I have heard accounts of altered bodily perception, and states of disorientation, etc. after various forms of nerve damage, or damage to the vestibular system; and I have heard accounts of how different the body feels when diving (I used to scuba-dive myself); but I have never heard a detailed account of how one experiences one’s body (and “world”) in free-fall, as you must have done for 260 hours.[*35]

  I take the liberty of sending you one of my books—I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of my stuff. The narrative called “The Disembodied Lady” relates to the experiences of a patient who had lost almost all proprioceptive sense—and hence felt “disconnected” in a fundamental sort of way. A former student of mine[*36] has written a book about another such patient, in which he notes, at one point, that […] the patient, “as he lay there flat on his bed, had the distinct and frightening sensation of floating…but this was not the relaxed feeling associated with swimming, but an almost unimaginable complete absence of feeling…He could feel nothing from the neck downwards…[and] he had no idea of where the various bits of his body were without looking at them.”

  In the very brief time we talked (as we were being photographed!) together, you said, if I did not misunderstand you, that if you closed your eyes when in space, you lost all idea of where your body was, or how it was oriented, and would have to open them and see (and that then, wherever you saw your feet, that was “down”). You also said that you had kept something of a diary, or a journal, when you were aloft. I am wondering if it would be possible for me to see any of this, or to learn more from you about the changes in bodily perception (and sense of orientation) when you were in space, and the ways in which you (and others) adapted to these. After writing “The Disembodied Lady,” I would like, I confess, to write “Lady in Space,” with your help or collaboration, about experiences which must be fundamental, but (at this point) so strange to most of us—tho’ in the next century, perhaps, they will be common knowledge.[*37]

  Do tell more!

  With all my thanks, and best wishes,

  Oliver Sacks

  * * *

  —

  In 1991 OS and I traveled to Washington, D.C., where he testified before a Senate subcommittee about the value of music therapy. There we met Mickey Hart, the Grateful Dead percussionist, who invited us to an upcoming show at Madison Square Garden. OS was seated onstage, behind the band, and my husband and I had the unlikely experience of seeing OS bopping away, looking strangely like Jerry Garcia’s twin. Both sported generous gray beards and were dressed in large black T-shirts. Later that week, on September 17, 1991, having sampled one Grateful Dead concert, we arranged to take OS’s patient “Gary,” a blind, amnesic Deadhead, to another one of their shows. (OS wrote about this in “The Last Hippie.”)

  To Frank Wilson

  Neurologist, Author, and Music Therapy Advocate

  September 16, 1991

  299 West 12th St., New York

  Dear Frank,

  Many thanks for your good letter—fascinating with your parkinsonian lady!—photos, Ted Rust’s article, etc.

  Very exciting about developments in DC—this MAY be the week for us, for music etc. etc. I went with Jonathan[*38] to a Grateful Dead concert. I had never been to a Rock concert in my life before—and loved it!! It was so dynamogenic that it caused me to dance for two hours—now I have an effused knee and can only hop. Incredible to see the vast audience (18,000) in a sort of group rapture, all psychically-neurologically completely “entrained” by the music: as direct an example of music’s power as I have ever seen—and an overwhelming one because of the numbers involved. There really was (as our ancestors would have said) a “neurogamy” involved.

  I am intolerably busy, as always. Could someone make a transcript of my Rochester talk—it was quite slow, and did not contain too many words—and then I’ll get to it. I sent a short piece (just my Washington statement) off to Rosalie Pratt, and I will be writing a much longer piece with Connie[*39] and try to place it somewhere prominent.

  All best wishes to you,

  Oliver

  To Rodrigo Delfino Nascimento

  Medical Student

  September 16, 1991

  299 West 12th St., New York

  Dear Sir,

  I was enchanted by your letter and language—and have even enlarged that portion of your letter where you express the hope that I may continue my work “until your cerebral cortex and your myocardial fibres allow (I beg God’s mercy these will for still a long time)” and pinned it on my notice-board.

  I was a bad student in medical school, cut most of my lectures, did not read my books—but (this was perhaps in a more leisurely era, in England, in the 1950’s) I was permitted to spend as much time as I wanted with patients, listening, looking, pondering, reflecting. We did not have DSM-III then; nor were there all the tormenting exams one has now. My “models,” I suppose, were my parents, both doctors—and the strong sense they had for individuals and their “stories.” I grew up, for better or worse, in an atmosphere of medical “stories”—but stories which always had a human, no less than a clinical, side. I grew up feeling the need for description—that experience could not yield its full meaning without this. If I went to medical school now, I am sure I would be flung out.

  What can I say to you? Stay with it, and (sooner or later) things will get different, and you will emerge from medical school into the spaciousness of real life.

  Good luck!

  Oliver Sacks

  To Thom Gunn

  April 1, 1992

  299 West 12th St.

  Dear Thom,

  I was away (Australia/NZ)—on my return found your new collection of poems, for which deep thanks.

  A few I had read before—especially “Lament,” which overwhelmed me—most were new (to me) and quite marvellous. You speak in so many voices now, you embrace more and more, and yet it is always your own voice, which I first heard (and loved) in Fighting Terms so long ago. I especially liked “Nasturtium”—I hope you may write more poems like this, celebrations of brave plants in vacant lots, ditches, crannies etc (you remember how “Hajdi Murad” came, or came back, to Tolstoy when he saw a thistle?)

  There are times when the human, and even the animal world, seem past bearing, and then I turn (back) to plants—and their metaphors. I very much liked “Otter” and “Pitcher Plant” too. At other times of “going back” I return to the water, to swimming, for which I get an ever-greater passion (Australia + New Zealand were wonderful for this—as for their fauna + flora—it was a relief from “the human condition”). I was given a proof of a book I found mysterious and amazing—Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero, by Char. Sprawson (forthcoming from Cape). Do you know of this—or of him? (blurb enclosed). It seemed to me (like motorcycling perhaps?) to reveal a deep, acted-on, but not fully acknowledged, part of myself—maybe others will find this too—especially if they are (of the trans-cultural “brotherhood” of) swimmers.

  I take the liberty of sending 2 recently published pieces of my own. I hope you too are enjoying (while sickness and madness ride around us) good health and a steady wind.

  Love,

  Oliver

  To Jane Mathias

  Psychologist[*40]

  July 14, 1992

  299 West 12th St., New York

  Dear Dr. Mathias,

  I am not sure whether I can answer any of your questions, or should try. I live somewhat like a somnambulist, and the reasons for my actions and thoughts are often opaque to me—nor do I want to get caught in the unproductive circularity of self-reference.

  The clinical life (like life itself) is full of chances—it seems to me that it was chance which brought me into contact with the postencephalitics of Awakenings, chance which brought me into contact with my first group of patients (Migraine), chance which determines who contacts me and whom I respond to, and perhaps it was chance which caused the accident I describe in my “Leg” book. The scientific life is much more systematic—one has a thesis, or a hypothesis, or a set of ideas, or a technique, and one explores in these terms. Whereas the clinician never quite knows who is going to walk through his door, phone him, whom he will encounter on the ward, or anything else.

  So, perhaps, there is a life rich in chances, or vicissitudes. And the question then is: which does one select—or which select one—How does the particular concentration and focus come about?

  The patient population may seem unpromising in the extreme—what a dead-end, I first thought, when I joined a migraine clinic. But then (as I indicate in my preface to Migraine) I found the subject, and the patients, opened out in a wonderful way—so it seemed to me (for a while) to be the most enchanting of subjects. Every subject promises enchantment, if approached as a microcosm of human nature, or Nature; every subject becomes a key, or a door, or a window (whatever metaphor you like to use), opens out more and more widely, and surprisingly—if one lets it.

  Recently (for example) I was phoned by a man blind from infancy, who has recently been given sight through surgery.[*41] But he can’t “see” too well—he (and his brain) never learned to see. This seemingly rather special and narrow situation opens into the most general (even philosophical) issues—as when Molyneux,[*42] in the 1680’s, wrote to Locke about such a patient, or (rather) trying to imagine such a patient.

  My “teacher” in a way was A. R. Luria—especially the Luria of Shattered World and Mnemonist, and the one who as a young man was influenced by Pater’s “Imaginary Portraits,”[*43] and decided he wanted to paint “Unimagined” (“real”) portraits”—portraits at the intersection of biology and biography. I cannot take more time on this letter—but in my CV there are a number of more general articles (precisely on some of the questions you ask), and I must leave you to explore yourself. But I would not waste too much time on me—rather, get on with, find, discover, create, your own work and path.

  With best wishes,

  Oliver Sacks

  To Vernon Mountcastle[*44]

  Neurophysiologist

  August 5, 1992

  299 West 12th St., New York

  Dear Vernon,

  Thank you so much for your letter—I will, if I may, convey your appreciation of his book to Jonathan Cole.

  I was moved, more than I can say, by your beautiful description of the joy(s) you have found in laboratory work—and people imagine that science, and scientists, are “dry”!

  I was reminded of the way in which Bertrand Russell describes his joy at first reading Euclid (this he compares to first love), and how Chandrasekhar (in Truth and Beauty) describes his delight in science (tho’ this, for him, means theory above all), where your ecstasies come from discovery (but perhaps, at this level, they become one).

  Perhaps a man like yourself should not cease, never cease, laboratory work—did Sherrington cease, or visit his labs right through?

  I found it painful, and poignant, to think of you ceasing lab work and hope/am sure you will find some way of resuming it (if this is your wish). Did you know Purdon Martin, the neurologist? He was devastated at his formal retirement but then, unasked, unsolicited, started a new chapter of his life, going to the Highlands Hospital in London, working with postencephalitics—beautiful, leisurely work, full of discoveries, which he pursued, in his own way, past the age of ninety—this last chapter of Purdon’s life was the most astonishing of all.

  I had a sort of pang on reading your letter, because I once dreamt of being a “real” scientist and discoverer myself, but (I sometimes feel) betrayed these aspirations. But the same life, the same gifts, are not given to us all—and perhaps the clinical life, so incoherent and “impure” compared to the scientific one, has its own discoveries, and beholdings, and even ecstasies too, tho’ perhaps these are always “complicated” by a sense of the suffering or affliction entailed—so there cannot be an unclouded joy.

  But there is nonetheless a strong pleasure and fulfilment in trying to draw the many strands of a patient’s life into a coherent clinical narrative or “case-history”—and perhaps (as I hope in my more sanguine moments) such case-histories also have their uses.

  I take the liberty (after all this!) of sending you one of the least “medical” narratives I have written[*45]—but I hope you may enjoy it, and get some sense of an odd phenomenon, and a man, and a life.

  With my warmest regards, and looking forward to our meeting again,

  Oliver

  PS Friend Ralph (Siegel) asks me to send his regards too.

  PPS Sorry about my writing—I should have typed this.

  To Marina Molino Ronza

  Art Teacher

  December 7, 1992

  299 West 12th St., New York

  Dear Mrs. Marina Molino Ronza,

  Many thanks for your letter (and, I think, your FAX last week), and for sending me a copy of your husband’s article.

  I am interested (and moved) that my own observations on patients (often with degenerative brain disease) can have resonances in an area which would seem so remote—namely, your own work with drawing and creative development in primary school children. I was very struck, many years ago, when I worked with children, to see how many of them had “breakdowns” in their 6th and 7th years when they first went to school. I was supposed to diagnose neuro- or psycho-pathology in them all, but finally I got so puzzled that I started visiting nearby schools, and there perceived what you center upon: that the natural spontaneity and freedom and creativity of the child can get appallingly inhibited or prohibited with the uncreative character of the school, and that it is precisely this violation (this near “soul-murder,” at times) which causes the “breakdowns.” So, by the same token, one desperately needs to have (somehow or other) the sort of “room,” the creative freedom, the child needs—without, however, forfeiting the structure, and perhaps the formal instruction, he may also need—as has happened in all-too-many “free” schools. […]

  With kindest regards,

  Oliver Sacks

  To Robert Bogdan

  Professor of Social Science and Education

  March 27, 1993

  299 West 12th St., New York

  Dear Dr. Bogdan,

  I have been away (in Guam)—hence my belated reply to your fascinating and moving paper on “A ‘Simple’ Farmer accused of Murder.”

  (Driving into town this morning I heard of a documentary Brother’s Keeper—I am not sure whether this is about the Munnsville episode, or some other: I had thought there was, already, a film about Delbert and his brothers).[*46]

  I have immediate (positive) resonances to what you write about—not least personally knowing three brothers in Sullivan Co, NY, also referred to (affectionately) as “the boys,” and occasionally as “simple” or “hillybillies,” but never in derogatory or stigmatizing or excluding terms—they are totally part of the community and always have been. I have known them myself for 25 years, and occasionally slept over in their ramshackle house. Having a personal relation to them myself I find it impossible to attach diagnostic or pathologizing terms to them like “mentally retarded,” “schizoid,” “deviant” etc (altho’ I am sure all these—and other things—would be said if, like the Ward brothers, some special incident were to bring them up for “diagnosis”).

  In a less personal, but more “medical-anthropological” sense my experiences have been with high incidences of diseases in various “geographical isolates” […] and, just last month, as I mentioned, I was in Guam, where there is a very high incidence of a neurological disorder (among the Chamorros) called “lytico-bodig.” In the 1940’s, in some villages, scarcely a household was unaffected, and it accounted for almost 50% of adult Chamorro deaths: it is now in decline, but there are still some hundreds of people affected.

  Virtually all the reporting of lytico-bodig has been of a strictly medical (and usually) epidemiological sort—I do not know of any studies of the sort which need equally to be done—of how those affected (and their families/friends/neighbours/communities) feel about the disease, “perceive” it, to what extent exclusionary or stigmatizing forces are active (there used to be a leper colony on Guam, incidentally), and to what extent the sick remain totally part of the community. I would say that the latter is strongly predominant, especially in the smaller, most affected, most rural communities—they are never shunned, and almost never institutionalized. All the reasons for community acceptance you analysed—native birth, lifelong residence, extensive family, shared values, independence (tho’ this last, obviously, changes as the disease advances)—are strong; there is no suggestion (I should add) that the disease is contagious. There is some suggestion that it may be caused by eating the seeds of a local plant—a cycad—and this suggestion itself has caused some local indignation (because “fadang” or “federico,” as the Chamorros call it, has been a staple of their diet, and prized and seen almost as their “special” food for two centuries or more).

  This, of course, is a very different situation from the Munnsville one. […]

  I am very ignorant in this sphere. Can you tell me of studies of communal reactions to (locally) high incidences of endemics of illness? There are a number of such “geographical isolates” around the world—or have been. One such is the endemic of Huntington’s chorea in Venezuela; another (if it still exists) of a cerebral degeneration (an adolescent neuro-lipidosis) in a village of Huguenot stock, in Nova Scotia. These are hereditary endemics; then, of course, there are the affected and the survivors in tragedies like Minamata Bay (mercury poisoning)—and (I guess) Hiroshima.