August 1. For the past four months, I have felt especially haunted. Almost every day I have been dogged by unexplained digestive symptoms that include abdominal pain, cramping, and nausea. In rereading Erich Neumann’s book the other day, I noticed that he refers several times to the “alimentary uroboros.” Neumann notes that “the uroboros is properly called the ‘tail-eater,’” and that this paradoxical symbol of self-digestion dominates both early childhood and the earliest creation myths—and is then repressed. But this is what I’ve been courting and looking to make conscious in the current book project: the primal circle of eating and being eaten, of life and death. Is it this then that lies at the core of my digestive distress?

What came to mind in rereading Neumann were some potent images I’d worked with in Dimensions of Apeiron. The material in question centers on a sequence of ominous visions experienced by Zarathustra, a character in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. In the most chilling vision of all, Zarathustra hears a dog howl in fear under a full moon to announce the appearance of a man who is lying on the ground: “A young shepherd I saw, writhing, gagging, in spasms, his face distorted, and a heavy black snake hung out of his mouth. Had I ever seen so much nausea and pale dread on one face? He seemed to have been asleep when the snake crawled into his throat, and there bit itself fast.” It is clear to me that the dreadful snake stuck in the shepherd’s mouth is none other than the “alimentary uroboros.” I was “asleep” when the serpent first crawled into my throat—I was unconscious. To resolve my relentless dyspepsia, it seems I need to become more conscious…