{"id":142,"date":"2009-06-12T07:41:52","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T05:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/revista\/?p=142"},"modified":"2010-01-22T21:56:13","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T19:56:13","slug":"jamais-vu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"Jamais Vu<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u00a0by Adrian Ioni\u0163\u0103 (USA)<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Edited\u00a0by Robert Fenhagen<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\"alice3\"<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat is wrong with this baby?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, Doctor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s watching us. He is!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, bitch-nurse.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSlap him!\u201d ordered the Doctor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, again, you righteous bastard<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I got slapped across the face\u2014an open sadistic slap, not an ass whacked to get my tiny lungs pumped for action. Someone slapped me. Someone else said, \u201cSlap him again. Slap the bastard!\u201d Normally, I like that word. It reminds me of things Irish. There are a great number of people I wouldn\u2019t mind knee-capping, but I am not Irish. I am a fucking Romanian mutt. A bloody bastard. OK? Am I special? Yes, for sure. I\u2019m so special that I\u2019m writing this bit about the day I was born as if it were a special occurrence. And it was. It was a bloody, violent, and cruel day. One would expect such a moment of glory to begin with a loud cry. That is usually taken as a good sign, inasmuch as it acknowledges the birth of our vocal cords. However, my entry was marked with a blue moon silence. Careful! It seems that I was looking ghastly and frightening when the doctor stepped back in horror.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has an attitude.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Fuck you again, Doc.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIs he catatonic or just intense?\u201c<\/span><\/p>\n

Are you done, bitch-nurse?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d asks my mother. Mom, you stay away from this\u2026 Rationally, I know that babies\u2014probably too many of them\u2014are born, but how many have memories of getting slapped with an open palm across the face?! There\u2019s the rub. I am ordinary, yet I am extraordinary! I love me. I think.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201dI panicked\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

C\u2019mon Mom, it\u2019s over. The cord was cut , the baby has grown.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSee? You were always a bit milk brained. What do you expect? With that Buster Keaton paleness and morbidly curious look in your eyes, no smile , no response at all\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

You know what ? I thought that we stepped out of the delivery room.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes. But you stayed like that for months and months. Papa tried everything to pull something out of you. He painted the walls pink; he did the Chu-Chu train; tried all the mega-super-giga-gagas you can imagine. Nevertheless, you hid whatever you were thinking. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n

Papa don\u2019t preach, I\u2019m in trouble deep,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Papa don\u2019t preach, I\u2019ve been loosing sleep,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0La, la la la laa, la la, pa bam, pabam, oh ho ho ho oooh\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cListen. One day, God be blessed, Papa came home with a beautiful rabbit named Swampy. A miracle happened. When Swampy disappeared in the bathroom and hid out of your sight, you cried out: \u201cHey Ilici, what\u2019s going on? Where\u2019s the rabbit gone?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Are you sure these were my first words? Such a vocabulary spurt, clearly begs for some explanation. It\u2019s not mah-ma, dada, bubba or any of that linguistic mambo-jumbo. It is a long sentence for god\u2019s sake, not just a pithy potty-whispering act. Mom, Mooom?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGranted, the words weren\u2019t expressed clearly, but your father swore beyond any doubt that he knew exactly what you were trying to say. And he was right. Mostly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To be exact, Mom, I know exactly what happened. I actually said, \u201cWhere a fuck is the rabbit?\u201d I didn\u2019t use a contraction. But he was close enough. Most importantly, he heard me, and so he brought back the bunny. After that, I didn\u2019t say anything for a couple of years. This wasn\u2019t because I had any agenda or an exploding Broca\u2019s Area. I simply had nothing to say. Maybe, maybeee, that\u2019s, because, I, always, had, my, rabbit ! <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou had my ass. I am listening to you two, and I wonder if anybody seems to understand that birth is a big illusion. The biggest illusion. An amniotic film, if you will.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Pa , I assume that each of us has\u00a0a story to tell.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have no idea. For instance, I can remember reading a news article about a young woman who gave birth to a child as she sat on the toilet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, no, this is gross.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRather bizarrely, upon releasing her child into the world, she didn\u2019t bother to immediately remove the infant from the bowels of the big bowl beneath her. Yes, she left it in the commode!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you Dad.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the police officer investigating the case, she left her newborn baby \u201csubmerged in the commode\u201d for an undetermined duration. I gather that she did not cut the umbilical cord, although the newspaper didn\u2019t say as much\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Fucking bitch!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow, with a beginning like that, one can only guess as to the ending. Still, one is forced to admit, this birth was a thing of wonder as much as any. For most people, the rest of the story is probably of little concern. The details of the delivery would be quite enough, and you may think the same. However, for me, a very small, seemingly insignificant detail, as the description of something very peculiar lying on the bathroom floor, was something miraculous. No, it wasn\u2019t a picture of Jesus in a burned tortilla, or anything of the sort. According to the news article, the investigators found a broken glass-rabbit on the floor. It had a label from the Collection of the Tampere Museum. This was no illusion. This was real.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

You just made this up!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYour father never ever lied. I imagine the child\u2019d mother must have been looking at the rabbit as she gave birth. I also imagine that she then looked back into the commode. I cannot help but wonder what she saw or else hoped to see, if anything? Did she spy her own reflection? Did the sight of this little symbol frustrate or soothe her? Did she interpret it as an artifact of guilt, panic, or shame? Or, did it evoke some other glimpse of the past? Then again, who knows\u2013maybe she experienced some sort of commode-like divination. I don\u2019t mean to mock the woman. I suppose that if we look long enough and hard enough, we\u2019d see the future everywhere. Even in a swirling spiral of potty water.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dear, Someone Else,<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope we meet again in more interesting circumstances than my birth. I hope we meet again soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Signed,<\/span><\/p>\n

The Romanian Baby. <\/span><\/p>\n

As for me \u2013\u00a0 since\u00a0this seems to be \u00a0the moment of truth \u2014 coming out from the womb, was largely a matter of neo-natal geometry. I was playing a whole new game of restrictions and limitations. I might have been quiet on the surface, but inside, I was clanging and banging away with life, as well as wondering what all the clanging and banging was about. The only thing that was self-evident to me\u2014quite literally\u2014was the endless opposing vibrations of strong and weak forces of every kind, that were forging a whole new me. Does this make sense to you? I was being continually made, unmade, and remade. But throughout this stormy period time, and even before I emerged, I know that I possessed a mind filled with mental representations, as well as complex emotions and moods. Some would even say, I came out with an attitude. In any event, I ought to know. I was there. I can still feel the smell of amniotic fluid in the nostrils. I have a more difficult time feeling the answer as to why I have this feeling. Also, while I can remember how I once called out for my rabbit, I\u2019m still puzzled as to why that moment prompted me to such an exceptional outburst. This question haunted me so much that I did several \u201cformal\u201d regressions in time to find out the meaning of my perplexity when crying out for Swampy.<\/span><\/p>\n

None of these things became clear until December 22, 1989, when I understood that the answer, the answers to these questions were not to be found in the past. They were in the future. And the future was to be found in every birth. Of course, that brings me around this particular moment, namely, the very moment at which I sit writing this. You might be interested to know that there is no glass rabbit lying on the ground in front of me. You\u2019re probably less interested in knowing that I\u2019m not sitting on a commode while Mom and Pa are rushing the toilet paper. Nonetheless, if at this particular moment, were you to ask me, \u201cWhy did you write all of this?\u201d I might find it difficult to give an answer. However, at least for now, I\u2019d say this: \u201dWhenever you take a poop, don\u2019t expect a jamais vu.\u201d You don\u2019t know what it means? Who gives a shit, it happened twenty years ago! We\u2019re different. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0by Adrian Ioni\u0163\u0103 (USA) Edited\u00a0by Robert Fenhagen \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat is wrong with this baby?\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, Doctor. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s watching us. He is!\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, bitch-nurse. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSlap him!\u201d ordered the Doctor. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, again, you righteous bastard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,22],"tags":[23,9,1123,1116],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7","category-short-story","tag-adrian-ionita","tag-egophobia-22","tag-english","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-2i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}