Читать книгу Wicked Weeds - Pedro Cabiya - Страница 18

ALCHEMY AND PHOTOSYNTHESIS

There are no emotions without a self that produces and experiences them. And vice versa: without emotions, the self doesn’t exist. The self, that presence conscious of itself, encysted in our bodies, has a dynamic existence, constantly defined and redefined by the emotions it uses to interpret stimuli received by the senses. They are not separable entities.

To “be one’s self” is our principal emotion.

Valérie’s death caused me to lose this base stimulus and threw my life into total confusion. I finished school on autopilot, doing the impossible so as not to think. Nothing mattered to me. I felt nothing. I had ceased to “be myself.” The loss, however, was not total; I could perceive, very vaguely, the need to recuperate that which had fled, not to remain forever with my arms crossed. For the time being though, I ignored the call almost completely.

I chucked the idea of preparing for entrance exams and getting back on the road to finish what was still required of me to become a doctor. I loathed the idea of investing the next two or three years reviewing material in order to obtain my license. I was horrified at the thought of then joining the mad rush of hundreds of my peers who kill themselves trying to conquer one of the only two or three vacant positions in a prestigious hospital. I wanted to get away from everything and everyone. I applied to graduate school at various universities in the United States. I was accepted to almost all of them. I chose one at random and left.