Read Online Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction by Lex Williford, Michael Martone - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lex Williford, Michael Martone
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Press, a new press dedicated to publishing innovative nonfiction. Her essays have recently appeared in Gulf Coast , Hotel Amerika , Columbia , Ninth Letter , American Poet , the North American Review , the Massachusetts Review , the Seneca Review , and Harper’s .
No Pain
The concept of Christ is considerably older than the concept of zero. Both are problematic — both have their fallacies and their immaculate conceptions. But the problem of zero troubles me significantly more than the problem of Christ.
I am sitting in the exam room of a hospital entertaining the idea that absolutely no pain is not possible. Despite the commercials, I suspect that pain cannot be eliminated. And this may be the fallacy on which we have based all our calculations and all our excesses. All our sins are for zero.
Zero is not a number. Or at least, it does not behave like a number. It does not add, subtract, or multiply like other numbers. Zero is a number in the way that Christ was a man.
Aristotle, for one, did not believe in Zero.
If no pain is possible, then, another question — is no pain desirable? Does the absence of pain equal the absence of everything?
Some very complicated mathematical problems cannot be solved Without the concept of zero. But zero makes some very simple problems impossible to solve. For example, the value of zero divided by zero is unknown.
I’m not a mathematician. I’m sitting in a hospital trying to measure my pain on a scale from zero to ten. For this purpose, I need a zero. A scale of any sort needs fixed points.
The upper fixed point on the Fahrenheit scale, ninety-six, is based on a slightly inaccurate measure of normal body temperature. The lower fixed point, zero, is the coldest temperature at which a mixture of salt and water can still remain liquid. I myself am a mixture of salt and water. I strive to remain liquid.
Zero, on the Celsius scale, is the point at which water freezes. And one hundred is the point at which water boils.
But Anders Celsius, who introduced the scale in 1741, originally fixed zero as the point at which water boiled, and one hundred as the point at which water froze. These fixed points were reversed only after his death.
The deepest circle of Dante’s Inferno does not burn. It is frozen. In his last glimpse of Hell, Dante looks back and sees Satan upside down through the ice.
There is only one fixed point on the Kelvin scale — absolute zero. Absolute zero is 273 degrees Celsius colder than the temperature at which water freezes. There are zeroes beneath zeroes. Absolute zero is the temperature at which molecules and atoms are moving as slowly as possible. But even at absolute zero, their motion does not stop completely. Even the absolute is not absolute. This is comforting, but it does not give me faith in zero.
At night, I ice my pain. My mind descends into a strange sinking calm. Any number multiplied by zero is zero. And so with ice and me. I am nullified. I wake up to melted ice and the warm throb of my pain returning.
Grab a chicken by its neck or body — it squawks and flaps and pecks and thrashes like mad. But grab a chicken by its feet and turn it upside down, and it just hangs there blinking in a waking trance. Zeroed. My mother and I hung the chickens like this on the barn door for their necks to be slit. I like to imagine that a chicken at zero feels no pain.
Major things are wind, evil, a good fighting horse, prepositions, inexhaustible love, the way people choose their king. Minor things include dirt, the names of schools of philosophy, mood and not having a mood, the correct time. There are more major things than minor things overall, yet there are more minor things than I have written here, but it is disheartening to list them….
— Anne Carson
My father is a physician.
No Pain
The concept of Christ is considerably older than the concept of zero. Both are problematic — both have their fallacies and their immaculate conceptions. But the problem of zero troubles me significantly more than the problem of Christ.
I am sitting in the exam room of a hospital entertaining the idea that absolutely no pain is not possible. Despite the commercials, I suspect that pain cannot be eliminated. And this may be the fallacy on which we have based all our calculations and all our excesses. All our sins are for zero.
Zero is not a number. Or at least, it does not behave like a number. It does not add, subtract, or multiply like other numbers. Zero is a number in the way that Christ was a man.
Aristotle, for one, did not believe in Zero.
If no pain is possible, then, another question — is no pain desirable? Does the absence of pain equal the absence of everything?
Some very complicated mathematical problems cannot be solved Without the concept of zero. But zero makes some very simple problems impossible to solve. For example, the value of zero divided by zero is unknown.
I’m not a mathematician. I’m sitting in a hospital trying to measure my pain on a scale from zero to ten. For this purpose, I need a zero. A scale of any sort needs fixed points.
The upper fixed point on the Fahrenheit scale, ninety-six, is based on a slightly inaccurate measure of normal body temperature. The lower fixed point, zero, is the coldest temperature at which a mixture of salt and water can still remain liquid. I myself am a mixture of salt and water. I strive to remain liquid.
Zero, on the Celsius scale, is the point at which water freezes. And one hundred is the point at which water boils.
But Anders Celsius, who introduced the scale in 1741, originally fixed zero as the point at which water boiled, and one hundred as the point at which water froze. These fixed points were reversed only after his death.
The deepest circle of Dante’s Inferno does not burn. It is frozen. In his last glimpse of Hell, Dante looks back and sees Satan upside down through the ice.
There is only one fixed point on the Kelvin scale — absolute zero. Absolute zero is 273 degrees Celsius colder than the temperature at which water freezes. There are zeroes beneath zeroes. Absolute zero is the temperature at which molecules and atoms are moving as slowly as possible. But even at absolute zero, their motion does not stop completely. Even the absolute is not absolute. This is comforting, but it does not give me faith in zero.
At night, I ice my pain. My mind descends into a strange sinking calm. Any number multiplied by zero is zero. And so with ice and me. I am nullified. I wake up to melted ice and the warm throb of my pain returning.
Grab a chicken by its neck or body — it squawks and flaps and pecks and thrashes like mad. But grab a chicken by its feet and turn it upside down, and it just hangs there blinking in a waking trance. Zeroed. My mother and I hung the chickens like this on the barn door for their necks to be slit. I like to imagine that a chicken at zero feels no pain.
Major things are wind, evil, a good fighting horse, prepositions, inexhaustible love, the way people choose their king. Minor things include dirt, the names of schools of philosophy, mood and not having a mood, the correct time. There are more major things than minor things overall, yet there are more minor things than I have written here, but it is disheartening to list them….
— Anne Carson
My father is a physician.
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