(no subject)

[proximoception]

Things I'm afraid of:

Falling
Loss of control
Vomit
Debts
Not hearing things
Repetition
Car crashes
Being worthless
Public speaking
Being wrong

Comments

vomit

[paris-hat.livejournal.com]

One's own or that of others? I've come into intimate contact with the former several times these past 3 days. So did, once, some unlucky little kid in a local deli, who was at the wrong place (blocking the women's room door) at the wrong time. Never done that before! Turns out Vicodin isn't so awesome after all for fighting off unknown ailments.

There is no worse feeling than vomiting. I still wish my mother was there, holding my hand, and I'm 34. It is the most disconcerting aspect of illness I've ever experienced, but I've been lucky, I imagine, because it hasn't gotten worse than that yet.

I think I share all those fears. Some reflect James' goal: being one on whom nothing is lost!

Add humiliation to the list and it'd be pretty much complete. But lots of those already imply humiliation.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Yeah, humiliation. I guess that's everyone's biggest one, at the end of the day? Even sociopaths and performance artists can't love it.

To the extent this list is at all atypical, now that I look at it, it's because of my partial deafness. All the little tactical problems arising in 30 years of social situations distill to a primal sense of having missed something. I wonder if James was spurred by something similar.

Vomit is so...alien. You sort of see why Sartre picked it, though I don't think it's the true face of things. Maybe their second face...some of the outrageousness comes from suddenly having to use routes, muscles, valves, whatever's in there--that had been empty or dormant for ages previously. I'm not this jerking bladder, this isn't me! That kind of thought. That's the awful thing about Having Missed Something too, I guess: if the world isn't what you thought it was, then who the hell are *you*?