A Pain

The old pain has returned. Diagnose this pain, seek its origin and course, and how it may be ended.

The pain rests like a glowing coal in the abdomen. It is very reminiscent of a toothache. It feels as though something is irredeemably rotten, and the festering heat from this decay is the

source of pain. It is also like a hard knot which cannot be digested, in the stomach.

What is the effect of this pain? Lack of ability to concentrate. On a book, a television, a computer, a task. Outward objects appear like symbols, like adjuncts and emissaries of the pain itself.

The pain prevents sleep. It glows through the night, sometimes in the day it suddenly prevents movement, and a stasis ensues, in which the current action appears meaningless, and in that space of questioning, action is arrested.

The effect is to leave the mind confused and disoriented, hearkening for an answer to an unanswerable question, an impossible grasping after facts.

The pain is intolerable, insistent, always making itself known and grasping outwards for an answer. The pain is also a need and more than a need, a question and more than a question.