Cotard's Syndrome and the Swirling Black Void

K. and I had a wonderful evening at a reception for a new exhibit at the Museum of Jurassic Technology last night. In case anyone is wondering, I think this relationship is definitely serious. It has erased all memories of previous relationships.

By the way, since some of you have asked, I’d like to post some pertinent scientific information about Cotard’s Syndrome. It is a condition – a mental illness – in which a person believes she has died and become a walking corpse. The delusion is often so persistent, she believes she can smell her own flesh rotting, that she can feel worms crawling through her skin, that she is putrefying, and that she has lost her blood and organs and is merely a shadow in this earthly existence.

I feel it would be remiss at this point to not share some details about a certain participant in my study (for the sake of the blog we will call her Mathilde). When I asked her about sensations relating to the “swirling black void,” she responded:

I’m drawn to it, even though it wants to destroy me. But I feel invincible. My flesh is rotting, I know it. I have no organs. I am obsessed with my own skeleton and the knowledge that it is stepping out of my skin, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. This is the part of me that is eternal, and I feel an invincibility knowing that it is going to be released. Life is the shroud and Death the unveiling. I find myself drawn to decay, and rot. What is it that keeps me moving, even though I am dead? It is the void.

As you will note, this mental delusion is quite serious, not only for the victim, but for anyone who crosses the victim’s path and becomes emotionally entangled with the victim.

Lives have been ruined by far simpler things.

Geophagy in the Non-Living Community

To answer a question posted in the comments section of the previous entry: yes, I was once acquainted with a young woman who indulged in the practice of dirt-eating.

Dirt-eating in the rural south and among the Tzombi population is a complex phenomenon and worthy of an entire paper of its own. The literature presents us with a number of conflicting testimonies about the “mud eaters”: it is sometimes difficult to separate racist propaganda and cultural bias/misunderstanding from disinterested observation; what we do know is that the earliest known reference to the “mud eaters” is in the aforementioned Kish stele.

The next mention comes from the diary of Agnolo di Tura in his 1347 A.D. plague remembrance. There is also an abundance of documentation regarding dirt eating among slaves in the rural south in the United States; because many American slaves came from various related regions through whatever circuitous route, it seems probable that the dirt eating which persists in the rural south was spread by this means. Whether dirt eating is a legitimate practice among the Tzombi population remains to be seen.

Of course, there are also members of the Living Community who still consume dirt, even in modern times. Here, from the White Dirt website:

Some people have actually been known to consume White Dirt regularly and not only like the taste but crave it. It has been said that the taste of white dirt is akin to the fresh way that the ground smells when it's real dry and a little sprinkle of rain falls. Dirt-eating is an ancient tradition that is practiced all over the world and although the demise of the practice has been predicted for many years, it still persists, particularly in rural areas of the South.

Aside from psychopathology (see aforementioned Soil Pica link), there are also possible medical reasons for dirt-eating. One may simply be that, though the need for eating has ceased, the habit continues, and dirt requires no digestion. In some African cultures, dirt eating is practiced among pregnant women, and medical studies have shown that it helps in producing antibodies. Since the post-deceased body is essentially a new life-form with a known susceptibility to certain viruses, it’s entirely possible that dirt-eating functions as a means towards increasing resistance.

Brahmagupta and the Void

A small setback today: another letter to the Center for the Study of the Living Deceased has been returned, unopened. How they can simply ignore my research is beyond human understanding. Adding insult to injury, the Sheriff’s Department rejected my request to conduct a seminar for the officers on Tzombi tolerance (this, despite their so-called public relations campaign to promote tolerance in the greater Los Angeles area).

Doubters and racists can turn a blind eye and pretend that the Tzombi race never existed. Meanwhile I am gathering a mountain of evidence which will soon be impossible to ignore.

I cite as an example the account of Sir Arthur Crawley, writing his Lives of the Mathematicians in the early 1800’s, who brings to light a few facts about the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta which might otherwise have been lost to the ages.

Brahmagupta’s major contribution to mathematics was in treating zero as a number in its own right, and in establishing a set of rules for working with negative numbers. Sir Crawley describes a near-fatal rodent attack which had Brahmagupta laid up for a number of days, presumed dead. He writes:

Upon recovery, Brahmagupta refused all nourishment and devoted
the lion’s share of his time in contemplation of the “cow’s udder,”
the large crater near his home town of Ujjain, which exerted a peculiar
fascination on him.

A rare order form—rare because of the scarcity of paper at the time but presumably necessary due to its unusual nature—details Brahmagupta’s request for a “black bowl, the lip of which is a zero and which, when set upright, represents a fortune, and which when set downright, represents a debt.” The bowl has never been discovered and is presumed destroyed, but several artists’ renditions have been created. I regret that I have been unable to secure the permission to use these images on this blog; however I have attempted with my own hand (a hand not untried in illustration) to render them:

1) Fortune (in Positive Numbers):



2) Debt (in Negative Numbers):



3) A View from Above:



Not surpringly, six months after the date of the order slip, Brahmagupta completed his Brahmasphutasiddhinta, or “The Opening of the Universe.”

Cultivating a Social Life

Though it may seem like I spend all of my time working, I’ve actually been cultivating an active social life. What good is dwelling on the pain of past relationships? I’m certainly not so thin-skinned and pathetic as to be rattled by faux-commenters who might be trying to exploit a perceived weakness.

In FACT, I’m in a new relationship with a lovely co-worker named K. She’s so full of life, so very charming and good at her job. I feel like a whole new man, in case any of you were wondering. So you can stop with the taunting e-mails now. I am rubber and you are glue and anything you write to me simply goes one ear and out the other.