Every time I start writing, there is a little bit of me that is slightly panicky about my mind going BLANK.
They are used to setting panicky new parents' minds at rest and can pick up on anything that needs treatment.
At one point, she barks an order to her own panicky thoughts: "Steady the Buffs!" The mind at work is like a regiment under fire, and about to relocate; but where is it going, and who is leading it, and will it survive?
Never mind that five years later, panicky officials in the Dakota Territory would set in motion the killing of Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee massacre.
"The Closing of the American Mind" was published in 1987, during the panicky time of backmasking and Satanic messages hidden in heavy-metal tracks.
In a Felliniesque scene at the start on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, she sought the race director, Fred Lebow, tugged on his pants and said, "Mr. Lebow, where do I stand?" Through his megaphone, Fred shouted, "Women and first-timers to the left!" Then he changed his mind, "No, to the right!" Grete must have felt almost panicky among the 8,937 runners.
The narrator's unusual approach to his diary has been occasioned by a panicky moment of childhood trauma that exposed the fragile connections between body and mind; this is combined with a kind of evanescence he experiences as his ailing father fades away and he feels himself like the shadow of a ghost, terrified of looking in the mirror.
And yet the fact that it's all in your mind is little consolation if it's also in the minds of a large, panicky population.
I either get panicky about the next time I'm going to be able to use an indoor loo, or my mind clouds over with thoughts like: "I've never seen so many white people with dreadlocks".
