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girl, interrupted by susanna kaysen
velocity vs. viscosity
insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow & fast. im not talking about onset or duration. i mean the quality of insanity, the day-to-day business of being nuts. there are a lot of names: depression, catatonia, mania, anxiety, agitation. they dont tell you much. the predominant quality of the slow form is viscosity. experience is thick. perceptions are thickened & dulled. time is slow, dripping slowly through the clogged filter of thickened perception. the body temperature is low. the pulse is sluggish. the immune system is half-asleep. the organism is torpid & brackish. even the reflexes are diminished, as if the lower leg couldnt be bothered to jerk itself out of its stupor when the knee is tapped. viscosity occurs on a cellular level. & so does velocity. in contrast to viscositys cellular coma, velocity endows every platelet & muscle fiber with a mind of its own, a means of knowing & commenting on its own behavior. there is too much perception, & beyond the plethora of perceptions, a plethora of thoughts about perceptions. digestion could kill you! what i mean is the unceasing awareness of the process of digestion could exhaust you to death. & digestion is just an involuntary sideline to thinking, which is where the real trouble begins. take a thought - anything; it doesnt matter. im tired of sitting here in front of the nursing station: a perfectly reasonable thought. heres what velocity does to it. first, break down the sentence: im tired - well, are you really tired exactly? is that like sleepy? you have to check all your body parts for sleepiness, & while youre doing that, theres a bombardment of images of sleepiness, along these lines: haed falling onto pillow, head hitting pillow, wynkin, blynken, & nod, little nemo rubbing sleep from his eyes, a sea monster. uh-oh, a sea monster. if youre lucky, you can avoid the sea monster & stick with sleepiness. back to the pillow. memories of having mumps @ age five, sensation of swollen cheeks on pillows & pain on salivation - stop. go back to sleepiness. but the salivation notion is too alluring, & now theres an excursion in the mouth. youve been here before & its bad. its the tongue: once you think of the tongue it becomes an intrusion. why is the tongue so large? why is it scratchy on the sides? is that a vitamin deficiency? could you remove the tongue? wouldnt your mouth be less bothersome without it? thered be more room in there. the tongue, now, every cell of the tongue, is enormous. its a vast foreign object in your mouth. trying to diminish the size of your tongue, you focus your attention on its components: tip, smooth; back, bumpy; sides, scratchy, as noted earlier (vitamin deficiency); roots - trouble. there are roots to the tongue. youve seen them, & if you put your finger in your mouth you can feel them, but you cant feel them with with tongue. its a paradox. paradox. the tortoise & the hare. achilles & the what? the tortoise? the tendon? the tongue? back to tongue. while you werent thinking of it, it got a little smaller. but thinking of it makes it big again. why is it scratchy on the sides? is that a vitamin deficiency? youve thought these thoughts already, but now these thoughts have been stuck onto your tongue. they adhere to the existence of your tongue. all of that took less than a minute, & theres still the rest of the sentence to figure out. & all you wanted, really, was to decide whether or not to stand up. viscosity & velocity are opposites, yes they can look the same. viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination; velocity causes the stillness of fascination. an observer cant tell if a person is silent & still because the inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy. something common to both is repetetive thought. experiences seem prerecorded, stylized. particular patterns of thought get attached to particular movements or activities, & before you know it, its impossible to approach that movement or activity without dislodging an avalanche of prethought thoughts. a lethargic avalanche of synthetic thought can take days to fall. part of the mute paralysis of viscosity comes from knowing every detail of whats ahead & having to wait for its arrival. here comes the im-no-good thought. that takes care of today. all day the insistent dropping of im no good. the next thought, the next day, is im the angel of death. this thought has a glittering expanse of panic behind it, which is unreachable. viscosity flattens the effervescence of panic. these thoughts have no meaning. they are idiot mantras that exist in a prearranged cycle: im no good, im the angel of death, im stupid, i cant do anything. thinking the first thought triggers the whole circuit. its like the flu: first a sore throat, then, inevitably, a stuffy nose & a cough. once, these thoughts must have had meanings. they must have meant what they said. but repetition has blunted them. they have become background music, a muzak medley of self-hatred themes. which is worse, overload or underload? luckily, i never had to choose. one or the other would assert itself, rush or dribble through me, & pass on. pass on to where? back into my cells to lurk like a virus waiting for the next opportunity? out into the ether of the world to wait for circumstances that would provoke its reappearance? endogenous or exogenous, nature or nurture - its the great mystery of mental illness.