Vintage Sacks by Oliver Sacks Page B

instantly vanished: “Wow!” she said, “I must have imagined it all. I guess I better take myself in hand.”
    14 July.
Following the excitements and changing moods of July 9, Miss R.’s state has become less pressured and hyperactive. She has been able to sleep, and has lost the ticlike “wiping” movements of her right hand. Unfortunately, after a two-week remission, her old enemy has reemerged, and she has experienced two severe oculogyric crises. I observed in these not only the usual staring, but a more bizarre symptom—captivation or enthrallment of gaze: in one of these crises she had been forced to stare at one of her fellow patients, and had felt her eyes “drawn” this way and that, following the movements of this patient around the ward. “It was uncanny,” Miss R. said later. “My eyes were spellbound. I felt like I was bewitched or something, like a rabbit with a snake.” During the periods of “bewitchment” or fascination, Miss R. had the feeling that her “thoughts had stopped,” and that she could only think of one thing, the object of her gaze. If, on the other hand, her attention was distracted, the quality of thinking would suddenly change, the motionless fascination would be broken up, and she would experience instead “an absolute torrent of thoughts,” rushing through her mind: these thoughts did not seem to be “her” thoughts, they were not what she wanted to think, they were “peculiar thoughts” which appeared “by themselves.” Miss R. could not or would not specify the nature of these intrusive thoughts, but she was greatly frightened by the whole business: “These crises are different from the ones I used to get,” she said. “They are worse. They are completely mad!” 10
25 July.
Miss R. has had an astonishing ten days, and has shown phenomena I never thought possible. Her mood has been joyous and elated, and very salacious. Her social behavior has remained impeccable, but she has developed an insatiable urge to sing songs and tell jokes, and has made very full use of our portable tape recorder. In the past few days, she has recorded innumerable songs of an astonishing lewdness, and reams of “light” verse all dating from the twenties. She is also full of anecdotes and allusions to “current” figures—to figures who were current in the mid-1920s. We have been forced to do some archival research, looking at old newspaper files in the New York Library. We have found that almost all of Miss R.’s allusions date to 1926, her last year of real life before her illness closed round her. Her memory is uncanny, considering she is speaking of so long ago. Miss R. wants the tape recorder, and nobody around; she stays in her room, alone with the tape recorder; she is looking at everyone as if they didn’t exist. She is completely engrossed in her memories of the twenties, and is doing her best to not notice anything later. I suppose one calls this “forced reminiscence,” or incontinent nostalgia. 11 But I also have the feeling that she feels her “past” as present, and that, perhaps it has never felt “past” for her. Is it possible that Miss R. has never, in fact, moved on from the “past”?
Could she still be “in” 1926 forty-three
years later? Is 1926 “now”? 12
    28 July.
Miss R. sought me out this morning—the first time she had done so in almost two weeks. Her face has lost its jubilant look, and she looks anxious and shadowed and slightly bewildered: “Things can’t last,” she said. “Something awful is coming. God knows what it is, but it’s bad as they come.” I tried to find out more, but Miss R. shook her head: “It’s just a feeling, I can’t tell you more. . . .”
    1 August.
A few hours after stating her prediction, Miss R. ran straight into a barrage