October 2006
Through my years of illness, hunting from doctor to doctor desperate for a diagnosis, I had a hatred of knowledge, for I could find none to explain my body to me. One of my hurts was that I had lost the ability to read books. I could no longer take them in, and realising I could no longer understand sent me into long-familiar spasms of sleep.
I had a strong desire to write my own books, and was accepted for an MA in Creative Writing in the Department of English at The University of Cape Town. The novel I am writing is coming along. It has been a wonder this year that anything has come along.
The mutiny project accompanied me through a break-down period after years of being a living experiment for my doctors. In their desperation to help me, they fed me drug after drug, with horrendous side effects at times. I crashed - the details be spared.
I am clawing my way back from over the edge, and it is frightening how alone one is, how little can be communicated of those months, how little there is to hold on to.
This and quick quick slow have come together, resulting in alpha. There is a repeated figure of a red woman or girl which has been haunting me since 2003, so it felt important to put them together. She keeps appearing and I'll have to keep working with this symbol until my conscious mind is able to grasp it.
