Man Who MIstook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks Page A

Actually his brother looks much younger than his age, and has the sort of face and build that change little with the years. These are true meetings, Jimmie's only connection of past and present, yet they do nothing to provide any sense of history or continuity. If anything they emphasise-at least to his brother, and to others who see them together-that Jimmie still lives, is fossilised, in the past.
       All of us, at first, had high hopes of helping Jimmie-he was so personable, so likable, so quick and intelligent, it was difficult to believe that he might be beyond help. But none of us had ever encountered, even imagined, such a power of amnesia, the possibility of a pit into which everything, every experience, every event, would fathomlessly drop, a bottomless memory-hole that would engulf the whole world.
       I suggested, when I first saw him, that he should keep a diary, and be encouraged to keep notes every day of his experiences, his feelings, thoughts, memories, reflections. These attempts were foiled, at first, by his continually losing the diary: it had to be attached to him-somehow. But this too failed to work: he dutifully kept a brief daily notebook but could not recognise his earlier entries in it. He does recognise his own writing, and style, and is always astounded to find that he wrote something the day before.
       Astounded-and indifferent-for he was a man who, in effect, had no 'day before'. His entries remained unconnected and un-connecting and had no power to provide any sense of time or continuity. Moreover, they were trivial-'Eggs for breakfast', 'Watched ballgame on TV-and never touched the depths. But were there depths in this unmemoried man, depths of an abiding feeling and thinking, or had he been reduced to a sort of Humean drivel, a mere succession of unrelated impressions and events?
       Jimmie both was and wasn't aware of this deep, tragic loss in himself, loss of himself. (If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self-
       himself-he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.) Therefore I could not question him intellectually about such matters.
       He had originally professed bewilderment at finding himself amid patients, when, as he said, he himself didn't feel ill. But what, we wondered, did he feel? He was strongly built and fit, he had a sort of animal strength and energy, but also a strange inertia, passivity, and (as everyone remarked) 'unconcern'; he gave all of us an overwhelming sense of'something missing,' although this, if he realised it, was itself accepted with an odd 'unconcern.' One day I asked him not about his memory, or past, but about the simplest and most elemental feelings of all:
       'How do you feel?'
       'How do I feel,' he repeated, and scratched his head. 'I cannot say I feel ill. But I cannot say I feel well. I cannot say I feel anything at all.'
       'Are you miserable?' I continued.
       'Can't say I am.'
       'Do you enjoy life?'
       'I can't say I do … '
       I hesitated, fearing that I was going too far, that I might be stripping a man down to some hidden, unacknowledgeable, unbearable despair.
       'You don't enjoy life,' I repeated, hesitating somewhat. 'How then do you feel about life?'
       'I can't say that I feel anything at all.'
       'You feel alive though?'
       'Feel alive? Not really. I haven't felt alive for a very long time.'
       His face wore a look of infinite sadness and resignation.
       Later, having noted his aptitude for, and pleasure in, quick games and puzzles, and their power to 'hold' him, at least while they lasted, and to allow, for a while, a sense of companionship and competition-he had not complained of loneliness, but he looked so alone; he never expressed sadness, but he looked so sad- I suggested he be brought into our recreation programs at the Home. This worked better-better than the diary. He would become keenly