Where are these phenomenological crossroads of physician and patient, practitioner of health and the healthy, destroyer of illness and the elusively undefinable concept of disease itself? How can we find such a way of communicating with one another when the path is so clouded by our own perception of self within the world? When we are so seemingly Within the Outside of it, yet Outside of the Within? If the existentialists sure fretted over the taut chords of isolation and apartness in the world, the pandemic has plucked those same chords causing them to vibrate even faster. For Arthur Schopenhauer, the world was that of philosophical pessimism. It was devoid of meaning where time and science were despairingly “innumerable showering drops of the waterfall,” yet he found respite from a pointless will to life’s isolation when he escaped within art that was for him a “rainbow, quietly resting on this raging torrent.” Others have employed this strategy of communication and seeking respite as well.
Are we humans really separate from nature, or is this mere tautology? This is highlighted in concept and color in “Man versus Nature versus Man” (above) by Ohirenua Giwa-amu (Spring 2020 Intima) where an individual dons full PPE in what appears to be an ecological arms race while trying to touch and participate in nature while paradoxically trying to control it and self-protect from it. Is it really that PPE can separate us from nature? Are we Outside of the PPE? Or are we Outside of our own epidermis that keeps us so free from bacteria? Are we that which is Within these layers? Nothing new; Plato struggled for an answer.
© Living in Between by Mandy Archibald Fall 2015 Intima A Journal of Narrative Medicine
Mandy Archibald attempts to explore those murky crossroads of time and life itself. For her illness is seemingly Outside and Within, and life/health “fluid” as she creates an existential purgatory where illness is the in between place she describes through the beautiful and evocative use of vibrant grays (“Living In Between,” Fall 2015 Intima, above).
© What Lies Beneath by Sapana Adhikari Spring 2020 Intima A Journal of Narrative Medicine
Where is this murky unknown place Within the universe, Within our body? That it leads to angst Within the mind is well described in “What Lies Beneath” (above) by Sapana Adhikari. (Spring 2020 Intima) as she portrays persons harboring undiagnosed illnesses of body yet suffering comorbid anguish about health. Constricted in affect, yet roiling Within, their existential fear is present with every ache. One could so easily envision a fourth stoic similarly anguished yet with full somatic health.
(c) Takotsubo_Cardiomyopathy The_Broken Heart Syndrome by Rayda Joomun. Intima Fall 2018
Regardless of equivocation about where or what illness is, or the crossroads of the Outsides and Withins of being, Rayda Joomun takes pencil to paper to conjure up metaphor and more concretely capture such a malefactor from nature itself, that seemingly strikes from both Outside and Within. Takotsubo represents an illness that shocks the heart from stressors but does not always kill it. In “Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy - The Broken Heart Syndrome” (Fall 2018 Intima) she aptly ascribes the octopus as our villain. Yet more careful viewing reveals the cardiac muscle and the villainous octopus are one and the same. What is it that needs to be slain and where does this nebulous aggressor live when it is seemingly housed from both Within and Outside the heart? Where arise the feelings of isolation in a pandemic, Within or Outside?
© Little Isolated Bird by Brent Carr Fall 2020 Intima
Here my Boat-tailed Grackle’s iridescent purple sheen dissipates, darkened against a sunrise. Or was it a sunset? Where did its purple color go? Outside or Within? Its darkened feathers now in stark contrast to the bright horizon. Their vibrance and energy seemingly drained to supply light to the very pole upon which it perches. Our grackle seems isolated but well integrated into the scene of a setting sun that is representative of an apocalyptic harsh struggle for life and isolation during an indifferent pandemic. Our grackle seems chipper in the early morning sunrise where it takes its reprieve—a well-positioned place where its connectedness to nature, despite loneness, weakens the venom of isolation.
Whether sunrise or sunset, being Outside or Within, sometimes the difficulty of finding words to answer to these questions, perhaps, is bettered answered through art…
Brent Carr
Brent Carr is a physician/ psychiatrist on faculty at the University of Florida, College of Medicine. Artist and philosopher, he is an advocate of teaching and encouragement of student involvement in the arts and humanities. He encourages medical students to deepen their understanding of the art of medicine to foster a deeper empathy and rapport with their patients, and that the practice of medicine becomes richer through exploration and a willful consideration of the human condition. He notes: “This photograph taken in May was captured on an early morning hike in Florida wetlands on a path that is often well-trodden, yet now eerily quiet from restrictions on public gatherings during the pandemic.” His photograph “Little Isolated Bird” appears in the Fall 2020 Intima.