PLACEBO EFFECT

AMENDED

 

 

 Each time I write this, I get closer to that state of being. 

I have no memory of this; I find it very hard these days 

to focus on positivity. Alina Feld said in her study of melancholy. 

'The self knows its light only by knowing

darkness". My darkness is projected from within. 

I live in a state of melancholy, but I hope 

this essay shines a little light in the dark 

and can help other stroke sufferers.

 

A way to accept this blemished acceptance and find hope. 

I live in the right hemisphere and write a blog each day as 

I must keep reminding myself. The Portuguese poet said 

in a poem called The Dream of Being Alive, this

is a blog about being alive.

 

@apfox1961.blogspot.com

 

 

I woke up after my stroke in a cold sweat, in a state of hallucination. 

The drugs that were keeping me alive were making my mind trip like 

nothing else on earth.

 

In the drug world, they talk of a bad trip and a whitey 

this was a trip you didn't want to go on. 

Words can't convey those moments. 

There was a crowd of

 doctors around me administering drugs, a fatal dose.

Hallucination; it seems I had a glimmer of hope, but now 

I think death was knocking on my door. There was 

no great light, but I think the neurons in

 your brain fire, and images resemble how films portray your life flashing before your eyes. 

I was out there locked in limbo.

 

I had no control. I have seen brutality and gore growing up 

in North Belfast, but not on this level. Just when 

they were injecting, I gripped the blankets

 with all my might and took the ride to hell. 

Only I had to take this ride to live or die. 

I was flickering between states of my brain injury 

has now damaged my holographic projector.

The brain flips it like a trip switch; it's survival. 

I was locked-in a locked-in syndrome.

They say I died for seconds in intensive care, and they declared me dead, and after the adrenalin 

stroke boost, I sat upright. It must have been harrowing 

for my family. I recall seeing my reflection 

in my son's eye as he leaned over to kiss me goodbye. 

I looked like a shadow of my former self. 

I saw my face again on the stainless steel elevator 

going to the ward. I had lost three 

and a half stone. Looked like The Walking Dead.

 

I thought the nurses were out to kill me. I even

 tipped up a stainless-steel surgical table, thinking they were

killing a patient and I was following. I was so paranoid. 

Those were extraordinary times. I had nothing on my mind; it 

was empty, like a forty-five-year-old newborn who didn't know

 the difference between fantasy and reality.

 

Those first days were like being in a Stephen King novel. 

A man behind my bed was cutting bodies with 

a chainsaw and tossing body parts into a skip; these 

weren't dreaming states. They were between 

sleep and awake, drifting. My left hemisphere 

was wiped clean, and these images came in 

half-awake hallucination; Is, I was like that for days.

 

 

I have never seen anything like this; a million-dollar film 

director couldn't capture what I saw. I have never seen 

the likes of tripping on L.S.D. psychedelics. 

Aya Waska would need to look in. My long- term 

memory loss was like the film Leaving Las Vegas 

I was leaving humanity.

Hunter Thompson couldn't write this script.

I'm just lucky in a sense to have lost my long--

 term memory.

 

This was like something from the book, 'The Diving Bell 

and the butterfly, the man in the book, died from his stroke 

after reciting to his private nurse by blinking his eyes 

once for yes and twice for no.

For almost a year, I lived like that with no voice

 , just an alphabet board to the point and spelling the letters. 

It was so uncanny in that world of silence; I could see 

the words coming to my mind, but they wouldn't roll off my tongue. 

I have no memory of this, but I know I was there; my brain 

injury caused the blackness behind my eyes and aphantasia.

 

I don't know why or how I am still alive; I have aphasia, dysarthria, aphasia, I am paralyzed down the right half of my body, and 

I can't walk or talk, mumbling my way.

 

I also have a degenerative spinal cord disease now 

bedbound with bedsores, laying immobile due to COVID 

when all physio stopped, I was in bed for three years.

I can hardly move from side to side; I could go on 

but Schopenhauer was right in his study of pessimism 

when he said life is suffering, I would say life is

a suffering fucking hell, but not until we face this 

blemished acceptance can we find hope.    

 

Marguerite Dumas said when you find your

 self in a hole at the bottom of a hole, you

realize only writing can save you.

 

I know I repeat myself, but this the only hope is,

a Keats Ian negative capability, hope in a hopeless world. 

After a year in the hospital, the Royal Hospital did 

surgery on my damaged vocal cords called a Filin-go-plast. 

I was one the first in N.I. to undergo

this surgery, and my voice gradually came back to mumbling 

My left vocal cord is faintly damaged and beyond repair.

I can say all this without an emotional grasp on memory 

I can even deal with the grief of my mother's death 

and my sister's suicide; that's aphantasia. It helps me deal 

with trauma; I think it's a brain reaction of survival to help 

us deal with PTSD.  

I'm not seeking sympathy or pity, but you can keep it. 

All I ask is that you read this and determine your 

own answers, not one that's shoved down your throat, 

I really did believe I would go out in a wooden box.

 

          This is my placebo effect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 THE GREENMAN

 

I was in the elevator going up in the lift to a ward, from intensive care where I died and rose from a stroke. The porter and nurse waffled on as I saw myself on Stainless steel. 

I looked like something scary I had seen before but there

 was nothing in on my mind. I had a massive stroke that

 wiped clean my left hemisphere, it was hard to get a fix in

 that vegetative state. They glided me beside an exit door, I

 lay there wrecking my broken mind. The nurses gave

 me drugs and left me to get a fix on life, as where I had

 seen that face in the lift appeared again played on my broken

 mind. Life was very surreal, a girl in a yellow uniform

 mopping up beside the bed.

 

I gestured water, I was parched and couldn’t talk and she

 uttered no English in a Balkan tongue and walked away only

 to return with a cup of water. A bit of humanity goes a long

 way. I will never forget her. I lay in a dead state for days, my

 only friend was a little green man above the fire exit door.

 Didn’t know where I was, it was as if they dosed

I with powerful drugs then left alone to live/die.

 

I couldn’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, that little green man gave me my reason for living, on the ward the patients were dropping like flies. The nurses were there in case but you had to find your own footing. Mine came in the form of a little green man. For days I watched him. That little green gave me a fix on life, I figured out In my broken mind that if there was no green man I was hallucinating. If that little

 green man was there I was in reality. It gave me a fix on life.

 

One summer's day a nurse opened the door to air the ward a waft of greenery woke something in me. I saw the grass and

 the gate cars going by. A google like a map appeared in my

 mind for the first time I knew where I was, at the back of

 Craigavon Hospital and cars were heading up the Bluestone

 the road past lilo church where my mother and sister.

Just a simple little green man woke from a vegetative state. People look for a spiritual substance outside themselves but their determination is in them. That road and the cars going

 by opened a map of Northern Ireland. From that day forward

 I was on the road to stroke recovery. Being taken to another

 rehab hospital,i n the life I saw my reflecion on the cover of 

a Peter Gabriel record cover, I don't remember, I recall.

 

 JANICE I WAS GONNA SAY YOU JOGGED MY MEMORY BUT I HAVE NONE.

JIMMY ONCE TOLD ME POEMS ARE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, YOU CREATED

A RIPPLE OF WORDS FLOWED IN ME. AFTER I READ YOUR PIECE ON FB

I WENT SEARCHING AND FOUND TWO OF THE FIRST POEMS I WROTE AT

THE POET'S HOUSE. THESE ARE MY MEMORIES THANX:

FIREWEED 1.

The mist moves in over Islandmagee

blue horizons are no longer seen. 

I'm here at The Poets House, locked 

in a poetry workshop: "Invasion".

As the mist begins to clear, I see

purple, the head of thistledown.

I reach to touch the color green

my skin welts with nettling pain.

I move inland along climbing narrow

twisting lanes, smugglers paths.

The blemished earth of invading

armies from other defeated shores.

The nettle stings have disappeared

but the gulls cry in my heart, I move

inland like fireweed on this burnt

encrusted land.

Fireweed2
for David Craig 

Shaving with virgin steel in the pulse 
tension of hand, the misted condensation 
of age. The blade cries like a sharp tongue 
licking red release.

The residue of my past lies at the bottom 
of the sink, I pull the plug and it falls away 
into the mensural sewers of loss.

I wipe away the mist from my reflected self, 
bloody war, winter landscape. Recycled pulp 
on my face hardening like a second skin.

I must shed and reappear wounded.

 
 THE OTHER HALF OF EVERYTHING 

METHOD ACT 1.
  
He woke in a tiny bedsit in Reading, Berkshire England. 
An image of his son's face falling away from his eyes like 

a rainbow drifting into the filthy walls. The drumbeat rippled 

with the hum of his landlady doing her washing on a wash-

board over the bath. The tune was probably handed down 

from her mother’s mother, a tribal lady washing on stone 

by a river. In a dream state of confusion, he clambered 

into his clothes along with the three flights of stairs 

he managed to maneuver in massive strides, standing 

on the cat that scared him and jolted him closer to 

the front door. The fear of what that hologram of his 

son meant drifted through his mind. 

The Queen Lizzy pub was quiet for a change. 

The drunks and junkies were asleep or still 

locked up in the cells after the dawn raid. 

He ran to the end of the street where the kebab 

van parks and sat on the wall awaiting the girl 

to exit the phone booth. 

 

For fuck's sake hurry up he told her silently my motives 

losing momentum. He turned to the street and watched 

the creeds of the world clamber along, among them 

the lost and the lonely released into the community, 

the mad ones the real people. 

An old lady with a white-painted face 

shoved a shopping trolley along the middle 
of the road the rush hour traffic swerving 
to miss her. Elvis in a sequined waistcoat 
posing for a shout-singing Love me Tender 
across the street. A man in a long black coat 
who never spoke to anyone just walked around 

with a scrunched-up ball of paper in his hand 

wiping crayons taken from his breast pocket 

across the page. 

He remembered meeting him once in 
the Irish cafe and like a tourist, he bought 
him a cup of tea and asked can I have a look. 
Without a sound and half a smile, he handed 
his sketchpad while another appeared instantly 

from within his coat and he began drawing 

the scene outside the window. Only he could see 

what he was drawing his back was the view he 

watched him draw half a man, half a car, and half 

a street like the aftermath of a blitz. The other ones, 

with crayons, he said and he took the ball of paper 

from his pocket and rolled it across the artificial 

marble Formica-topped table. As he unfolded 

the ball of paper Monet’s, Lilies, Van Gogh’s trees, 

and Vermeer's light filled his eyes, he looked at him 

and saw in his eyes the other half of everything.

 
METHOD ACT 2.
 
He rushed past the girl and shoved the coins 
in the slot his heart beating wildly like electronic 

codes gathering in his head, a dead tone. He took 

the rejected coins and shoved them home again 

and again only to hear the same dead tones ringing 

like a thumping headache, she must have changed 

the number, he thought as he returned to his 
little room. Feeling caged like an animal trying 

so hard to concentrate on a book but it only brought 

confusion. Unable to erase the sight of the picture 

of his son appearing like that hologram 

and the worrying thoughts attached to it. 

Your conscience is the prison of the mind, he 

thought no matter how hard you try you just 

can't run from it, oh how he wished at that 

moment that he was one of the dispossessed 

shuffling through life, oblivious of any moral 

obligations. He thought of his father trying 

to run all his life from his bastard past, each 

one of 5 siblings were born in a different town 

and staying no longer than a year in each 

English town. 

Belfast during the 60s and 70s being 

the longest they stayed anywhere then 
that it was probably one of the safest places 
in the world for him, what past would want 
to find you in Belfast during the nightmare 
of the troubles. When he gave up running 
from his past, a secret family exploded after 
thirty-one years of marriage to his mother 
and showered down like emotional shrapnel, 
sending the family to the four winds to lick 
their wounds.  Killing my father and devastating 

my mother with five strokes.  He always swore 

he would never be like him and here he was in 

a fucked-uptown in England while everything 

was across the Irish Sea.
 
He discarded the book Charles Bukowski’s 
hot water music with a vengeance into 
the corner of the room left him cold 
he took his only coat from the only chair 
and left the still-ordinary madness of the room 
and joined the frantic streets. It was warm 
summer's evening, which didn't 
help much as the town's grim sights clashed 
with the elements and his void. He called 
at the Asian shop and purchased a bottle of 
overpriced wine (uncorked), without a care 
for paying over the odds, anything to sup-
press his inner lament and awaken 
his mind to simpler things. 
 
He walked south of the town intent on not 

opening the wine until he reached his destination. 

Beneath a filthy old railway bridge, he uncorked 

the wine and took a deep swig while in his mind 

he told the roaring train thundering overhead to 

fuck off. He passed the roundabout where the cars 

waited impatiently for their little piece of space 

in a mad hurry to get nowhere. Dusk fell on reaching 

his destination, his space by the river.

He went there often to clear his head of the modern filth. 

He sat by the river's edge smoking and chugging the wine. 

A warm slight breeze blew with the river flow creating 

short sharp waves that gleamed with the red dye-injected sky. 

A treat for his eyes after the usual week of air-conditioned 

factories, traffic jams everywhre the sight of built-up grey 

areas filled with drunks, , and perverts clambering the streets 

in of some temporary nirvana. 

That vexed feeling came fleeting back at the sight of the river-

boat pumping along unnaturally like filth on the river.  

It's cheap-colored lights flashed cutting the reflection of the line 

of trees from the far bank like a chainsaw. Idling towards the boat 

was a train of swans at point, a beautiful white bird followed 

by four black cygnets, guarding the rear was the majestic male. 

Pleasantly they blended with the scenery, belonging. The bright 

lights of the boat exterior and the lights within clashed creating 

silhouette shapes that pranced around out of sync with 

the nightclub's thumping beats. Man’s celebration driving like 

a nightmare on the surpassing river. 

He recalled a night he was on board that very boat, 

The Princess, a cruise or so he thought a pleasure trip. 

One of the girls in work arranged it in anticipation 

he pictured the scene, relaxing on the starboard bow 

with a beer mellowing with the sights and the natural flow 

of nature passing by. Most of the people he worked with 

were assholes their form of chilling out after work was 

glued to the box in the corner that pumped garbage 

into their minute recesses.
 
METHOD ACT 3.
 
He was excommunicated, he's an oddball, they said 

because he couldn't make a comment on the latest 

goings on in the soap operas or who scored the vital 

goal in the football or give  his opinion on the lunatic 

on the news that murdered twenty-seven men 

and women and ate their genitals He liked poetry 

and literature they can keep their electrified dementia, 

I'll stay quietly insane.
 
He got a beer and left the swarm of people within, 

He sat on the deck ready for the world's natural flow. 

The disco beat pumped decibels of thumping sounds 

through the hull, echoing tremors through the river's 

capacity. It's no wonder it's a good river for fishing they 

want to be caught and have their necks smashed on 

the nearest rock, he was so pissed off he wanted 

to catch the hook pull back on it and be hauled to freedom. 

He was starving and wanted to hear classical 

and let his mind wander off to take it in then pour this experience 

out on paper. He tried he best to relax and push those stupid 

sounds away, just when he thought he had it sorted one of his 

fellow workers broke his concentration to talk shop. He had 

riverboat sickness, leaving the deck he returned to the madness 

and sat with his fellow used and the presence of beer 

and whisky flowed. 

The booze took its toll and he was no longer in control, letting it 

flow with the jfilth of the boat on the river. As the train of swans 

met the boat two silhouette shapes stood on the deck drinking 

from glasses that flashed in the moonlight, pouring their 

substance from the glasses down on the flock, 

their strict security broke in shock. 

He yelled at the shapes, you think it's fucking funny, 

ya mindless wankers. In his rage, he didn't notice the swan 

swimming towards him bolting onto the bank honking 

and hissing wildly flapping its outstretched wings. He 

stumbled back and ran for cover behind the trees 

with the echoes of laughter from the boat. He zigzagged 

the line of trees and by the time he reached the river’s edge 

again after finishing the wine, it seemed the moon and stars 

were out for his benefit only. Mellowing in solitude pondering 

his circumstance watching the shadows from the far shore 

rippling a picture for the album of his mind, until something 

caught his eye. 

 

He turned to see the swans silently coming along 

the river's edge. He was about to get up and run 

when he told himself to stall, and relax, his heart 

beat wildly and shook with fear like the flowing river 

when the majestic bird broke the water with great 

ease onto the bank and idled towards him. 

The massive bird came strolling along the grass verge

 for a second they made eye contact before he lowered 

his head closed his eyes and braced himself. He felt 

the strength of its breast as it pressed against him, its 

cold beak brushed his forehead and flowed to the nape 

of his neck with the affection of a lover’s touch, 

and a sensation flowed through his mind and body, 

a new sensation.

Something he had only come close to experiencing seeing 

his children being born. It cleared his mind of every trivial 

thought he ever had. he opened his eyes, left the river 

and returned to the town, got his gear together from 

the corner of the filthy room 
and left.
 
 On the train, he thought maybe I should leave her alone, 

maybe they're better off without me. On the ferry crossing, 

the rough Irish Sea political parties condemned murder 

in the TV lounge. As he sipped a pint of Guinness. 

It's winter in Northern Ireland all things are dying, the rain 

and the sea spray cut with the coldness of steel but he held 

in his hands a picture of sons, the reality was pulsing with 

a rhythm he never wanted to lose. Returning to the news 

of his son being taken to hospital with a strain of meningitis.