I came packed in oils, the residue of Eden.
Some said that grief made me.
Some said it was the death of a child.
Or a passion so dense no light escaped.
Some said it was sin.
They told me stories to account for the disease.
Of heavy elements that kept me from rising.
Of the ribbed wings of angels.
Of cells that changed.
I trusted the world to be natural. The voice
Of disease was the white noise I slept by.
What happened to me happened to you.
I ate too much or too little, the water was unclean.
I saw the face of illness mature in the mirror.
Everything that had been outside me
Came to be inside me.
I was unequally well and unwell.
I was my own medicine.
And now the endless remedies
Became the white noise I slept by, deeply.
For such and so many are the body's afflictions,
That to live is to die.
-- Marvin Bell, "A Healthy Life"
Friday, January 25, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Please come here. Please come on over. There is no line that you can't step right over.
This morning I woke up, glanced out my window like I do every morning, and did a major double take, because there was 8 or so inches of snow on the ground. Maybe there's more, actually, but I didn't really go outside with a yardstick so I have no concrete number to report.
Got dressed, put on some snow boots, borrowed the ergonomic shovel from our neighbors, and began to dig out my car, which the plowman had so kindly packed into the snow like a little shitty red igloo. I've actually never been in Massachusetts for winter whilst also owning a car, so by some short-lived miracle, I've never had to un-burrow my own car. I did the best I could, getting most of the ice out from under the wheels. I turned on my car to warm it up while I went back into the house for my backpack and my coffee. I felt very strange, however... there was this latent but nagging feeling that something integral was missing from the picture. Like there was a step I was forgetting.
I went back outside and sat in the car to think:
I dug out the wheels.
I cleaned off the wipers.
I have the emergency brake on.
There's no snow on top of the car.
But that feeling was still there, and now it was compounded by me feeling really dizzy. And nauseous. I felt pretty sick in general.
I opened the door and put my head between my knees to breathe. Then it slowly dawned on me... I turned my head to look at the back of my car...
I never dug out the exhaust pipe.
I had neglected to un-bury the exhaust pipe, which was packed into ice and snow.
What happens when people try to kill themselves in the garage? They slowly asphyxiate to death, because the carbon monoxide filters back into their car. Which is almost what I accidentally did this morning.
I like to think that I'm not actually such a complete moron that I qualify for a Darwin Award by just trying to drive. But my mom did mention that my grandfather's childhood friend killed his entire family in a very similar manner.
And recently in the news, a man quite accidentally began to drive, passed out behind the wheel, and drove into incoming traffic. His tailpipe had been blocked off.
Why would I forget such a critical step of such a simple series of tasks? Doesn't our memories serve to protect us?
Yes and no. But not always.
From the November issue of National Geographic, an article discusses Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter, who has developed a taxonomy for the types of forgetting with experience. He calls these the "sins of memory". Yet each sin, he believes, is also a blessing -- they are "a price we pay for processes and functions that serve us well in many respects". For each thing we forget, we remember something which our brains have prioritized as more important. Not that there's such a limited amount of room, but for our brains to work most efficiently, its easiest for us to forget extraneous details. The entire purpose of our brains are, after all, to be highly developed "prediction machines"; we touch, we taste, we talk and hear and move. From every outlet we have, we take in as much information about world as we can get. All that information could drown us; its part of the brain's job to throw away what's not important. Whats left in our memories, scientists theorize, are five types of memories:
- Short-memory, immediate. (sensory)
We hold these for fractions of a second; a street light down the block changing, a far off church bell, a whiff of the neighbor's dinner. These are also known as things subliminal -- most of the time we don't even realize that we are sensing these stimuli.
- Working, short-term memory. (recalled)
You can remember what this post is about. After dinner you remember what you ate. Tomorrow you'll know it snowed today. Simple immediate information.
- Long-Term Memory, Facts and Events. (declarative, aka, episodic and semantic)
When did Columbus sail? Who wrote Lolita? What was the name of your first dog? Where did your father trip and fall on the ice when you were 9? How many broken bones have you had?
These are things we consider as integral to who we are, our past, the books we've read, the wars we've seen, the names of all fifty states and our favorite sonnet. There is a spectrum of fact and event long-term memory; you might have known a line or two from the Talmud when you were studying world religions in 10th grade, but I doubt you remember it now. Yet on the other end of the long-term spectrum, there are Jewish scholars who memorized the Talmud so completely that it was passed down orally for generations.
- Long-Term Memory for Habits/Skills (procedural)
Things you do unconsciously, like how to make coffee, or paint, how to read, etc. "It's like riding a bike", literally.
- Long-Term Emotional Memory
Related specifically to fear (so we can react quickly to dangerous situations), but also other things: what happiness is. How you felt when you were accepted to college. These memories are linked to events, but also trigger uncontrollable physiological reactions. The smell of a perfume, for example, might cause you to feel suddenly nostalgic and sad. Interestingly, what we would consider "love", is often not found in this category.
Forgetting is a more complicated business than remembering. Remembering is so much more understood that forgetting seems to baffle scientists and doctors alike. In neurodegenerative memory disorders for example, contrary to what doctors would expect, there seems to be a strange order of which memories begin to disappear. In fact, in slow, cruel diseases like Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis, strange memories remain where others disappear. The date, unknown, but a perfect random day from the 40s remains. Feelings of familiarity come and go. Some eventually forget how to feed themselves, but remember how to fix a watch. Some memories evaporate forever. Some return with no warning. What this means, although understood to relate to neuron degeneration, still seems to re-complicate all we know about memory.
When we forget things, however, it is dependent on what it is, it relates to a different part of the brain. I forgot (or maybe was never handed the Rule Book of How To Function In Snow) to dig out my tailpipe. I never had to dig out my car, so this information was stored in my Procedural Memory. I don't have fond memories of mommy and dad gathered around the exhaust, so it was stored in my emotional memory banks either. And I didn't memorize that Rule Book that I received, nor was snow-based carbon monoxide poisoning covered in my high school AP Biology class. So my forgetting didn't seem to be dire; my brain did not see the information as critical. But what if I hadn't remembered in time? Did my brain evacuate one memory for another? Some event that I want to remember -- what lyrics someone was singing to me in a car, or what my aunt made me for breakfast when I was eight, or how long it takes to bake chocolate chip cookies, instead of this information which turned out to be drastically important to my well-being and survival.
So if we could improve our memories by erasing old memories, would we? Would that mean we would have minds which remembered everything, but only with no emotional attachment? Or would we remember only highly selective events, like a newspaper edited by an OCD editor? What would we be willing to omit for the sake of ourselves?
Got dressed, put on some snow boots, borrowed the ergonomic shovel from our neighbors, and began to dig out my car, which the plowman had so kindly packed into the snow like a little shitty red igloo. I've actually never been in Massachusetts for winter whilst also owning a car, so by some short-lived miracle, I've never had to un-burrow my own car. I did the best I could, getting most of the ice out from under the wheels. I turned on my car to warm it up while I went back into the house for my backpack and my coffee. I felt very strange, however... there was this latent but nagging feeling that something integral was missing from the picture. Like there was a step I was forgetting.
I went back outside and sat in the car to think:
I dug out the wheels.
I cleaned off the wipers.
I have the emergency brake on.
There's no snow on top of the car.
But that feeling was still there, and now it was compounded by me feeling really dizzy. And nauseous. I felt pretty sick in general.
I opened the door and put my head between my knees to breathe. Then it slowly dawned on me... I turned my head to look at the back of my car...
I never dug out the exhaust pipe.
I had neglected to un-bury the exhaust pipe, which was packed into ice and snow.
What happens when people try to kill themselves in the garage? They slowly asphyxiate to death, because the carbon monoxide filters back into their car. Which is almost what I accidentally did this morning.
I like to think that I'm not actually such a complete moron that I qualify for a Darwin Award by just trying to drive. But my mom did mention that my grandfather's childhood friend killed his entire family in a very similar manner.
And recently in the news, a man quite accidentally began to drive, passed out behind the wheel, and drove into incoming traffic. His tailpipe had been blocked off.
Why would I forget such a critical step of such a simple series of tasks? Doesn't our memories serve to protect us?
Yes and no. But not always.
From the November issue of National Geographic, an article discusses Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter, who has developed a taxonomy for the types of forgetting with experience. He calls these the "sins of memory". Yet each sin, he believes, is also a blessing -- they are "a price we pay for processes and functions that serve us well in many respects". For each thing we forget, we remember something which our brains have prioritized as more important. Not that there's such a limited amount of room, but for our brains to work most efficiently, its easiest for us to forget extraneous details. The entire purpose of our brains are, after all, to be highly developed "prediction machines"; we touch, we taste, we talk and hear and move. From every outlet we have, we take in as much information about world as we can get. All that information could drown us; its part of the brain's job to throw away what's not important. Whats left in our memories, scientists theorize, are five types of memories:
- Short-memory, immediate. (sensory)
We hold these for fractions of a second; a street light down the block changing, a far off church bell, a whiff of the neighbor's dinner. These are also known as things subliminal -- most of the time we don't even realize that we are sensing these stimuli.
- Working, short-term memory. (recalled)
You can remember what this post is about. After dinner you remember what you ate. Tomorrow you'll know it snowed today. Simple immediate information.
- Long-Term Memory, Facts and Events. (declarative, aka, episodic and semantic)
When did Columbus sail? Who wrote Lolita? What was the name of your first dog? Where did your father trip and fall on the ice when you were 9? How many broken bones have you had?
These are things we consider as integral to who we are, our past, the books we've read, the wars we've seen, the names of all fifty states and our favorite sonnet. There is a spectrum of fact and event long-term memory; you might have known a line or two from the Talmud when you were studying world religions in 10th grade, but I doubt you remember it now. Yet on the other end of the long-term spectrum, there are Jewish scholars who memorized the Talmud so completely that it was passed down orally for generations.
- Long-Term Memory for Habits/Skills (procedural)
Things you do unconsciously, like how to make coffee, or paint, how to read, etc. "It's like riding a bike", literally.
- Long-Term Emotional Memory
Related specifically to fear (so we can react quickly to dangerous situations), but also other things: what happiness is. How you felt when you were accepted to college. These memories are linked to events, but also trigger uncontrollable physiological reactions. The smell of a perfume, for example, might cause you to feel suddenly nostalgic and sad. Interestingly, what we would consider "love", is often not found in this category.
Forgetting is a more complicated business than remembering. Remembering is so much more understood that forgetting seems to baffle scientists and doctors alike. In neurodegenerative memory disorders for example, contrary to what doctors would expect, there seems to be a strange order of which memories begin to disappear. In fact, in slow, cruel diseases like Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis, strange memories remain where others disappear. The date, unknown, but a perfect random day from the 40s remains. Feelings of familiarity come and go. Some eventually forget how to feed themselves, but remember how to fix a watch. Some memories evaporate forever. Some return with no warning. What this means, although understood to relate to neuron degeneration, still seems to re-complicate all we know about memory.
When we forget things, however, it is dependent on what it is, it relates to a different part of the brain. I forgot (or maybe was never handed the Rule Book of How To Function In Snow) to dig out my tailpipe. I never had to dig out my car, so this information was stored in my Procedural Memory. I don't have fond memories of mommy and dad gathered around the exhaust, so it was stored in my emotional memory banks either. And I didn't memorize that Rule Book that I received, nor was snow-based carbon monoxide poisoning covered in my high school AP Biology class. So my forgetting didn't seem to be dire; my brain did not see the information as critical. But what if I hadn't remembered in time? Did my brain evacuate one memory for another? Some event that I want to remember -- what lyrics someone was singing to me in a car, or what my aunt made me for breakfast when I was eight, or how long it takes to bake chocolate chip cookies, instead of this information which turned out to be drastically important to my well-being and survival.
So if we could improve our memories by erasing old memories, would we? Would that mean we would have minds which remembered everything, but only with no emotional attachment? Or would we remember only highly selective events, like a newspaper edited by an OCD editor? What would we be willing to omit for the sake of ourselves?
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
it's everything.
Although I feel guilty for not having written a post either vaguely academic, politically based, or anything otherwise social/science/theory oriented in a while, I will forewarn -- this post, too, will be on none of those topics. I will, eventually, get back to writing less serious, (or more serious depending on how you look at it), and less personal posts.
However. It is the New Year. I said on my birthday that my New Year was beginning then. It did, in ways. But there's something about the entire world looking forward at the same time which makes today feel undeniably like another new beginning.
A long time ago, I visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem. I hadn't ever been a religious person, didn't really consider myself spiritual. But standing in front of this towering wall, stuffed with tiny scrolls of rolled up paper; every corner was being touched, and every crack and seam was overflowing with people's written prayers. The feeling of standing in front of that wall... was like dry heat. It just set waves up from the rock, from the pavement. You could feel this sway... every single person there believing so strongly in one thing. Everything was slow motion and I felt like I was swimming in holy air.
That was this feeling I have today, in another way. Everyone believes, truly truly and truly believes, that THIS day will be a fresh start. This day means something. Everyone puts their hopes on it, that this year will be better.
Every end of the month, or end of the year, I always say: This has been a hard year.
But its always a hard year. There will never be a year without some difficulty; I embrace this. I love living, but I love all of living, and if you truly love something, ya gotta love all of it. Life, death, birth, joy, pain... (apparently new years day also makes me Deep and Thematic).
OK, yes, this is cliche. So is dressing up in red and green for Christmas or handing out valentines, or celebrating anniversaries, or Falling In Love, or giving birthday gifts, or really thinking about any of this. But... what else is there? I mean, other than These Things... these weird trappings and celebrations we have and create... other than this, what do we have? How do we define our lives? Shakespeare was on-point -- it's all Sound and Fury. But what certainties do we have after tomorrow? Or after the big final sleep? I think the only things we have are what we create. So we create reasons for reasons, and seasons, and holidays, and arbitrary-time-thingys, like New Years. Or Resolutions. Because that's how we give our lives meaning. Markers, definition... it's all we have.
It's like looking in your fridge for whatever ingredients you have for dinner. Here's what you have. Dinner will come and go, and you can make it or not. That's up to you. But here's what you have. What can we do with these? Let's do the best we can with what we have.
I'm not good at sticking to resolutions. I have a resolution-rebound-rate of about three hours. Honestly. I made one this morning and I already broke it. Twice. Ha ha.
Never-the-less, there are some things I am working on. Maybe "working" is too much of an action verb; some things I am seriously contemplating and maybe verging on strongly-considering-action.
I am trying to spend more time Thinking. Not worrying and agonizing, stressing, or if-BritneySpeares-falls-in-the-forrest-does-it-make-a-sound kind of thinking. Thinking. I'm talking about legitimate knowledge.
I'm already thinking about things the majority of my waking hours, and also several of my sleeping hours already. But to be truthful, most of this thinking is fruitless.
I want to think to the point of learning. And think to the point of changing. And creating. And moving. And living. So I guess that would be: Thinking to the point of Living. Maybe at least feeling, at the end of each day, that I've thought about something and come to understand something about it, or resolved something, or come to a meaningful question, even.
Second is ... to stop thinking about other things. Permanently. Some of the worst and most fruitless thinking I embark upon is Wondering. I wonder what would have happened if Things Had Been Different. If I had said other things, stayed longer, done other things... this is not to say I regret. But I wonder if I had spent more time Thinking and less time Reacting, if I would still be wondering.
... See, right there, I just did it.
I think about what would happen if I could go back, and appreciate, or apologize, or maybe just leave way sooner. Do you ever think about what you would say to people now, if this You that you are now could go back and be the You that you were then? (I know, very metaphysical-stoner, this train of thought.) Or... do you wonder, at weird times, how things would be different if you could open your eyes in a moment? Sometimes I think people are non-committal to their own stories, their own lives. Like we're speaking but we're not really there. We're waking up, but somehow still in a coma. We're out there walking back to our cars, but we could really be anywhere non-specifically walking anywhere. I think back to moments like that and I kind of want to shake my shoulders and yell in my own face: "Commit!". And then, perhaps, there won't be so many of those moments where I look back and wish I said what I meant, did what I meant, or just really BEEN there... etc. There are fewer of these as time goes by, but still. No one can say they have none of them. Earlier this month I had a particularly grisly one. The thing is, we change so much... and then we waste time thinking about all the places where things went awry, for whatever reasons. Its not much help, that. Things are what they are, though I wonder how much more living I could do if I let go of the wondering.
I won't do a cheesy "But all in all this year has been great...", because that's not what this post is about. Of course there have been wonderful, beautiful, silly moments. In one year so much changes. We re-meet ourselves, in a way. There have been amazing discoveries and insane parties and dancing and skin-to-skin and love and rain and all the good shit. Also, there has been gut-wrenching awful pain, and the worst in people, and anxiety and stress. There will always be both. This post is just part of a life examined, a year examined, examining the examination... etc.
Where am I going with this?
Huh.
Well... I guess that's the question of the hour, isn't it.
However. It is the New Year. I said on my birthday that my New Year was beginning then. It did, in ways. But there's something about the entire world looking forward at the same time which makes today feel undeniably like another new beginning.
A long time ago, I visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem. I hadn't ever been a religious person, didn't really consider myself spiritual. But standing in front of this towering wall, stuffed with tiny scrolls of rolled up paper; every corner was being touched, and every crack and seam was overflowing with people's written prayers. The feeling of standing in front of that wall... was like dry heat. It just set waves up from the rock, from the pavement. You could feel this sway... every single person there believing so strongly in one thing. Everything was slow motion and I felt like I was swimming in holy air.
That was this feeling I have today, in another way. Everyone believes, truly truly and truly believes, that THIS day will be a fresh start. This day means something. Everyone puts their hopes on it, that this year will be better.
Every end of the month, or end of the year, I always say: This has been a hard year.
But its always a hard year. There will never be a year without some difficulty; I embrace this. I love living, but I love all of living, and if you truly love something, ya gotta love all of it. Life, death, birth, joy, pain... (apparently new years day also makes me Deep and Thematic).
OK, yes, this is cliche. So is dressing up in red and green for Christmas or handing out valentines, or celebrating anniversaries, or Falling In Love, or giving birthday gifts, or really thinking about any of this. But... what else is there? I mean, other than These Things... these weird trappings and celebrations we have and create... other than this, what do we have? How do we define our lives? Shakespeare was on-point -- it's all Sound and Fury. But what certainties do we have after tomorrow? Or after the big final sleep? I think the only things we have are what we create. So we create reasons for reasons, and seasons, and holidays, and arbitrary-time-thingys, like New Years. Or Resolutions. Because that's how we give our lives meaning. Markers, definition... it's all we have.
It's like looking in your fridge for whatever ingredients you have for dinner. Here's what you have. Dinner will come and go, and you can make it or not. That's up to you. But here's what you have. What can we do with these? Let's do the best we can with what we have.
I'm not good at sticking to resolutions. I have a resolution-rebound-rate of about three hours. Honestly. I made one this morning and I already broke it. Twice. Ha ha.
Never-the-less, there are some things I am working on. Maybe "working" is too much of an action verb; some things I am seriously contemplating and maybe verging on strongly-considering-action.
I am trying to spend more time Thinking. Not worrying and agonizing, stressing, or if-BritneySpeares-falls-in-the-forrest-does-it-make-a-sound kind of thinking. Thinking. I'm talking about legitimate knowledge.
I'm already thinking about things the majority of my waking hours, and also several of my sleeping hours already. But to be truthful, most of this thinking is fruitless.
I want to think to the point of learning. And think to the point of changing. And creating. And moving. And living. So I guess that would be: Thinking to the point of Living. Maybe at least feeling, at the end of each day, that I've thought about something and come to understand something about it, or resolved something, or come to a meaningful question, even.
Second is ... to stop thinking about other things. Permanently. Some of the worst and most fruitless thinking I embark upon is Wondering. I wonder what would have happened if Things Had Been Different. If I had said other things, stayed longer, done other things... this is not to say I regret. But I wonder if I had spent more time Thinking and less time Reacting, if I would still be wondering.
... See, right there, I just did it.
I think about what would happen if I could go back, and appreciate, or apologize, or maybe just leave way sooner. Do you ever think about what you would say to people now, if this You that you are now could go back and be the You that you were then? (I know, very metaphysical-stoner, this train of thought.) Or... do you wonder, at weird times, how things would be different if you could open your eyes in a moment? Sometimes I think people are non-committal to their own stories, their own lives. Like we're speaking but we're not really there. We're waking up, but somehow still in a coma. We're out there walking back to our cars, but we could really be anywhere non-specifically walking anywhere. I think back to moments like that and I kind of want to shake my shoulders and yell in my own face: "Commit!". And then, perhaps, there won't be so many of those moments where I look back and wish I said what I meant, did what I meant, or just really BEEN there... etc. There are fewer of these as time goes by, but still. No one can say they have none of them. Earlier this month I had a particularly grisly one. The thing is, we change so much... and then we waste time thinking about all the places where things went awry, for whatever reasons. Its not much help, that. Things are what they are, though I wonder how much more living I could do if I let go of the wondering.
I won't do a cheesy "But all in all this year has been great...", because that's not what this post is about. Of course there have been wonderful, beautiful, silly moments. In one year so much changes. We re-meet ourselves, in a way. There have been amazing discoveries and insane parties and dancing and skin-to-skin and love and rain and all the good shit. Also, there has been gut-wrenching awful pain, and the worst in people, and anxiety and stress. There will always be both. This post is just part of a life examined, a year examined, examining the examination... etc.
Where am I going with this?
Huh.
Well... I guess that's the question of the hour, isn't it.
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