Word: reflexivity
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...flinched and wheeled on me with the same look in his eye that he had when the lightbulb exploded. He thought for an instant that I was his assassin, his James Earl Ray. A natural reflex for someone who was on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel that day in Memphis...
...scene, especially considering that lofty gallery owners, art historians and curators chose these artists from over 100 New England artists. The chosen artists are neither original in what they want to say nor subtle in conveying it. As a result, most of their work produces a gag reflex or a bored yawn...
...That reflex is completely right in the former assumption, completely wrong in the latter...
...deep proof of our need to spill, and keep on spilling, lies in reflex, often in desperate circumstances. A number of years ago, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle magazine in Paris, was felled by a stroke so destructive that the only part of his body that could move was his left eyelid. Flicking that eyelid, he managed to signal the letters of the alphabet, and proceeded to write his autobiography, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, with the last grand gesture of his life...
...that onset of divinity might have some relationship to the physiology of tickling. I'm serious - if that is the word. The (humorless) physiologist describes laughter as spasmodic, rhythmic, vocalized, expiratory and, when due to tickling, involuntary: Those studying the neural pathways of what is called "the tickle-laughter reflex arc" postulate that tickling results from the simultaneous sensation of both touch and pain - a kind of benign assault, wherein Normality of touch (N) and a prospective Violence of pain (V) suddenly occupy the same space. N + V = H (hilarity...