“This,” said the doctor, answering his own question. “Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction.”
“Yes?” said old Yacob. “Yes?”
“And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies.”
“And then he will be sane?”
“Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen.”
- H.G. Wells
Non trovi che questa cosa della rete, di poter vedere tutto assieme in una volta sola, e però di non poterlo vedere, di sapere solo che in qualche cazzo di modo dev’essere possibile vederlo, sia come quella pagina dell’Aleph con la visione del tutto, quel culmine del tutto in una volta? Da qualche parte ho letto che Borges si era calato un acido, ma non ci credo perché l’ha scritto nel 1945 e l’acido non era ancora una moda letteraria ma una roba di nicchia per chimici colti di lingua tedesca, magari ha preso una pianta allucinogena argentina. Di sicuro c’è che la sua cecità ereditaria era in uno stato avanzato e forse sta proprio lì il punto. Che non poteva vedere nulla, e raccontava di qualcuno che poteva vedere tutto, tutto assieme, tutto in una volta. Poco fa ho aperto uno di quei siti dove ci sono tanti rettangolini e in ognuno c’era un video porno, e la visione dell’insieme mi ha impedito di volerne aprire uno solo, il fatto che ce n’erano così tanti. Alle undici di ieri sera ho avuto una raffica di sensi di colpa. Ero all’angolo di una strada trafficata ad assorbire tensioni altrui, a trattenere la mia, nell’esatto punto in cui staziona un lavavetri tra un verde e l’altro. Ogni tanto dovrebbero mettere i trip negli acquedotti, ho pensato. Vorrei vivere in una terra di veri ciechi, la frequentazione pluriennale di Fabio non mi ha insegnato nulla. Sempre più mi sento intermittente come una lucina rossa che si spegne e si accende senza fare troppo rumore, senza illuminare niente se non qualche centimetro in un universo di buio per un solo istante. Hai pensato di potere controllare quella che è solo una terapia (delle dosi da assimilare ogni tot tempo), hai sbagliato a monte perché si sbaglia quando si crede di essere nel giusto. Esistono i sintomi, non le malattie. Non trovi che siamo tutti degli illusi?
Foreign accent syndrome is a very rare medical condition in which patients develop what appears to be a foreign accent. Foreign accent syndrome almost always results from brain damage. However, two cases have been reported of individuals with the condition as a development problem and one associated with severe migraine. Between 1941 and 2012 there were sixty-two recorded cases.
Occurrences
Early cases
The condition was first described in 1907 by the French neurologist Pierre Marie, and another early case was reported in a Czech study in 1919. Other well-known cases of the syndrome have included one that occurred in Norway in 1941 after a young woman, Astrid L., suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air-raid. After apparently recovering from the injury, she was left with what sounded like a strong German accent and was shunned by her fellow Norwegians.
Judi Roberts
Another well-known case is that of Judi Roberts, also known as Tiffany Noel, who was born and raised in Indiana, USA. In 1999, at the age of 57, Roberts suffered a stroke and, after recovering, her voice spoke with what resembled an English accent, though she never had been to Britain.
Dallas woman, 2004
In February 2004 a woman in Dallas, Texas, who had been raised in upstate New York and had been living in Texas for over 15 years, was given an iodine contrast injection for a chest CT scan. She was allergic to iodine, however, and the resulting allergic reaction resulted in a 24-hour paralysis during which she was unable to speak. As the paralysis wore off she began to speak with a Russian sounding accent. Along with the change in her speech, she also began to have seizures. Over time the accent became more normal but became stronger again when she had a seizure. The Foreign Accent Syndrome website at the University of Texas at Dallas has sound clips of her speech from before the incident, and after her speech had been affected.
Linda Walker
A further case of foreign accent syndrome occurred to Linda Walker, a 60-year-old woman from the Newcastle area of UK. Again following a stroke, her normal Geordie accent was transformed and has been variously described as resembling a Jamaican, as well as a French Canadian, Italian, and a Slovak accent. Researchers at Newcastle University were reported to be studying the condition in the hope of finding a cure. Speech therapist Frauke Buerk said: “Foreign accent syndrome is extremely rare. When I discovered Linda had the syndrome it was an opportunity to make some progress in the treatment of the condition because so little has been made. “Although Linda has improved it looks likely that she will be left with an accent. We worked on intonation and the stress she places on different words. Some people have said the accent is Jamaican and others Eastern European. As is often the case though, a lot of accents come together.” She was interviewed by BBC News 24 and appeared on the Richard & Judy show in the UK in July 2006 to speak of her ordeal.
Rajesh, India, 2007
On 14 July 2007 a boy named Rajesh in a remote town in India suddenly started speaking in English, even though he had never been out of his hometown. He was reported as supposedly being the reincarnation of an American scientist. This case was poorly understood and was never associated with Foreign Accent Syndrome. The reported symptoms, however, were quite clear indication.
Ontario woman, 2008
In the July 2008 issue of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, researchers from McMaster University reported a study where a woman from Windsor, Ontario, after suffering a stroke, began speaking with what some people described as a Newfoundland accent.
Cindy Lou Romberg
In 2008 Cindy Lou Romberg of Port Angeles, Washington, who had suffered a brain injury 17 years earlier, developed foreign accent syndrome after a neck adjustment from her chiropractor. A visit to the hospital ruled out a stroke. Afterwards she spoke with a Russian-sounding accent and even appeared to make the grammatical mistakes of a Russian speaking English, as if English were not her native language. She was featured on theDiscovery Health Channel’s Mystery ER show on October 26, 2008,and she was also featured on the October 31 edition of Inside Edition.
Julie Frazier
In 2008 Julie Frazier, a woman from Fort Wayne, Indiana, with severe Sporadic Hemiplegic Migraine developed foreign accent syndrome. After several months of multiple, daily hemiplegic migraine attacks, her accent began sounding British to Russian, depending on fatigue levels and the perception of the listener. Frazier’s case is, to date, the first confirmed association of foreign accent syndrome with a migraine condition.
George Harris
In May 2009, an 18-year-old English student who suffered a brain haemorrhage while visiting Bratislava, Slovakia, began speaking in a thick Russian accent shortly after his recovery. Harris was in an induced coma for a week. His English vocabulary had been mildly affected. Foreign Accent Syndrome was not fully diagnosed. He had lived in Russia for a couple of years from the age of two. Harris underwent speech therapy for a year and even then still slurred his speech when fatigued, but was eventually able to graduate from university.
Sarah Colwill
In 2010 another case associated with severe migraine was publicly reported. Sarah Colwill, a frequent migraine sufferer from Devon in the UK, experienced a headache so extreme that she had to call an ambulance. When waking in the hospital later, her accent sounded Chinese.
Kay Russell
In September 2010, Kay Russell, a 49-year-old woman from Gloucestershire UK, lay down due to a migraine and woke up with/suffering from FAS. Her accent is generally described as sounding French, though it has also been categorized it as sounding Eastern European or Russian.
Karen Butler
On May 5, 2011 The Huffington Post reported the case of Karen Butler, a woman from Newport, Oregon, who emerged from oral surgery with an accent which some describe as sounding Irish, while other sources have indicated that her new accent had an Eastern European sound.
George Michael
In July 2012 it was claimed that singer George Michael, when waking from a coma caused by pneumonia in 2011, spoke with a West Country British accent instead of his original North London British accent.
Leanne Rowe
A Tasmanian woman who sustained a head injury that left her speaking with what sounds like a French accent says the rare condition has left her feeling anxious and depressed. Eight years ago (in 2005) Leanne Rowe woke up in Melbourne’s Austin Hospital with a broken back and jaw after being involved in a serious car accident. “Slowly, as my jaw started to heal, they said that I was slurring my words because I was on very powerful tablets,” The slurring turned into what sounded like a French accent, which she has spoken with ever since. Family doctor Robert Newton believes Ms Rowe has the extremely rare Foreign Accent Syndrome.
I’m not going to analyze this indifference
If you climb a mountain for the first time and die on the descent, is it really a complete first ascent of the mountain? I am rather inclined to think personally that maybe it is quite important, the getting down, and the complete climb of a mountain is reaching the summit and getting safely to the bottom again.
- Sir Edmund Hillary
credo funzioni così: che è praticamente impossibile deludere le aspettative di qualcuno, fino a quando questo qualcuno non vuole che le sue aspettative vadano deluse.
la dimensione dell’aspettativa è uno spazio totalmente monologico.
uno decide di aspettarsi una cosa e poi a un certo punto decide di non aspettarsela più, cambia idea. l’oggetto dell’aspettativa è secondario in questo processo, smette di essere quello che è per diventare una proiezione del sè, un simulacro non autonomo dell’originale, un’immagine.
io mi aspetto che X abbia un buon carattere, e costruisco un’immagine di X con un buon carattere. da quel momento X avrà un buon carattere, potrà fare qualunque cosa, ma io continuerò ad assegnare quel valore al suo carattere. siccome non voglio correre il rischio di scoprire che X non corrisponde a quello che ho immaginato, io non vedrò mai il vero X ma l’immagine di X costruita da me. fino a quando non vorrò più avere quell’immagine di X.
tutto questo succede ovunque, qui dentro e là fuori.
la realtà diventa qualcosa di soggettivo e mutevole. e nel momento in cui X riesce a farsi vedere per quello che è veramente, egli smette di coincidere con l’immagine attesa che si ha di lui, la sua esistenza diventa inaccettabile, egli perciò smette di esistere.
