Chris Jones wrote:
> Dementia, not something you can know unless you have it and still you
> cannot know.
There's often a penumbra of known (or partly-known) unknowns around the
unknown unknowns: "I have lost my front-door keys", or "I have forgotten
where I live". One chap in a nursing home I visited once insisted he was
going home soon, but could not say where that was except that it was
outside somewhere. The sense of home, and of not being in it, still very
strong in him, poor bugger.
Dementia sometimes gives way to brief episodes of lucidity, which I
gather can be very distressing (perhaps like encountering oneself as
another not knowing). Lyric poetry as a kind of lucid episode?
Dominic
|