Drowning rats and Gilad Kedem's 1 year in India
I was reading WG Sebald's account of an experiment that intrigued him:
“They put a rat in a cylinder that is full of water and the rat swims around for about a minute until it sees that it can’t get out and then it dies of cardiac arrest,” he told me. A second rat is placed in a similar cylinder, except that this cylinder has a ladder, which enables the rat to climb out. “Then, if you put this rat in another cylinder and don’t offer it a ladder, it will keep swimming until it dies of exhaustion,” he explained. “You’re given something—a holiday in Tene-rife, or you meet a nice person—and so you carry on, even though it’s quite hopeless. That may tell you everything you need to know.”
Soon after, I rediscovered the expired photogallery account of a stranger. And this is everything I need to know, that I can dream of visiting this desolation personified as landscape, in better circumstance and health, for an extended period someday.
Like many taking a break after army stints, this Israeli man spent a year traveling in India before moving on to Europe. One year. It reminds me of my brief journeys in India that never exceeded 10 days. One year is a long time. I wonder of all the things that must've met his gaze during this really long stretch of time. I wonder if the alien northern landscape seeped through his clothes and skin and set up outcroppings on his pericardium, so that every beat set off vibrations through the mountains and snowstorms triggered minor arrhythmias in his heart.
Like Sebald, I am drawn to the past travels of strangers in foreign lands. I feel that long after they have forgotten about their own journeys, I will still remember the rarified morning air touching the muffler-bound face of the traveler, and how close he once stood to the flowers whose picture still lingers on some expired account on the internet.
“They put a rat in a cylinder that is full of water and the rat swims around for about a minute until it sees that it can’t get out and then it dies of cardiac arrest,” he told me. A second rat is placed in a similar cylinder, except that this cylinder has a ladder, which enables the rat to climb out. “Then, if you put this rat in another cylinder and don’t offer it a ladder, it will keep swimming until it dies of exhaustion,” he explained. “You’re given something—a holiday in Tene-rife, or you meet a nice person—and so you carry on, even though it’s quite hopeless. That may tell you everything you need to know.”
Soon after, I rediscovered the expired photogallery account of a stranger. And this is everything I need to know, that I can dream of visiting this desolation personified as landscape, in better circumstance and health, for an extended period someday.
Like many taking a break after army stints, this Israeli man spent a year traveling in India before moving on to Europe. One year. It reminds me of my brief journeys in India that never exceeded 10 days. One year is a long time. I wonder of all the things that must've met his gaze during this really long stretch of time. I wonder if the alien northern landscape seeped through his clothes and skin and set up outcroppings on his pericardium, so that every beat set off vibrations through the mountains and snowstorms triggered minor arrhythmias in his heart.
Like Sebald, I am drawn to the past travels of strangers in foreign lands. I feel that long after they have forgotten about their own journeys, I will still remember the rarified morning air touching the muffler-bound face of the traveler, and how close he once stood to the flowers whose picture still lingers on some expired account on the internet.
posted by No You're Not at 8:59 PM
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