|
LISTENING TO THE SILENCES
|
CHAPTER
12 PAGE 2
|
| It
can be comparatively easy to describe the most overtly serious, threatening
and obscene intrusions. Far more subtle and insidious - and arguably more
effective in disrupting one's life and thought - is the intrusion that itself
appears to be an extension of one's own thoughts. I have already written
about the ambience that can be created in the mo-ments of first consciousness
after waking. Unless one has established a personal 'drill' aimed at excluding
any responses that one may be tempted to make in one's mind, it is exceedingly
difficult not to respond. The semi-automatic and instant reaction closely
resembles the interchange that can take place between couples who have shared
their lives for many years. A stage can be reached when it can appear rude
not to respond in ones thoughts. This ploy is one that frequently is used at the start of what promises to be a productive day in whatever activities one plans to be engaged. As one begins to address one's mind toward the first task, they will put forward a pressing alternative. Then, if that is rejected, another, and another, and so on, inducing a feeling of panic and the thought that nothing will be commenced, the whole lot aborted, and the day completely wasted. In time, it will be realised that this particular ploy is often used, and used most effectively, when the meteorology is such that a woolly brain is being induced. By 'meteorology', I do not mean wet or dry, hot or cold, windy or still. Instead, I must refer you back to where I wrote about the Föhn wind and the effects that may be induced in sensitive individuals. I wrote that while we in Britain do not have named winds such as the Föhn, Chinook, Santa Ana and the rest, we do have movements of air across the country that can provoke reactions in people similar to those produced by the notorious winds. The property of these winds that is replicated in those that blow across Britain, is the excess of positive ions over the more desirable negative ones. It is so relevant that one should consider the effects of all winds and other ambient influences that I believe it to be worth repeating the quotation from the book The Ion Effect that I included earlier: "The search for information that led to this book actually began in 1970 as an attempt to prove to myself that I was neither a manic-depressive nor a hypochondriac. For ten years I had lived and worked in Geneva, and almost from the moment I moved there from New York I suffered totally inexplicable fits of anxiety, depression, physical illness, and the kind of bottomless despair that at times even led me to flirt with the idea of suicide. Neither doctors nor a psychiatrist could explain what was happening to me, but when one said vaguely that it might be "something electrical" in the air of Geneva I seized upon it as a possible explanation and spent five years travelling through Europe, the Middle East, and North America meeting scientists and amassing an awesome pile of scientific literature. I made three discoveries. The first was that in certain places at certain times - in Geneva, in a large part of Central Europe, in southern California, alongside the Rocky Mountains and in at least a dozen other parts of the world - the air becomes sick not because of the pollution we all know about, but because of imbalances in the natural electrical charge of the air…"
In archive material that I obtained from the Boston Globe newspaper,
I found interesting corroborative comments:
|
|
|
Copyright
© 2003 Roy Vincent
|
|