The Jellyfish
One day she awoke in her room
And discovered she had become
A jellyfish
Her tentacles retracted
Her body shrunk
And she sunk to the ocean floor
She had neither a brain, nor a heart
And she realised she was a butterfly
Who had reverted to its cocoon
A chicken
Who had crawled back inside its egg
She had become a blueprint
Humans would try to use without success
To potentially cycle indefinitely
Between baby and maturity
Maturity and baby
But she realized regeneration
Was a pendulum between
Good death and bad death
Bad death was to lose fertility
Good death was to accept
Damaged crops and replant
But what could she do as a jellyfish?
A jellyfish had no hands to hold
No legs to chase
No lips to kiss a lover
No time to waste
What is the point of living with no love to give?
No thoughts to share?
No lungs to breathe?
One day she awoke in her room
And realised she would never die
Her tentacles retracted
Her body shrunk
She sunk to the ocean floor
And never came up for air.
‘The Jellyfish’ – Claire Fitzpatrick, 2017
1.
In 1894, railroad worker Phineas Gage changed the study of neuroscience forever. His job was to clear rocks for railway tracks, however, one day his iron rod – which he used to tamp down explosives before lighting the fuse – scraped the side of a pile of rocks, igniting a spark which set off the gunpower prematurely. The explosion sent the iron rod straight through his left eye, into his skull, through the back of his head, and back out to the ground almost thirty metres away. Miraculously, Phineas survived, yet became unreliable, partial to swearing and inappropriate remarks. Because of the sustained damage to his frontal lobe, Phineas developed Epilepsy as well as Witzelsucht, a neurological condition characterised by the impulsive and often uncontrollable desire to tell jokes, puns, and pointless stories. In 1860, at the age of 36, he died ‘in status epilepticus,’ described as a single seizure which lasts more than five minutes, or two or more seizures within a five-minute period without the person returning to cognitive normality between them. [1]
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