Liz Breslin
In 2016, Liz Breslin was concussed. This is the third part of her ‘Diary of a Concussion’, an occasional series that documents this experience. See below for where to read parts 1 and 2.
I nearly give up. Twice. The first time I am sitting by the window at home, hand over my ear which still has a strange thudding lack of unlocated feeling that the doctor couldn’t find with her little hammer light thing and I can’t find the words for. Dull? Numb? Dumb. I feel so dumb. Stupid, stupid me.
The second time, I’ve driven to the city for the day because of the little white envelope of hope that said the neurologist would see me. A long time coming and a long time driving but that’s OK because, answers. Because, something. Because, someone.
Hauntology is a concept coined by philospher Jacques Derrida, in his 1993 book Specters of Marx, to describe the way that we all construct the world differently, out of what most haunts each of us from the past.
Atlas is a literary medical journal, published in print and sold in bookstores around New Zealand, that offers an alternative to the usual scientific discourse that surrounds our bodies. It hopes to shift medical conversations away from the rigid and prescriptive to a literary form that accommodates our human complexities.
Dad was a papyrophile; he loved paper. Not necessarily what was written on it, but the feel of it, the size, length and shape of it. He viewed paper in its various forms in a way that most people don’t: as the end-point of a long, careful process of ruling, sizing, cutting, fitting into a desired product.