For this response to David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous (pg. 93-115), I focused on the text on page 93, "There are those who suggest that a generally exploitative relation to the rest of nature is part and parcel of being human, and hence that the human species has from the start been at war with other organisms and the earth." as well as the text on page 106, "Whenever we wish to know how to accomplish a certain task, we need only find the book wherein that knowledge is inscribed."
I responded to the text on page 93 due to the fact that it mentions war with other organisms. At first, finding a way to respond to this section of reading was quite difficult, but my hospital bracelet literally poked me in the eye when I was scratching my head, thinking hard about the reading. Then I remembered I had to declare war with the illness I faced; at the time I was losing, I thought I was going to die with my body shutting down.
As for the text on page 106, it reminded me how looking up my symptoms made my worries of death even more prevalent. I used a lot of resources trying to find out what was wrong with me, even practically crawling to the nurse's office on campus.
I couldn't pin-point exact text as the whole section was talking about language and communication, but reading it again after having thought of my illness made it click, how the papers they handed me for my illness, my bills, the terminology they used, the texts and phone calls I exchanged with my mother...all I could think of was how scared I was, nothing made sense. The terminology, bills, and all the papers they handed me didn't make sense to begin with. The doctor tried down-playing my illness when telling me what I needed to do right after she said it was the worst case she'd seen. Even after I left the hospital, I was terrified; I couldn't have any pressure on my stomach region or my kidneys and/or liver would burst so I made sure to chew everything more than needed so I wouldn't die from someone trying to perform the heimlich maneuver while trying to save my life. Just the way things were said and the papers she gave me explaining everything made it seem so bad.
I couldn't pin-point exact text as the whole section was talking about language and communication, but reading it again after having thought of my illness made it click, how the papers they handed me for my illness, my bills, the terminology they used, the texts and phone calls I exchanged with my mother...all I could think of was how scared I was, nothing made sense. The terminology, bills, and all the papers they handed me didn't make sense to begin with. The doctor tried down-playing my illness when telling me what I needed to do right after she said it was the worst case she'd seen. Even after I left the hospital, I was terrified; I couldn't have any pressure on my stomach region or my kidneys and/or liver would burst so I made sure to chew everything more than needed so I wouldn't die from someone trying to perform the heimlich maneuver while trying to save my life. Just the way things were said and the papers she gave me explaining everything made it seem so bad.
So, for the video, I wanted to go through the motions of what I had gone through. Spitting out black was to represent the illness and the fear spilling out as I broke down on the phone before I went to the hospital.
The different languages are all saying "I'm dying" as that was what I kept repeating when I was breaking down. I used different languages as fear of is something that everyone of every culture experiences.
The English statements was a combination of my texts to my mom and what I said on the phone to her in my time of panic.
The last part of the video is the cutting of my hospital bracelet (finally!) to represent the fact that I am no longer to the point that I'm worried about dying, as the voice-over explains that I'm getting better, though I still have a while to go before I'm 100%, and that I'm not dead.
I show the patient number to represent the other patients who may or may not have died that day, who also had to deal with the fear of death, and those who could not comprehend what they have been told due to shock and fear.
The photo has some meaning as well; it represents the negativity that surrounded my illness and the removal of that negativity.
