Tarrying with the Negative: A Second Hegelian Perspective on OCD Outline of the Problem Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is marked by obsessions, intrusive images, waves of anxiety, and rituals — sometimes visible, sometimes entirely internal — that feel compulsory even when they are not truly willed. Driven by absolutist and non-negotiable core beliefs or fixed ideas — ‘I must be certain’, ‘I can never be wrong’, for instance — the condition becomes a relentless overseer,

A Ghost As If I am not your keeper O ghost who crouches At the grave of my father. The body is dead; it is in the shade. A pale figure with a sheet for a robe rises from the earth (His hair black as ravens' feet). With cold-clay fingers, He could quell the soul’s fire. As if. A seagull cries In the salted air Like a baby Calling for its parents. There is blood on the land, Blood in the rivers too. You are not what you appear To thi

Deliquescent Bodies (Love Parade) I hope for night; it comes; it is here; it comes with rain & river, & the lights are electric. I am offered a drink & the mercury blue neon over the door catches my eye, tears open the retina, imbuing the optic nerve with cold cathode gas, ionising my nervous system to the limit. Breathing carbon dioxide, I metabolize my own body. I am a pillar of ether by the exit door. But I’m not alone. We all matter less than we did before,