Walt Whitman wrote of the body electric. I frequently suffer from the
body static; a condition of increased systemic noise. A body suffering
from static cannot register faint signals, such as vaguely nostalgic
music playing on the radio, or the momentous rustling of leaves of the
nearby trees. It wallows in self-generated non-meaning, vacillating between
stupor and hysteria, blocking the outside world behind a screen of
a throbbing pulse or a rumbling stomach. A burdened brain can produce
a cloud of noxious vapour that obstructs the intake of most external
impulses.