i had hoped that spending the week at home would give me a chance to catch up on work - but i can barely do any reading. i might have some half-hours of clarity of mind throughout the day, each of these too-brief durations ended in the same way - quite without warning, and with immediate effect, black exhaustion sweeps over me - i sleep almost immediately, in mid-book, -conversation, -thought. i haven't even been able to read my comfort books - i don't have the concentration even for that - let alone the tracts of milton and the essays of derrida. this in fact is my third continuation of what, you can see, is a rather brief entry. but i'm also trying to accept the pain and incapacity and to simply let things take their course, even though i don't like not understanding why. i said before that we are characterised by the need to understand - we want know that the body is producing certain chemicals in reaction to particular injuries and they affect such and such a part of your brain to cause nausea or drowsiness and so on. we want to know that medication or treatment functions by stimulating certain parts of the body to release this or that substance and this change of chemical balance changes the activity of this or that organ and functions to bring about relief. logical explanations based on body physics.