by last evening—too exhausted to exercise any pronouns, much less my I. Of course, after the I removal I no longer, well.

At any rate, last night, I had to do some thinking. This specialist pissed me off me. He was quite irksome and impersonal. He seemed inconvenienced by my inflammation. When I waited for him, the nurse announced his arrival as if it were a profound moment. Something out of Don Giovanni. He was a surgeon at a prestigious children’s hospital. He told me curtly that he studied the development of I in children. The nurse and the doctor hooked me up to an EKG and monitored my bodily stress as I spoke a series of sentences that were to test the nature and extent of my I inflammation.

I am a good-natured and intelligent man.

I am a good boy.

I am a rock.

I am a mountain.

I am a precocious and pretty girl.

I am an urbane and pleasant woman.

There were a billion of these recitations, like Don Giovanni’s catalog of lovers, and where my I is (which I have yet to be able to pinpoint) seemed to dully throb more and more. Dr. Gadwill read off the questions impatiently and impersonally. He came in with his ruddy beard and drooping nose and skin the color of raw poultry and bombarded me with a barrage of recitations. Each “I” I subsequently uttered stuck in me like a small bit of shrapnel. He took a break after an hour and returned and there were more.

I am a god.

I am wasting away.

I am a fugitive and afraid of being recaptured.

I am a scientist.

I am unaware of my surroundings.

To be quite honest, now that thirty-six hours or more have passed, I don’t quite remember everything he made me say. As the inflammation intensifies all my associations with uttering and thinking, my I seems to have a black-hole effect. The dull pain has become acute, rather, it’s become so dull it’s a broad pain that wipes out time and space for me. I have been thinking because the pain is somewhat metaphysical, it throbs in dimensions beyond twinging of nerve-endings. It has become something that throbs my mindset, my memory, and the important connections in my head.

But one moment has returned. Or rather, I cannot forget a confrontation that occurred in the second session.

“Why are you making me saying these things?”

“We have to make an exact diagnosis,” the doctor said, writing some notes. “Why didn’t I get her number.”

“What?”

“Why didn’t I get her number.”
“Whose number?”

“That’s your next recitation.”
“Why didn’t I get her number?”

“Why didn’t I lie to the police officer.”
“Why didn’t I lie to the police officer?” Gadwill looked at me carefully, then at the instruments, and wrote a quick note.

“Why didn’t I order the one I wanted.” (Interestingly, the doctor’s I’s don’t hurt for me to write. Only my own.)

“Why didn’t I order the one I want?”

“I am not interested in your new purse.”

“I am not interested in your damn purse.”
“Stick to the script please. Again. I am not interested in your new purse.”

“I am not interested in your new purse.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any more money.”

“I feel I’ve become impotent.”

“What exactly are you testing here?”

“They’re computer-designed questions to help us determine where and how big the inflammation is.”

“It’s in my head, though, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Where?”

“It’s in you. Everybody has a different inside. I think I’ve become impotent, please.”

“I think I’ve become impotent. Do you give these questions to children?”

“No. They have a separate test. If we are going to get through this in a timely fashion you’re going to have to stop asking me questions. I think I love you.”

“Why don’t you just give me the list and I’ll just read them off.”

“Because it only works when you hear the proper cadence. I think I love you.”

“So I don’t know how to say things right. My State-school education didn’t teach me how to properly enunciate.”

“You have to say it in the manner that I say it, otherwise our instruments will not register accurately. It has nothing to do with your education. So, please, I think I love you.”
“Though my education is regrettable. Perhaps with a suitable northeast education in a private school I could have become a fancy specialist. As it is, I’m just a straggler. I’m a starving professional student with nothing to my name except an obscure mental disorder.”

“Please, just repeat what I say. I am in no way disparaging your education. Let’s finish this set and we can take a break for lunch.” The specialist’s nostrils flared, splaying the bristles of his moustache angrily. “Besides, I’m from Portland. I went to public school and obtained my MD at University of Washington.”

How proletariat of you! I thought, or maybe I actually said. Rot in hell. As I pulled the wet-like EKG tabs off my naked body I started to regret everything that is possible to be regretted. I had not asserted myself enough in the past. That was what had led me to the present. I was confident with my I only mentally, not in its use in speech. The discrepancy led to the inflammation—I was sure of it. The specialist watched me vacantly as I put on my robe and walked out of the office. In the hallway there was a payphone. I called my mother collect. She wasn’t home. I called her at her office. She responded, but said she couldn’t talk long. I told her that I wasn’t taking the idea of surgery very well. She said she would get some time off and come and visit me and take care of me—she hadn’t realized it was such a major thing. I hadn’t realized it either, I said, but that I was starting to get upset about the impending loss. She said that she was having a guy redo her bathroom, but that the fixing could wait, and she could come up north to be with me. She would call me in the evening but she had to go because she a meeting to go to. Okay, I said. Meanwhile, a nurse came out of the office and spotted me at the phone. She had a slight sneer and chid: “You’re keeping the doctor waiting.”

I said bye to mom and I let the nurse lead me back to the room. They hooked me up and continued the tests, effectively erasing my impertinence from the records. My impotent assertion. The last gasps of my dying autonomy. Will I have a self when my I is removed? I suspect I will. But one of the myriad vague fears I have is that my sense of freedom will be removed with the I. Isn’t the I the prow of my ship that expeditions the waters of the world? (Expeditions? Where did that come from? Since when have I ever expeditioned? This started as a parenthetical tangent, but I think this is the meat of the matter. I’ve grown up as an American Male spoonfed from day one the idea that freedom is my bread and butter, and it was my privilege to shit a masterpiece out of my life. Seize the you-know-what. But in order to achieve this godlike autonomy I have to follow a pre-ordained route. The route itself is a slave-caravan of dead souls. Autonomic functioning is beaten out of you. Okay, so that’s obvious. Nevertheless, why worship this idea of freedom? Maybe I should be glad I is going. The I is a bar of my cage. Once the I bar is split I can slip out as a ghost in society. I will no longer be able to directly assert or identify myself. Perhaps I will be able to expedition in my own society. And, like a foreigner, I won’t be able to speak the language so I won’t have to partake in conforming rituals.)

After all the tests I decided to call Dr. Wilkinson, my physician. I had liked him a lot more than Gadwill. (And I will make this short. My I is beginning to really throb now. It had been all right until now. It is upsetting.) It was asked of Dr. Wilkinson if he could find out anything more about both my condition and this specialist. Wilkinson said he would do what he can. He said he was glad to hear that his patient was writing a journal, and his patient should try writing everyday even if it hurt and even if it was just a little.

Tomorrow the results of the tests should be in. I

Thursday, November 24

Everything is okay. I just pushed it last night with that last I. I still need to rest. I wrote the first-person pronoun and then I suffered an acute, crippling pain. Again, I can’t quite locate where the pain is. Maybe it’s akin to heartburn, except the burn is in my nervous system not in the gastrointestinal. It is pain that throbs in radiation from the locus of the I. It’s such a general pain though that it’s impossible for me to say where it is. It’s like trying to figure out where my thoughts originate.

There has been no call from either doctor today. I have been spending my day watching TV and then turning it off and listening to my body. Somewhere in there is my I, and they are going to remove it. Is my I like a cog on a gearwheel? Whereby, after its dismemberment, instead of moving smoothly along I’ll skip and stutter a bit but nonetheless continue my progress? Or will removing my I short-circuit my whole system, rendering coherent thought impossible? These are questions I want to bring to Dr. Gadwill.

Friday, November 25

I got a call early this morning to come back to the hospital for more tests. Also, there was an issue with my insurance, but I think it’s sorted out. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m having a bad one. I’ll try to use as many contractions as possible to round off the edges of my pronoun pain. I’ve been reading some psychology books I’d picked randomly at the local library. I’m interested that small children don’t start out using an I. They refer to themselves in the third person if at all. How does that relate to my condition? For them, they haven’t recognized the condition of the objective. The writer of this journal entry doesn’t exactly believe in the condition of the objective either—maybe that’s it in a nutshell. But is it because of my decision not to believe in the objective, or is the writer genetically inclined to lose faith in the idea of the objective? I’m not able to speculate right now; I’m too tired. (Why couldn’t I’ve contracted inflammation of the use of the semi-colon instead of the first-person pronoun? I could live with that. Ow.)

There was only one session of recitations, and then an hour of physiognomic calibrations. I’ll explain as much as possible, because, you see, I’ve had a confrontation with Dr. Gadwill. Actually, an attempted confrontation. (But I’m not sure how much I can write without buckling over.)

Gadwill: I can’t go on like this.

Invalid: X can’t go on like this. [In the test today X didn’t say X. X said the actual first-person pronoun. It’s just becoming too painful for me to write it as an uppercase i. Sorry for the circumlocution, I’m just trying to avoid pain.]

Gadwill: I am always right.

Invalid: X am always right.

Gadwill: No, I haven’t seen the news yet.

Invalid: No, X haven’t seen the news yet.

Gadwill: On my way to work this morning, I saw a child die.

Invalid: Now that’s just sick.

Gadwill: (Releases a tight, impatient sigh from his poultry-lips.)

Invalid: On my way to work this morning, X saw a child die.

Gadwill: You shouldn’t have waited for me.

Invalid: What is this?

Gadwill: Repeat, please. We are testing other pronouns. You shouldn’t have waited for me.

Invalid: You shouldn’t have waited for me.

Gadwill: Take off your shoes, I see lightning.

Invalid: Take off your shoes, I see lightning. This doesn’t make any sense. What are you learning by this nonsense?

Gadwill: I don’t have time. We need to get through the tests so we have time for the physiognomic calibration.

Invalid: What? Was any of that for recitation?

Gadwill: No. The next one is: You owe me ten more dollars. I gave you a twenty not a ten.

Invalid: Wow, that’s a long one.

Gadwill: Please just repeat.

Invalid: Uh, let’s see. You owe me ten more dollars, ow! [X was unable to say the pronoun. It hurt too much. (Hm. That was interesting, the X that time twinged me a little.)]

Gadwill: I see.

Invalid: I see? Ow! [Ow!] Would you just say what the hell this is all about!

Gadwill: It is very important that you follow my instructions. This is a test of your physical symptoms to help us pinpoint the location of your I.

Invalid: But what the hell is this? Removal of my I. Ow. [Ow—I’ll go back to using X.]

Gadwill: It may seem ludicrous to you, but it is a very real affliction. And if we don’t accurately find your I and remove it soon the inflammation may spread to other pronouns.

Invalid: Isn’t there some kind of therapy that, uh, me could undergo to avoid surgery…

Gadwill: The inflammation isn’t in your actual “I.” It is in your sense of yourself. It is in your metaphysical conception of yourself in relation to subjective reality.

Invalid: So my first person is in a metaphysical reality?

Gadwill: Yes.

Invalid: How does one perform metaphysical surgery?

Gadwill: Very carefully.

Invalid: I hate you. You know I’m not an idiot. I’ve some education.

Gadwill: This is very difficult for you, I know. We locate your I using techniques developed in the 18^th century by the physiogomist Johann Levater. The basic principle is that by carefully examining surface conditions we can understand the complexities of the interior. Back then physiogomist techniques were used to determine personality characteristics. Now, because of our technology, we can use it to rectify deeper metaphysical problems.

Invalid: X still don’t understand how you can perform surgery on me. The body is a part of the physical, but the mind is a part of the metaphysical.

Gadwill: The mind is in the body, therefore the mind is a part of the physical and it can be operated upon. We can infer from the readings of the instruments where your I is located. Because of the precision of our instruments, we can pinpoint down to the molecule. And if we can find it, we can remove it with micro-scalpels.

Invalid: It’s insanity.

Gadwill: It’s the world we live in. If it weren’t for the technology, you would go mad. You said no one lived in this submarine.

Invalid: You said no one lived in this submarine. Has anyone’s soul ever inflamed?

Gadwill: Not that I know of. Please take off your shoes, I see lightning.

Invalid: It was a rhetorical question. I don’t believe in the soul. We already did this one. Please take off your shoes, X see lightning.

Gadwill: Just repeat what I say, please.

(The X started throbbing pretty hard there. Even a pronoun in proxy starts to hurt. How is the sufferer going to get through this?) The “calibration” was a bit easier. What they made me do was read statements similar to the recitations. Not aloud, just to myself. X’d read the statement to myself. (Even the X with a contraction is beginning to hurt.) X’d read the statement and then read the statement’s number aloud. This somehow fine-tuned the physiognomic measurements. Don’t ask me how.

Dr. Wilkinson called when the sufferer got home. By the time he called, the sufferer could barely talk. It’s been a bad one. The sufferer is miserable. Wilkinson said he had done a little research. He told me what Gadwill had told me, that my condition is metaphysical. What they cut out of me is physical, but in past cases removal of the I has meant a spot at the tip of the liver, plus a little bit scrapped off the circumflex (Whatever that is—my copy of Gray’s Anatomy seems to be misplaced.) Essentially, the metaphysical crosses the physical in different spots on the body. The I is not necessarily in the brain because the mind is not necessarily in the brain. (Wilkinson told me that neurons are found throughout the body.) The metaphysical is manifest in the interstices of the physical systems. The testing measured bodily reflexes for location and acuity of I activity. Wilkinson also confirmed that the inflammation would spread if not altogether excised. The inflammation could spread to other pronouns, my first or last name, or my idea of language altogether. Therapy could temporarily suppress the agitation the sufferer and the I experience; but the inflammation would always return stronger and quite possibly trigger debilitating metaphysical complications. Surgery is not the perfect solution, but, apparently, it is my best chance for stabilization of my metaphysical state.

That’s all there’s in me for tonight. My mother comes tomorrow, Bogey films in tow, and my surgery commences next week at some point not of my choosing. Good night.

Sunday, November 27

My mom has been here for two days. She has made me rest the entire time. I have watched TV and have tried to read some books. It’s evening. I lay on the couch and she sits on a nearby chair, ostensibly reading the New York Times. Earlier, she had called her own mother. We had started watching Casablanca. I couldn’t stand it. It used to be the film my parents watched on New Years Eve, before they divorced. I sat there wondering how she could stand to watch this movie—their shared movie; and now they were split. I feigned nausea and she stopped the tape. But I am ecstatic that I have energy to make I’s. I’m not sure how long it will last. I know the doctor wanted me to write everyday, but there wasn’t anything to say yesterday. I still don’t know if I can do this. There are so many unknowns. When I first heard that I had to have my I removed I unquestionably accepted the doctor’s expert words as Gospel. (And that’s amazing, because as a rule I accept no Gospels. Except the Gospel of Base Drives and the meaningless, miserable state of The Everyday. And Stubbornness, my mother might add.) But now… I’m wondering if I should rush into this. I mean, look at me now: I’m only experiencing a few pains with the I use, and I’ve found techniques to ameliorate the pain. Contractions and substitutions for example. There have only been a handful of people diagnosed with I-inflammation, and in each case the doctors went heedlessly to the operating table for fear of pronoun spreading (or worse.) Wilkinson is my physician—he wants me to feel better. I believe he is sincere. I always have. Under my insurance plan, I can choose my primary care doctor, and I’ve always been impressed with his intelligence and candor—as well as his willingness to prescribe tranquilizers and antidepressants with little prompting. Despite his willingness to dispense philters that fight existential-angst, however, he’s no philosopher. He understands my condition only to an extent that enables him to alleviate my suffering. That’s practical medicine. Gadwill, the specialist, seems to have no interest in my health, only his reputation and by association his theories and aptitude. Intellectually, I have no problem with that. (As a patient, it is a bit harrowing to be at his mercy, but medicine needs its theoreticians.) Burning questions and smoldering doubts remain. Physiognomy? Gadwill’s Physiognomy is not the physiognomy of old—I realize that. I cannot escape barbarity. For this reason alone I am willing to go under the knife. Only…What if there’s a reason for my pains? How do I not know that they aren’t perhaps growing pains on the path to a greater consciousness? I’m not mystical, but I do believe in the power of mutation and evolution. Sometimes we have to trust in genetic flukes. If I have children they will inherit my proclivity for I-inflammation. So all is not lost. But what if humanity needs my inflammation now? Could it be a deep-seated species survival mechanism of some sort? (I would love to elaborate, but I’m beginning feel some pronoun fatigue.) Never mind physiognomy, inflammations, posterity or the results of my surgery in medical journals—why don’t they just ask me if I’m happy or not?

On the eve of my surgery (or the eve of the eve, or the eve of the eve of the eve), I’m quite restless. And I grow even more restless as I watch my mom fidget about me. Before the movie, she had been in a constant state of motion. Now’s she’s just ostensibly reading the newspaper. She’d been cleaning and cooking and rearranging. She eyes me; She is glad to see me, but she doesn’t feel right if she’s not working. It aggravates me to no end. I

Monday, November 28

The sufferer went into a

Tuesday, November 29

I suffered an attack Sunday night. It took a lot of effort to write that “I.” It is not certain how many more “I”s are in me. Seem not to hurt so much if it’s written as an “I.” In quotes and disassociated from me. No problem writing “me.” Just problems writing an “I.” That “I” didn’t hurt. What if I. That hurt. Will just have to get hurt. That last sentence didn’t have the pronoun but it still hurt. Probably because the idea of “I” was implicit. There was an implication of the “I” and that’s all that seems to matter. Last night it was attempted to explain what happened Sunday night. That’s very awkward. Sorry. That hurt. “Sorry” has implication of the pronoun. It’s getting so that just thought of the pronoun hurts. Surgery is tomorrow. It is necessary. There can be thought without the “I” quite easily. There can be speech too. There is a window in my room. They took me to the hospital Sunday after my debilitating spasms. It was a piercing pain and then spasms and I could barely breathe. So you understand why I. I. Have to be careful. Those might be the last ones. Maybe should tell doctors to not let me write anymore. (Implication there, it hurt badly.) It needs to be removed. I can’t wait. Last one. Maybe one more. Can’t say goodbye yet.

There is a lot of snow coming down outside. The view is from the fifth floor. The point of view is from an objective observer. A ghost. Third person with limited-omniscience. No omniscience. Third person blind. Swirling flakes. Distanced, poetic images, perhaps. Swirling flakes. Detached from everything else. Crystal self-elaborations riding on specks of dust. The sufferer. Pain. There is no substitution allowed anymore. It must be removed. Sunday night was last ride on the I-train. That was too abstract to hurt. Last climb on the building made of I-beams. French who must have their Je’s removed? Spaniards who have their Yo’s removed? Chinese who have their La’s removed? There’s this person. This person pinched their I once and lost feeling momentarily there for awhile. (It knows that it’s been used. It’s hurting when I talk about this person. It’s unbearable. Maybe one more. Don’t tell Wilkwill or Gadlickson. It will be one more.) When it’s removed, will it be as an amputee? Will there be a phantom I? Will my sense of self-as-an-object ache and then realize it doesn’t exist? Why Doctor? What is this? This is insanity. I’ll just say it over and over again. It’ll work out the pain. I’ll just shit out the poison... I. I. I.

Please take off your shoes, I see lightning. It doesn’t make any sense.

I am a Scientist. I am a God.

Please put on your shoes, I heard it’s going to rain.

I.I.I.

Don’t stop me now. I’ve almost got a hang of it. I’m just holding my hand over the flame. I’ll just bring it down another inch. I. I. I. I.

That’s it. Can’t take anymore. I don’t want to die. Or maybe I do. Living like this it isn’t worth it.

I. I.

No more. Stop it. Just one more. What will be the last one? Something affirmative? Something negative and sarcastic? It has to be something. No more fucking around, it’ll just put me in coma and I’ll suffer brain damage. Oooooh. It smarts. It smarts. But one more.

I can’t think of anything.

Thursday, December 1

It’s not gone yet. Or so they tell me. The implications are raw. This is hurting too much. My sleep is needed.

Friday, December 2

There’s this joke that we have. The last line of The Maltese Falcon. What do you think it is? It’s not “It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.” You ask somebody and that’s what they say. “It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.”

Saturday, December 3

Detective: Hey Sam, what’s this?

Sam Spade: It’s the, uh, stuff dreams are made of.

Detective: Huh?

It’s “Huh?” My sleep. In the sleep there is. The language isn’t there. He. An attempt. Implications are gone. There is no coherence, but there is no pain either.

Sunday, December 4

Convalescence is not a “few days” as Dr. Wilkinson promised. Play a few Bogey films on the hospital TV. We said the joke. The family. My mom and my dad. Father excised himself, left the mom part reeling. Everybody said our family was the stuff dreams were made of. Maltese Family made of lead. Dr. Gadwill and Dr. Wilkinson fumbly scraped like the fumbling Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet fumbly scraped and everybody said, “Huh?” Is that fair? My parents made me. Their genetics are here. Genetics and physiognomy are the same. They are surface indications of the interior. But they are not the interior. Mom moved away and had me be the fix-it man. Home is where the heart is. He. Who? Who is the fix-it man? Can a broken I-less man be a fix-it man? Fix-it men are perpetually inundated with the to-be-fixed. What the hell is he talking about? Who? The fix-it man? Dr. Abott and Dr. Costello performed the surgery. Sam Spade needs a fall guy. You can always have more sons but there’s only one Maltese Falcon. Nurse says my sleep is needed.

Monday, December 5

Going home today. Mom is staying a few more days. She needs to go to work. My speech is broken. There are ways of expressing things. New ways. It will take a long time to find them.