Quote of the Day

[During the night, I] scroll through my life, my thoughts, my fantasies, my memories, mis-memories, and the like until I have chanced upon events, people, or narratives that I can employ to divert my mind from the body in which it is encased. These mental exercises have to be interesting enough to hold my attention and see me through an intolerable itch in my inner ear or lower back; but they also have to be boring and predictable enough to serve as a reliable prelude and encouragement to sleep. It took me some time to identify this process as a workable alternative to insomnia and physical discomfort and it is by no means infallible. But I am occasionally astonished, when I reflect upon the matter, at how readily I seem to get through, night after night, week after week, month after month, what was once an almost insufferable nocturnal ordeal. I wake up in exactly the position, frame of mind, and state of suspended despair with which I went to bed—which in the circumstances might be thought a considerable achievement.

This cockroach-like existence is cumulatively intolerable even though on any given night it is perfectly manageable. "Cockroach" is of course an allusion to Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes up one morning to discover that he has been transformed into an insect. The point of the story is as much the responses and incomprehension of his family as it is the account of his own sensations, and it is hard to resist the thought that even the best-meaning and most generously thoughtful friend or relative cannot hope to understand the sense of isolation and imprisonment that this disease imposes upon its victims.

—Author Tony Judt, who has a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease), in "Night," the first of a series of essays he will be writing on living with ALS.

For reasons having everything to do with privilege, and nothing to do with Judt's enviable ability to convey a thought, I don't believe his essay will bring anyone who does not share his (or a similar) diagnosis beyond the precipice of wholly understanding his sense of isolation and imprisonment. But I have nonetheless learned some very important things, factual and emotional, by reading it.

[Via Memeorandum.]