I recently published a post here, called “My life as a tiger”. Since then I have received few e-mails from different people and a phone call from my friend, surprisingly all of them referring to skull trepanation. As it started to look rather like a heated debate, I decided to explain myself a little bit more on this topic. So here I scrambled together whatever I feel like or want to say about it. It’s relevant to me anyway, so why not put it here?
So, I want to make a hole in my skull. I had this dream for a long time, maybe for 5 years or so. It started probably from my early interest in anthropology. There were many references across different cultures to skull trepanation: mainly in Mesoamerica, but also in Pre-Christian Europe, India, Egypt. It is the oldest surgical procedure known to man, as some of the trepanned skulls dated back to 2500 BC. Which is weird, indeed. Why would people just about everywhere, where civilizations flourished, would want to make a hole in their heads?
Continue reading ‘A hole in the head: the most wonderful entertainment in the whole Wide Wonderful World’
Other posts by boris kislitsin
When I was 9 years old, I nearly died. My appendix burst, so the symptoms were confusing, and I was admitted to hospital with a different diagnosis. It happened that my mother worked there in X ray lab, so she knew local staff. One of her friends, a surgeon, came up to see me. He came to our house sometimes before, so we were kind of friends…well, if friendship between 9 years old boy and a man 40 years older can exist. Anyway, occasionally we had a game in chess. Whatever the reason was, he came up. By a weird coincidence, he had a girl with a similar case admitted few weeks before; she also was diagnosed with something else and later died. So he took me to the operation table at once. In a matter of few hours I could be dead too. Of course, such a case brought as closer. I had to stay in hospital with drainage pipes coming out of my belly for a couple of weeks. He visited me daily. If he had enough time we had a chess game and talked. Little by little I learnt about his life. In 60’s he was a doctor in Cuba and in one of the attempts by americans to topple Castro was shot from M16 somehow. He didn’t go into details, but the scar on his belly was impressive. He was a doctor with Soviet trade fleet later for few years. He worked in Kongo’s hospitals during outbreak of cholera. He went as an army doctor to Afganisthan in early eightees. He saw the world from Honduras and Africa to Singapore. He had many stories to tell. For over 20 years he kept notebooks where he’d write everything that seemed interesting to him: from his life, books, stories he’ve heard…they were eclectic. He brought them to me so I could read them. I remember them vividly. I read them through a dozen times. I remember their covers and that some pages were missing; I remember a leaf of grass between pages of one of them and a photo of a group of soldiers in another. I secretly copied them. I even copied the drawings. After I’ve finished, there were still some pages left. So from that point on and off I started to write what I’ll find interesting myself, later on switching to computer. So here’s one, connected with dream, though not mine. This really happened; at that time, though, I tried to put all these things in a kind of narrative, there everything is connected, making a long and often absurd story. So it goes with remarks to unknown reader and different discourses to clarify the matters: Continue reading ‘Have you met yourself recently?’
Other posts by boris kislitsin
Today I received a letter from my friend. He wrote: I’d love to write something for MemoryCemetery, but memories are boring. Let me disagree with that. Memories are boring, for sure, on the condition they are of a boring and unimaginative life. A few years ago I wrote a short novel, called ”A girl from Taliban, Coca Cola and the last days of my creation”. As you could probably see from my other posts, I’m interested in black holes. So this story (or at least parts of it) set in a black hole. This world also should like a black hole from the other side, right? Though the novel’s plot was generally made up, it was partially based on my memories and experiencies of living in London. My life is not so eventful these days, as it was back then. I broke my toe few days ago though, in the place there it was broke before. I remembered writing about this experience in the story, and it happened again just a day after I wrote about memory loops and loops of memory. No wonder it looked like a loop for me, so I took out my old dusty harddrive and refreshed in my memory what actually happened 4 years ago. Here’s this accident account, and I swear it’s all true. The story goes like this:
…Few years back I was about to paint a portrait of D. Beckham, as he is a national hero, cultural phenomena and looks like a nice guy, even if he spends a lot on the staff I probably wouldn’t. It is not my business what he makes of his life. I do not care what he does with money either: he can as well burn them. I wouldn’t mind. My wife once met another herself in a dream. So I wonder if D.Beckham has met any of himself. I see at least ten people a day wearing a T-shirt with his name whenever I go out. They call it “replica” shirt. For one Beckham there should be at least ten millions “replicas” in the world. Imagine all of them gather together at a football pitch the same time… Which one is original?
I painted maybe five or six replica Beckhams with pink or acid green bodies and different haircuts. I still can draw him with closed eyes. Beckham usually looked like this:
Illustration 1. Usual replica Beckham.
But, this time I wanted to paint the “original” Beckham.
Continue reading ‘Me and David Beckham’
Other posts by boris kislitsin
