Michael Cisco

Although unavailable for analysis the moment it happens, being struck a violent blow on the head is a very interesting experience. When, as was true in this case, the blunt object makes its intervention without warning, instantaneously reducing the victim – me – to a state of unconsciousness, a fascinating blank spot in the continuity of events is introduced. It might be the briefest variety of episode possible. Whatever fear or pain one experiences in association with it is displaced to a later moment, and then retroactively loaned in hindsight to where there had not been the time. As for the sensation, I liken it to being transformed by a spell into a rattling chest of drawers suddenly. A crash of silverware that dance like a shoal of fish, contents tossed aside and tumbling onto the floorboards. Loose floorboards. Dusty ones. Revoltingly dusty, loose floorboards, with clots and footscrapes in the dust. There really was a white flash. I seem to recall also a yawing of my perception in two directions at once, as if my field of vision – I do not say my eyes – were focussed in two opposed directions, half slipped upwards, the other downwards, along a glassy barrier dividing them. A glassy, slick barrier. The bruises and hurts incurred in falling to the pavement had to be discovered one by one later on.