"Could this be it?" "He wouldn't live here." "But knowing him his peculiarities perhaps he would in this derelict place?" "Well..." "Good afternoon." "How may I help you, gentlemen?" "Good afternoon." "I was called." "Was it you?" "Or not." "They asked for a consultation." "I'm a physician." "Ah, yes." "I'll alert the lady of the house." "She'll explain everything." "A moment, please." "I'm coming, coming..." "Coming..." "Good afternoon." "Good morning." "Am I to assume, sirs - you are interested in a room for two?" "Not at all." "I was called." "Perhaps it was you, madam?" "Perhaps." "Perhaps I did call." "Perhaps by phone as well." "If you would..." "Come in." "Please, come in, sirs." "Let me show you, tell you, everything." "This should suit for the examination but first the room." "We'll take a look at everything." "You understand, that things are a bit awkward now." "Simply, what with more of these, well, these..." "Peculiarities?" "Yes, it's all so odd now, so fuzzy." "Even threatening." "We'll need to go over everything." "In detail." "Carefully." "It's so troubling." "I'm the one who has to hold it all together, restore it." "Holding." "Restoring." "And I've scarcely the strength for it." "It's justified, I'm sure." "Keeping things settled." "The family, you see..." "Here we are." "See?" "I'm sure you'll be quite cozy here, sir." "The room is larger than the first." "And this - what's it called... ?" "Bay-window." "You can see everything going on in the yard." "What's going on?" "There's the belt, but that's nothing, really." "Well..." "It's quiet here, no one should bother you." "Bother?" "Yes." "There's been some trouble..." "I took the belt down from the tree." "It's mine, after all." "From my robe." "He had cut it." "You see?" "The belt, that is." " I went out that night, and saw it hanging." " Who was hanging?" "Not who." "But what." "The belt was hanging." "Don't you see?" "No, I don't." "What's needed..." "How can I know?" "Does it bother you, madam?" "No." "It perplexes me." "It was knotted and I couldn't loosen it." "I started to cut it, so I could sew it up again." "Then I could be certain with everything so uncertain, at any time it could anything is possible." "Time slips on and on, just slips right past me and..." "And, then what?" "Then I strike over and over and over..." "I go out, out out, out, out there." "Am I clear... ?" "...clear, clear, clear clear, sir?" "Clear." "Is it hanging there again?" "Yes." "This time by a rope." "With a knot like a but no belt." "Nothing." "He's always tying something up, then doubling it, always nice and even..." "That's when I decided to call you." "To quiet things down." "Go on." "Everything doubled, even." "He counts his steps, you know." "Careful to walk only on the black tiles." "He avoids the white." "Come in." "Gentlemen, dinner is served." "I might be absent entirely and no metaphysical will..." "Help yourself, don't be shy!" "...would be capable of drawing me back to myself." "You mean yourself, sir?" "I mean him." "He's no different than me." "He suffers from the exact headache I do, but he does things I'd never attempt in any corporeal actuality..." "That's enough." "Listen." "I just don't understand him offer him this and offer him that, find it, cut it up, sew it together, and track it down for everyone and everything, all the time..." "Our son-in-law is a doctor, too." "He should be able to help." "He's dealt with this, but - and this is just between us - no one has lifted a finger to help." "Except for me." "Which would be fine, but lately..." "It's clear that treatment is called for." "Or so another specialist advised." "Called for, but..." "And I've offered repeatedly to pay for it all." " Aunty, let's not..." " Fine, fine." "She is...you know." "I'd never turn my back on a poor relative but it's just so unaesthetic." "You know, it's a regrettable case." "Regrettable." "Who knows, really..." "Who knows, who was right there and who was wrong..." "She still won't speak to anyone." "Not even us." "Can you imagine?" "Since it happened she's stopped speaking completely." "I've been telling him, a trip to the clinic is in order, but he and his ropes, knots, and principles..." "It's just so unaesthetic..." "You know, such a regrettable case." "So regrettable." "Well..." "I'm at a loss." "I talk to her and nothing, not a word." "She just twists away at her belt." "Silent as a stone and twisting, twisting, twisting, twisting, twisting, twisting away..." "And what about the professor?" "On and on incessantly about knots and nooses and the existence that enfolds us, about his own which aren't his at all..." "I hear it all and I understand perfectly that it's all wrong." "All wrong!" "So so so so..." "All wrong." "So so so so..." "Not so so so so so, so so, so, so, so, so, so..." "All wrong..." "And here it is hanging." "A noose, like..." "A symptom." "The image forms from the tiniest details." "One could concoct an anamnesis to fit these symptoms." "But it's all so clear." "He is speaking about truth and I about authenticity." "This way?" "This house..." "Something oddly familiar..." "Maybe I got it wrong but the address..." "The bridge just like I was told." " Hello!" "Ooh!" "Good morning." " Good morning." "You gentlemen are looking for a quiet spot?" "For two, I take it?" "Yes, and we'd like full board if possible." "We have a double-room and board." "Please, come in!" "You'll never find food like this in a health resort." "And the full hospital treatment!" "We're experienced, you know." "A medical family." "We fully appreciate that our patien..." "guests need their peace and quiet." "How about this one?" "Nice and light." "Quiet, too!" "A cozy spot to be alone." "The patients...guests before you have all just loved it." "A calming place." "They come here and find their balance their balance, they find it." "Our maid is trained - as a nurse - as well." "Just a good rest, to calm yourself." "Please, come in." "Just close the door behind you." "You know, we were lucky to find a boarding house." "It's good that he advised us insisted even." "Still, it's all so odd." "Why is it all turning out like this - one thing on the heels of another." "I don't understand..." "Where is this antipathy coming from?" "I've begun to get on his nerves." "He looks at me and his gorge rises." "He can't stand me any longer." "A casual brush of my arm and he jerks away." "You start to feel guilty, guilty of everything, in everything." "You want to drop to your knees and cry out:" "Forgive me!" "Please forgive me!" "But for what?" "Perhaps I truly irritate him a mere irritation..." "Nothing else..." "Do I stink?" "It's some kind of dysmorphomania." "Or a product of autosuggestion?" "Induction!" "Everything looks wrong." "Looks?" "Have we lost touch with reality?" "Well?" "What do you have to say?" "It's impossible to be certain in anything." "And the knot?" "For naught." "A noose?" "Yes." "And no..." "Get up." "Take a look." "Images arrange themselves systematically, and actions, ritually only able to be realized elsewhere." "Elsewhere, everything would be different." "Here it is hanging." "A knot..." "How did he describe it?" "The suggestion of a loop?" "Still her way changes everything..." "Could it be him after all?" "This is a skillful knot." "Certainly." "He is a knotist." "A slipknot holds best of all." "Or a simple twist - and you have half a noose." "A half what?" "Half the meaning." "This is too complex." "Let's start from the beginning." "Any object is merely a phenomenon..." "Enough." "I'm expected." "Certainly, you could start anywhere." "Intuitively..." "It's just a rope." "Knotless." "Like ..." "Like a clerical collar." "Collared." "Encircled." "Here again." "Such an odd house." "It looks like that other, earlier." "Everything seems the same yet stripped of volume and voice..." "Is my voice my own?" "Can you hear it?" "Someone is ringing." "Wake up!" "Wake up!" "Someone is asking for you, sir." "They're waiting..." "Your tie." "Earlier everything was as it should be, you see, proper, calm..." "But now..." "He is fixated on his ropes, his knots." "Now, where has he put the belt?" "I keep asking, asking..." "He's tight-lipped." "I go out to the yard and there it hangs..." "...half of it anyway." "The maid came later with the other part." "She didn't say where she'd found it, imagine it..." "He cuts." "I sew." "They're all this way..." "One wants this the other wants that." "Imagine, I'm cleaning, just like now, under the bed and what do I find... ?" "A necklace scattered everywhere." "And later, a string, all crudely knotted up." "She keeps to herself." "Constantly alone and won't speak." "Not a word." "Not a word." "To anyone." "You see, sir?" "Not since the incident." "The gentleman has been told." "But not a word in response." "He does not care at all." "Does not care..." "No one cares... "Talk to him", I say, but it's just him with his ropes, knots, ropes, knots ropes, knots, knots, knots, knots, knots..." "Ropes, knots and..." "He is a knotist..." "Knotist." "All day he's knotting...knots, words." "Words aren't really the problem..." "He's lost all perspective." "He should have become a philatelist." "Understandable and safer." "With this you don't know what to expect." "I can never be sure, never." "I wish the gentleman had seen his shoebox." "Another part of the problem, that box..." "He filled them all." "Where do I put the shoes?" "He lays them out all the day long, one just like the next." "The ropes: knotted, unknotted, knotted, unknotted..." "It's too much to take in." "Sometimes I want to say:" ""My sweet, pull yourself together."" ""Your delirium - let me take it away."" "You are listening, aren't you?" "Yes, I am." "Imagine, I'm cleaning, just like now ..." "Anyway, symmetry is vital...and balance." "It maintains its form - a good, strong knot." "Look, here - a simple noose." "Yes, and everything under control, as it should be." "Otherwise, more of the same." "I wonder if she recognizes it?" "Conscious actions are arranged systematically, but her actions... ritually." "He is a knoti..." "She said what?" "A numismatist?" "He puts his ropes in little boxes..." "Or knots them..." "Can I... ?" "Look here." "I even had to iron his shoelaces three times a day." "What of it?" "A nasty business." "Wake up, mister, please." "The hosts are expecting you, at dinner." "Everything is ready." "I couldn't." "Not a thing..." "And this..." "A simple design: a loop, a rope." "Rope, loop." "So..." "I couldn't." "Not a thing." "End of story!" "Damn it." "Now, what?" "Should I pair it?" "Symmetry is vital." "Yes, the gentleman has put it very well, very precisely." "It is enough." "Thank you." "Yet, doubt persists." "Darling, please pass the salt." "The sense of things deviates from what is denoted." "Any sense of reality merely references the past." "It relies on the indispensable authentication of sensations derived beyond consciousness." "Good evening, gentlemen." "Allow me to introduce the husband of our daughter." "Bon appetit!" "We know each other." "We've already met." "Yes, in the clinic." "Thank you." "That'll do." "Thank you." "You see ..." "Please pass the salt." "You see, by acting or thinking in a certain fashion, in the hope of preventing a sequence of events or influencing it." "We ignore that formal changes in our assumptions are never determinative of the nature of our experience." "I am compelled to stress this:" "the absence of consciousness terminates all experience." "Generally, only the living may have experiences." "Death signals the end of me." "The end." "In a purely semantic view, bereft of corporeality it all comes to naught." "A noose." "A loop." "A collar ..." "Enough already!" "I also saw hanging, not far from the house..." "You see, we should have cut it up again, and then sewn it up afterwards." "Cut and sew." "Open and close, like the physician advised." "The physician..." "I've told her and told her I'll pay for everything." "She's his...and a bit on the odd side." "I'd never turn my back on..." "You understand." "Still it's so unaesthetic." "Oh, mother, don't start." "Fine, fine." "Still, this case is so, you understand - regrettable." "We can't know who was right and who was wrong." "But the poor dear was hysterical and won't say a word to anybody about what happened." "They're all knotted up together in this." "Or is he alone in it?" "They don't even suspect." "Yet collared, the collar." "A rope, a knot." "It's all knotted together." "Induction tests our limits." "Perhaps ending in suicide." "And what about the son?" "And she keeps silent all the time." "Too arbitrary." "A thought." "A type of game." "It even smells like a hospital here." "She's lost in thought about something." "The others - other than him - know nothing." "He knows, but cannot change a thing." "What do you think?" "The torrent of perceptions presents us with endless possibilities for the associative process." "Perhaps a few will manifest themselves as phenomena." "Most, typically, remain unremarked, though may result in feeling not unlike the conscious state." "Does this trouble you?" "It does." "I feel, but what I feel is nothing." "Only an impression of nonexistence remains." "Let's start from the beginning." "Again from the beginning?" "Or from the end." "From the end?" "We should continue." "From where?" "From here." "What is the sense of these permutations?" "The intangibility of the past is terrifying." "There is no present." "Only reference to the past." "Moving unswervingly ahead, yet constantly circling." "The future constricts." "Time stops." "Starts again." "And yet, simultaneously, never moves again." "I saw it once." "But I cannot make the association." "Image and sound." "A raven ..." "Croaking ..." "You see..." "I'm late because..." "I apologize..." "Yes." "What took so long, sir?" "I'll alert the lady of the house." "She is expecting you." "A moment, please." "Come in." "Nice." "Cozy." "But it smells a little like  a church." "Yes?" "Yes, they've just brought him in." "He seems calm." "No apparent symptoms." "I have hidden everything already, the ropes as well..." "I'll keep watch, always nearby." "Did you say something?" "Shut up." "I would ..." "Allow me." "Let's begin." "The diagnosis is apparent:" "a gradual degradation of the personality." "Note well the initial, confused conversations." "We've all heard:" "the time, the scope, both subject and object." "It's all been recorded." "Then..." "So regarding the object." "Which object?" "The rope." "I have a detailed record of it all." "As well as the knots." "You have to admit it's highly instructive." "We're faced with a clinical example." "As a physician I am bound bound to recommend hospitalization." "Everyone could rest assured." "In the end, you will need to consider, but I would have to insist." "Who is responsible for all this?" "I want to know who's responsible." "A moment, if you would." "Excuse me, but this is important." "It's an aberration." "We can no longer tolerate all this knotting." "Usually one could ignore this sort of thing, but this is creating an atmosphere of disintegration." "An induction, a living threat, is born." "If it is truly an aberration, there are no guarantees." "Who can assure me that this is not a conspiracy of those seated at this very table?" "Indeed, we are all prone to this type of aberration." "I, she, and you, gentlemen." "We should put 'peace and quiet' out of our minds." "A type of delirium." "A conspiracy needs no sanction." "I am in earnest." "Shut up." "Could you recommend something?" "Induction!" "And what is the peculiar sense in this, good sirs?" "In the knots." "The quality of which corresponds directly to the peculiarity of the rope material." "Darling, what on earth can you know about this?" "Please." "Thank you." "I ..." "I am a knotist." "That is ..." "I have the perspective of an expert." "Afternoons, Sundays, and even nights on occasion, I'm knotting my knots." "I'll gladly explain everything." "To be clear, knotting a tie is no different than knotting a rope." "A knot is simply embedding a circle in Euclidean space, and endlessly, freely, distorting it." "Is it clear?" "No?" "Later I'll show you." "You'll see" "A circle." "Like a clerical collar!" "Now do you see?" "It's what I was saying." "You'll aways hear the truth from me." "Nothing but the truth." "Shut up!" "Bon appetit!" "Allow me to introduce our son, he works at the clinic..." "We've already been introduced." "Pass the salt, please." "Let's go on..." "Consider the basic row:" "the circle, the clerical collar, the fascia or the noose." "We see them as empty, yet are incapable of comprehending the depth of that perceptible emptiness." "You know, I saw it, too." "Hanging nearby." "Stop it." "It's simply unaesthetic." "Perhaps Clozapin is called for?" "What do you mean Clozapin?" "That's utter rubbish, doctor." "Raving nonsense!" "My experience proves my vitality." "The loss of self-awareness terminates all experience." "Experience?" "Which experience?" "What exactly?" "The lived-experience of one's mortality." "Unlike any other, it assumes a unique construct..." "Construct?" "Which construct?" "Where?" "That's the result." "The result is nothingness." "Nothingness?" "Nothingness?" "Diagnosis:" "Induced delirium." "A mistake." "The disintegration of his conscious state has encircled him with maleficent definitions." "All external stimuli of feelings and memory are indistinguishable from one another." "A phantasm." "In the initial stages, reality is indistinguishable from dreams." "Delirium." "Soon afterwards, it becomes one with them." "Delirium." "At first, delirium differs from reality, later becoming reality itself." "Simple, isn't it?" "Reality - to the conscious mind - is restricted to negative symbols, with consciousness resisting itself." "Consciousness, enfolding - and enfolded - defines its own reality." "Well, now everything has come full-circle." "A circle, a collar, a simple knot." "A noose unloosed." "Help yourself." "A nasty business." "It would be wrong to resist, doctor." "It helps when treating disorders..." "Disorders?" "Whose disorders?" "This isn't for me." "And I'll take one more, with your permission." "It calms me down..." "How can it calm you down when it's presented in a purely conceptual form, bereft of corporeality?" "How goes it with you?" "Like through a window." "A distortion of the initial impression?" "A raven?" "Suggestion." "Again an aberration." "They have nothing in common." "A gulf exists here that is impossible to bridge - a raven and his croak." "Consciousness resists reality." "An aberration." "I'm unable to knot the two..." "A suggestion." "...image and sound..." "They are already inseparably knotted." "Between them - a gulf." "Amen." "He hangs." "Amen." "Amen." "Why are you standing here?" "Let's go." "Shall we begin?" "Wait..." "So..." "It's as if something has taken place..." "I was called." "Difficult to recall but not before yesterday." "It was impossible to refuse..." "They persuaded me." "Perhaps, he forced me?" "Shall we go further?" "They're expecting you." "It was wrong of me to accept." "It's all so strange..." "Something's not right." "Why do they want a consultation?" "Yes, come in." "They are expecting you." "It seems peaceful here..." "Although you can never be sure when you're alone." "And when you're together, everyone can hear him." "He tells me something and they all hear it." "Only I really see him, they hallucinate about him elsewhere." "The past and the future twist into a noose." "I endure eternity as if nothingness." "I lose the sense of it all it's all out of joint, so it seems." "Everything is knotting..." "Present existence seems real with consciousness resisting it." "Taken together, they contradict me." "Enfolded, I enfold existence itself." "Encircled, circling." "No way out." "Nothing can be taken as certain." "Yet..." "Nonetheless, this vital matter which I sense with full awareness of time and space..." "Cornered." "Cornered." "Cornered." "Am I, perhaps, no more?" "Something isn't right here..." "This mattress, these stripes, asphyxiating, fixating..." "And this chandelier inducting me..." "I've got to run away." "Now." "Later will be too late," "or again from the beginning." "You know, everything is like the symptoms..." "The diagnosis could have been..." "But for whom?" "Everyone and everything is recurring." "Repeating." "I am, too..." "Have you noticed?" "I start to notice it in myself now..." "Do you?" "No?" "Each one dangling its own inducement..." "Each in its own way." "We need something..." "But?" "What do you think?" "Perhaps just a drop of..." "You know, perhaps it's best to say nothing about this to our colleagues." "I mean, it's a bit odd us prattling on, babbling on so..." "They would figure us for a couple of nuts." "Delusional." "Paranoiac." "Two nuts in a nutshell." "You know how it looks." "Some type of delirium..." "Fine." "Let's go..."