This dreadful journal, almost void of any other content but these passionate assertions and denials, intending to affirm existence and continuity but forever contradicting them, was filled anew each day, and soon mounted to hundreds of almost identical pages. I awoke for the first time, despite my previous claims.” This in turn was crossed out, followed by “I was fully conscious at 10:35 P.M., and awake for the first time in many, many weeks.” This in turn was cancelled out by the next entry.
2:35 P.M: this time completely awake,” along with negations of these statements: “At 9:40 P.M. He would write: “2:10 P.M: This time properly awake. . . . But his journal entries consisted, essentially, of the statements “I am awake” or “I am conscious,” entered again and again every few minutes.
“It’s like being dead.”ĭesperate to hold on to something, to gain some purchase, Clive started to keep a journal, first on scraps of paper, then in a notebook. “I haven’t heard anything, seen anything, touched anything, smelled anything,” he would say. Clive was under the constant impression that he had just emerged from unconsciousness because he had no evidence in his own mind of ever being awake before. . . . It was as if every waking moment was the first waking moment.
