Alzheimer : do Ghosts Cry?

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Paris, May 23rd, 2005, sunshine, rain, cold

A sad day;

I got acquainted with an e-friend in the darkest hours of Mother's Alzheimer, the time when mother was crossing the line from sanity to insanity, two steps forward, one step back.

At that time it was touch and go whether I would make it. I still do not know whether I made it.

She was caretaker of a very good and handsome and nice husband.

We were on the web for years, getting support from one another when things were so dark that you cannot even breathe, even less beat your heart.

Days got better, we would joke, we would speak of nothing, we would speak of today, yesterday, other days.

Sometimes we would be silent.

We were friends.

She knew, I knew, her husband knew all the different phases of Alzheimer.

We knew that Alzheimer and Alzheimer caretaking is one of the most potent poisons, killing everything, killing life, killing love, killing families.

On Saturday, he could not take it any longer to walk the path to the hell of humiliation, mockery, stink, degradation.

He ended his life.

You may think that it is most inappropriate to write a “crazy” under such circumstances. Yet what else can you do when confronted with all the ways life finds of making a mockery of suffering and humiliation out of life, what can you do, either you cry or you laugh, sure, it is better to cry, but if you do not have the courage to cry, you can turn back the mockery on life.

I do not remember anything.

I remember that I should not be here, whatever here could be.

I know I am supposed to say

<< where am I>>

and then to ask

<<what happened?>>

but it seems rather silly to ask such things when you are alone in a room, or is it not a room?

I seem to be in some kind of huge lecturing hall but there are no walls, or rather there are walls but you cannot see them, the walls are like the sounds of the strings of a Beethoven quartet, you have a feeling you can grab them, but they are only in you.

But I know who I am, I am Donky, I seem to be lying on my back, it feels as if I am lying on something soft but I cannot feel any mattress, possibly I am in one of these hyper costly Emergency Wards for very rich people were they use air flow to sustain you as you are so damaged that you could not even lie on a dun mattress, but I am only Donky and I do not know who would foot the bill for me.

I am Donky, I remember that I am Donky Dunk, I am a woman, I even remember that you know who I am, you have seen me on your TV screen whenever something dangerous was happening, I would be there, in front of the front row.

I am Donky but what has happened to me?

I lift my head to look at my body, I feel nothing, have I broken my neck and become tetraplegic? I would rather die than be dead alive I do not want to have all these unknown people come and handle my body like some kind of dirty rag, I do not want all these unknown people come and put tubes and pipes inside me, I do not want some kind lady to come and see if I have dirtied myself again and tell me what a good girl I have been today.

Am I tetraplegic?

I can lift my head but I feel nothing of my body.

I lift my head and I look and I do not understand. Apparently my body is there, but my body is like the walls of this lecture hall, I can see my body and I cannot see it. I can se that there is something there, as if I was looking at my body through some kind of foggy glass.

I try again and I begin to feel my body, but it feels very strange, not like my body used to be, heavy and bumpy here and there, it rather feels like a flow of water, a path of something, something like light and warmth. It is not unpleasant.

I am beginning to feel all funny over my body, you know the feeling a woman gets when some dirty man is ogling her, you get all prickly, I am observed, but how can I be observed, there is nothing here, nothing but that kind of luminous fog.

Am I getting better, the fog appears to take some kind of shape, but it is an idiotic shape, it looks s if I am enclosed inside some stupid crossword;

I can see that the dome is covered with symbols, like these stupid Egyptian words where you had to guess that the carving of a bird meant that the chap wanted a Double order of Chicken burger with chips.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/glyphs.html" http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/glyphs.html

Not only is the dome covered with hieroglyphs but these hieroglyphs seem to be changing all the time like some Time Square Display.

Do they really expect me to take out my check book and write a fat check just because they are showing me adds that I cannot read and prices that seem to be changing all the time? Obviously whoever they are must be in the show business and if there is something Donky does understand it is the show business and these people are not going to uppermanship me with some kind of digital video display, I could probably get the same for a couple of hundreds at any teenager electronic shop.

For sure these people whoever they are would not make much of a career in show business if they are really that slow, they seem to have only one script and don't appear to know what ot do now.

One of the glyphs seem to get out of its lethargy and instead of looking like the scrambled eggs my boyfriend used to try and prepare that even the dog would not want to eat, it is taking some kind of shape. If he thinks that I am going to get all wobbly seeing his shape, he must have been brought up with a kind mother who had no mirrors in the house; compared to him, Hulk looks like Miss Universe. Well Donky had been brought up by a mother who taught her to respect any shape and laugh with delight even at jokes told by Presidents. So if I can take a President, I suppose I can take that scrambled egg Hulk thing.

Apparently that scrambled egg thing is trying to tell me something. It does sound as if that thing has been through a major brain injury, or possibly in this world it could be an infant, you know these creepy little things that slobber all over you and you have to appear to be so delighted in front of the proud mother who pretends that the urchin has told you how much he loves you while in fact he was trying to gobble you ear rings.

Well, Donky has not been trained for nothing, if I could make some sense of what father Bush was saying I should be able to decipher what that crushed egg thing is trying to explain. So let us go through the routine.

I flash him my best smile, showing as much teeth as I can, you know that most sincere smile that it takes weeks and weeks of training in front of the mirror to perfect. The result is not a total victory, that thing appears to become a bit faint, going all smoggy again, I know that men are a bit timid and that I tend to use to much charm but it is such a fun to see men getting so confused that they are unable to utter one meaningful sentence.

But why am I assuming that egg yolk is a man? Of course in my line of work, you do not get within spitting distance of a female if you can avoid it so I tend to have a rather limited vision of humanity. Could my friend scrambled egg yolk be a woman? If egg yolk is a woman then I have not really kept up to date on the latest fashion for “chick” ladies.

Egg yolk appears to come back to his sense, the fog is taking a more precise shape, I cannot say that it is much of an improvement, now he looks like a egg yolk on which somebody seems to have printed the annual accounts of the Federal budget. Mind you, if he carries the accounts of the Federal budget, I feel that I could overlook some of the minor physical defects he has and get interested in his soul and help him on the arduous path of the search of happiness, meaning me.

We appear to be back into the speaking routing. My buddy egg yolks is uttering a sentence, first starting with middle age lower Uzbek dialect, then seeing that he is not within putting distance of the hole, he appears to go through his sentence book of “phrases to se said when you meet an intergalactic alien”. While he grunts and sneezes the most improbable sounds, I feel that it would quite in order to have a little nap, it is sometime wonderful what a little nap can do to a young ladies beauty.

As I am really going to fall asleep and forget all about this stupid dream, I suddenly hear

<< Just get me a double bacon burger with a side order of chips and salad>>

I look at him and feel awfully sorry, so that's why my friend egg yolk looks so fat and out of proportion.

As a kindness to him I inform him that he had better forget about the chips and concentrate on the salad part and while I am at it I tell him that he has had enough double order like that and he should consider going back to one portion orders.

A long silence follows, I am not surprised, I know how these burger addicts can be dangerous when threatened in the core of their fat. So, as egg yolk appears to have frozen, I go back to my cat nap sleep routine.

Suddenly the voice comes back, it still sounds as if it is coming out of one of these radios which so kindly announced to the population that Pearl Harbour had been bombed, and the voice informs me that the Central Computer has identified my language as belonging to a dialect spoken by a lower Manhattan tribe.

Well, Donky is not the girl who is too proud of having been brought up by a kind and tendering mother in Harlem, but I till him to go and fry himself an egg if he thinks of us New Yorkers as a lower tribe.

A long silence follows, apparently they have as much need for catnaps as I have, they lust have had a hell of an evening yesterday if they cannot keep awake for more than one sentence. Mind you, when you have been in the President interview business, you get used to wasting a whole day just to hear one sentence that makes sense.

Egg yolk is coming back, he must be keeping a bottle in the sleeves of his egg dress as he sounds much better;

Apparently egg yolk is a bit annoyed at me for having broken down the universal translation computer software twice and he informs me that they have chained all the University computers to handle the complexity of deciphering my language. He tells me to wait a bit as the computer is still trying to figure out why I want him to fry and egg, the problem had been sent over to the computer unit specialized in religious rites and it totally broke down.

Egg yolk proposes that we continue our discussions and suggest that I keep my part of the show by trying to speak in the language they have listed as House of Common Blairish English Dialect.

Well, why not, if Blair can speak with a potato in his month, why could not little Donky do it?

Egg yolk appears to be very satisfied, you wonder how I can know that, well, his yolk has turned from a yellowish colour to the colour off an egg yolk you get from a chicken that has been brought up on top of a manure heap with free access to sun and water. From an aesthetic point of view he has not improved, but he looks now more like a 1950 painting produced by a young painter after a heavy night of jolly girls and bottles who wakes up in the morning lying on squeezed out paint tubes on a canvas and gets the first prize at the Art Gallery.

We appear to have entered into the stage of the presentations:

Egg Yolk informs me that he is the Universe Total Supreme Glub Professor in his bubbled form.

Of course that information immediately tells me where I am, this must be the madhouse and egg yolk must be either a patient or more likely one of the doctors, these days it is so difficult to make the difference.

Donky mother would not hesitate to slap little Donky's hand if she was not being polite to a visitor, so I let him have my handle, telling him that he is speaking to Donky Dunk from the Universal Supreme World News Channel Star Reporter, two can play at that game of who has got the biggest;

As he seems to take this in his stride, could be a jolly good fellow if he really has a sense of humour, I tell him that to cut it short he can call me Donky and what does he want me to call him?

After a bit of bargaining as he seems to be rather keen on being called “Universe Total Supreme Glub Professor in his bubbled form”, we settle on Donky and Glub Professor. I wanted to get a bit further and call him “Johnny Glub”, but apparently that is beyond his sense of properties. Even when I threatened to call him egg yolk he would not move from his last bargaining offer, so what, I took it.

I can feel that now that the opening gambits have been played, we are gong to enter into the core of the play. I have been in a plane trying to interview President Eltsine at a time when he appeared to have two fixed ideas in his head, getting his hands on the bottle and getting them on my little Donky, he did not win, even if the bottle lost. If I could take President Eltsine in a plane, I should be able to handle Egg Yolk, I mean Glub Professor.

Glub Professor, you know I had better get used to it, it is alright to call a President “Big Dick” while you are in the Office, I mean not the Oval Office, the working Office, it would be less well received in the Oval Office, so I had better try and tame my tongue and get used to calling him Glub Professor, so Glub Professor goes into a kind of solemn voice, the one you use on a declaration of war or the one you use when you tell the voters to read your lips when you tell them that you are not going to increase the taxes, and he informs me that I am in the Central Post Mortem Morgue and that I am being studied as the first Avatar produced by the Universe Supreme Total Computer.

This time I must admit that little Donky is rather taken aback. I have been called a lot of names, you don't get to the top in my profession without going through pools of pig shit, but being called a Avatar is a premier and I do not know whether I really like it.

Glub Professor goes on telling me that the synthesiser was not properly synchronized, that this being the first time they did this experiment, they had no idea that they should not start with the upper bulge first and then proceed downwards

I am a bit taken aback by that discourse, what doe egg yolk mean with “upper bulge”, is he finally another of these sex maniacs who has a fixation on boobs, then if he has that kind of fixation why does not that idiot even see that little Donky has two of them and I can tell you that when it comes to firmness and size, they have called for a lot of appreciative comments. One upper bulge, what does that idiot refer to?

It would not be my Head by chance?

Like all Professors, now that he has got the mike it appears that he is not going to stop unless there is a power break.

So in a long and twisted and confused narrative that would not even get him a “C” grade, he tries to explain that I am being synthesized from the top to the feet and that I can follow the process as I will be seeing my body taken form little by little.

Indeed, as I look down, I can see that what looked like a misty Ice cream with floating fresh fruits bits is starting to look a bit like a body.

It even looks like my body, I can now see my boobs taking form, I do not know how their synthesizer is adjusted but that machine must have been designed by a chap spending a bit too much time with Play Boy and looking at Malibu Beach, sure I am proud of my boobs but I never felt the need to inflate them to that size with surgical jelly.

I wonder whether you would be interested in a minor detail. Just a minor detail, rather irrelevant and insignificant, apparently that synthesizer has never heard of clothing and I seem to be reconstructed as I do appear on occasions, but really this is the first time I am appearing like this in public and I am not sure that I am fully prepared for that. Mind you, I have nothing to be ashamed of, but I have a kind of a proprietary feeling and rather resent that all this be exposed without my lawyer having had me sign a 15 page document in triplicates, especially a document where there would be a most interesting line about the fee to be paid at the end of the show.

Apparently I am not the only one who has noticed that a little irrelevant bit of information has been omitted in the reconstruction of the Donky avatar, my friend egg yolk has now turned into a purple colour and I could swear that I see him drooling even if I must admit that never before in my life have I prepared scrambled eggs with drooling eggs so you do not have to take my word for it.

It seems that the conversation has run into one of these dead ends, I can feel that it is up to Donky to put it back on the right track. Yes I know, you think of me as a dumb head because apparently I have not noticed that Egg yolk told me I was in the morgue. It should be quite a good teaser to start the conversation, I have myself tried it at many parties, when things get a little bit dull, you ask in your most innocent voice “how was your last visit to the morgue, does the new stink clearing perfume really work?”.

So here we go

<< Egg Yolk Professor, I mean Glub Professor, you really told me that I am in your morgue and that I am being reconstructed?”>>

I must have hit on the right line, with these brainy chaps lines like that are usually quite helpful, his colour goes from deep red to a healthy egg colour and I can feel that he is inflating himself for one of these lectures that these dotty professors love to deliver.

My dear, my dear Bubble student, I mean, let us see, yes, I mean, what was it I meant, oh yes, I meant my dear Donky, well not really Donky, I mean, my dear reconstruction of Donky, even if it is as yet only partial, and please do not think at any time that I do not like what I am seeing at the present time, while of course, I am not really seeing you, as I am only a bubbled Glub Professor, yes, what was your question my dear, you wanted to know if we could continue this discussion later on in my Office, of course my dear, I would be most honoured and I think I have a few Data Bases which seen in a very special angle would interest you,,

Assistant, stop tugging at my sleeve, of course this was the question she wanted to ask me, what do you mean, what morgue, you want me to explain to Avatar Donky what a morgue is?, what a silly idea, is that really what you want Donky, why should I explain what a morgue is, anybody does know that, what, you mean she does not know why she is in the morgue,

Assistants, why is Donky in the morgue and not in my Office?

You mean she is being resynthesized? Oh yes of course, sorry, I was contemplating some of the features that I have synthesized and I wanted to ask you Donky, if it was not very tiresome to carry these liquid containers all the time and whether it did not create a lot of tension in you back holding them up?

Assistant stop pulling at my shirt, what do you mean, this was not the question, of course this was the question, what other question can be of any interest than the use of boobs? The morgue? Who is interested in morgues, assistant I am beginning to fear that you are a necrophiliac!