Bianca Ichim

“Cand mi se intampla sa-mi exprim scrupulele, imi spuneau ca trebuie sa reflectez la ceea ce este in joc si imi dadeau argumente adesea impresionante ca sa ma faca sa inghit ceea ce nu-mi aluneca pe gat. Si eu le raspundeam ca marii ciumati, cei care isi pun robe rosii, au si ei argumente excelente in aceste cazuri si ca, daca admitem argumentele de forta majora si necesitatile invocate de micii ciumati, nu mai puteam sa le resping pe cele ale celor mari. Ei ma faceau sa observ ca felul cel mai potrivit de a da dreptate robelor rosii era de a le lasa exclusivitatea condamnarii. Si eu imi spuneam ca, daca cedezi o data in aceasta problema, nu mai exista motive sa te opresti. Se pare ca istoria mi-a dat dreptate, astazi se intrec cine sa omoare mai mult. Sunt toti cuprinsi de furia uciderii si nu pot sa faca altfel.
Ceea ce ma interesa, in orice caz, nu era rationamentul. (...) Si imi spuneam ca pana una-alta si cel putin in ceea ce ma priveste, voi refuza sa-i gasesc vreodata vreo ratiune, una singura, acestei dezgustatoare macelarii. Da, am ales aceasta orbire incapatanata asteptand sa vad mai clar. (...)
Pana atunci eu stiu ca nu mai valorez nimic pentru lumea asta si ca, din clipa cand am renuntat sa ucid m-am condamnat la un exil definitiv. Istoria o vor face ceilalti.
Stiu de asemenea ca, in aparenta, nu pot sa-i judec pe acesti ceilalti. (...)
M-am hotarat atunci sa folosesc un limbaj clar si sa am o purtare deschisa ca sa gasesc drumul cel bun.
Incerc sa fiu un ucigas nevinovat. Vezi ca nu e o ambitie mare...”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“As medical students, we were confronted by death, suffering and the work entailed in patient care, while being simultaneously shielded from the real brunt of responsibility, though we could spot its specter. Med students spend the first two years in classrooms, socializing, studying and reading; it was easy to treat the work as a mere extension of undergraduate studies. But my girlfriend, whom I met in the first year of medical school, understood the subtext of the academics. Her capacity to love was barely finite, and a lesson to me. One night on the sofa in my apartment, while studying the reams of wavy lines that made up EKGs, she puzzled over, then correctly identified, a fatal arrhythmia. All at once, it dawned on her and she began to cry: wherever this “practice EKG” had come from, the patient had not survived. The squiggly lines on that page were more than just lines; they were ventricular fibrillation deteriorating to asystole, and they could bring you to tears.”
― Paul Kalanithi, NOT A A BOOK: When Breath Becomes Air

“In contemporary Western society, buying a magazine on astrology - at a newsstand, say - is easy; it is much harder to find one on astronomy. Virtually every newspaper in America has a daily column on astrology; there are hardly any that have even a weekly column on astronomy. There are ten times more astrologers in the United States than astronomers. At parties, when I meet people that do not know I’m a scientist, I am sometimes asked “Are you a Gemini?” (chances of success, one in twelve), or “What sign are you?” Much more rarely am I asked “Have you heard that gold is made in supernova explosions?” or “When do you think Congress will approve a Mars Rover?”
(...)
And personal astrology is with us still: consider two different newspaper astrology columns published in the same city on the same day. For example, we can examine The New York Post and the New York Daily News on September 21, 1979. Suppose you are a Libra - that is, born between September 23 and October 22. According to the astrologer for the Post, ‘a compromise will help ease tension’; useful, perhaps, but somewhat vague. According to the Daily News’ astrologer, you must ‘demand more of yourself’, an admonition that is also vague but also different. These ‘predictions’ are not predictions; rather they are pieces of advice - they tell you what to do, not what will happen. Deliberately, they are phrased so generally that they could apply to anyone. And they display major mutual inconsistencies. Why are they published as unapologetically as sport statistics and stock market reports?
Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one twin is killed in childhood, in a riding accident, say, or is struck by lightning, while the other lives to a prosperous old age. Each was born in precisely the same place and within minutes of the other. Exactly the same planets were rising at their births. If astrology were valid, how could two such twins have such profoundly different fates? It also turns out that astrologers cannot even agree among themselves on what a given horoscope means. In careful tests, they are unable to predict the character and future of people they knew nothing about except their time and place of birth.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Gertie C. had had a half-controlled hallucinosis for decades before she started on L-dopa - bucolic hallucinations of lying in a sunlit meadow or floating in a creek near her childhood home. This changed when she was given L-dopa, and her hallucinations assumed a social and sometimes sexual character. When she told me about this, she added, anxiously - You surely wouldn’t forbid a friendly hallucination to a frustrated old lady like me!
I replied that if her hallucinations had a pleasant and controllable character, they seemed rather a good idea under the circumstances. After this, the paranoid quality dropped away, and her hallucinatory encounters became purely amicable and amorous. She developed a humor and tact and control, never allowing herself a hallucination before eight in the evening and keeping its duration to thirty to forty minutes at most.
If her relatives stayed too late, she would explain firmly but pleasantly that she was expecting a gentleman visitor from out of town in a few minutes’ time, and she felt he might take it amiss if he was kept waiting outside. She now receives love, attention, and invisible presents from a hallucinatory gentleman who visits faithfully each evening.”
― Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations