Curious Things
A grey and apprehensive sky today. Knew something was up before I even opened the blinds. Spidey-sense. Squiggly lines emanating from head.
As I stepped out of the elevator, a guy in a blue windbreaker huffed by me with his cellphone to his ear, saying, "Right, right, right, right, right."
The day's events proceeded at a measured clip. Waves of fog rolled over the morning streets like banished clouds. Air dense with electric moisture. You could feel the static in your lungs. Forthright, melancholy.
The Professor didn't show up. This allowed the lab a slight mirth, which we weren't really sure what to do with, except play the Pixies. But that seemed to make the atmosphere too self-conscious, too concrete, so we switched to the Beatles, summoning The Professor by proxy.
Crazy Alfredo again at the commissary, which is basically a mash of whatever the kitchen happens to have left in their pantry at the end of the semester. Why do fat people attract one another? I noticed this as an undergrad, and it's the same here: all the fat kids sit at the same table. It's like a support group. Safety in numbers. They all eat together every day, gorging themselves in splendid, gluttonous unison. They eat fat, they stay fat, and so continues the cosmic cycle.
Steph: Ever given road head?
Miranda (nodding): It was religious.
Steph: Where were you?
Miranda: Montana with my college boyfriend. There was a stretch of highway alongside this national park. Some Roosevelt chasm or whatever. It looked like a crater. Grand, stupefying. Almost mystical. I had to honor it somehow, show my appreciation.
Duncan: I could never get anyone to give me road head.
Steph: You can't ask, you idiot. That's not the way feminine desire works.
Miranda: It just has to happen.
Duncan: Well, it never happened. Wait ― does the side of the road count?
Miranda: No. The whole point is the car has to be moving.
Steph: That's the whole point, Duncan.
Duncan: Who are you guys? Where do you come from? How did you even know there was such as thing as "road head?"
Miranda folded her napkin into a paper airplane.
Devi: How much will you give me if I down a glass of Tabasco sauce.
Miranda: You'd never do it. You're diabetic.
Devi: But how much would you give me?
All of this breezed over me as I gulped down chunks of creamy chicken.
The foreboding persisted through most of the afternoon. A tremor of impending discordance, like swollen throat glands before the cold. Angry ripples in not quite boiling water. At the gym, I sweat and sweat. I plowed over the whirring, whining rubber belt and watched American Homes, the text scrolling at the bottom. How does that work exactly? Do the networks employ stenographers? Saved my shower for home because I prefer the complimentary Pantene to the complimentary Pert.
Things seemed okay. My Spidey-sense had turned out to be a false alarm.
At home I opened the minibar and treated myself to a mini-7UP and a mini Seagram's and a mini package of Oreos. Fewer pleasures on this earth can be found. I drew a bath ― love that expression! ― and soaked in the nearly-scalding water for at least forty minutes, appreciating my naturally bald legs. The neighbors were blasting an overpriced hotel movie. I could hear Morgan Freeman's stately voice booming from the moral high ground.
I thought of cities. When is a city a city? I thought of galaxies, how they were once believed to be merely nebulae. My thoughts drifted from one thing to the next, linked by nothing as far as I could tell but a feeble strand of curiosity. I thought of sweaters, then of bridges. I thought of old hotels and how many of them have no thirteenth floor. I thought of those chutes they have ― what are they called? ― into which you drop trash and it falls all the way to the basement incinerator. I thought about rashes and then about spider silk and then about Brian Eno, and whether or not ambient music is really music. Then about what it would be like to give birth. What does it smell like? (I imagine it salty and greasy and buttery and raw.) I thought about beach caves. I tried to imagine the sound of the surf inside a beach cave.
And that was when I saw the message.
On the fogged mirror above the sink was a queer shape. I didn't make it out all it once ― my eyes were drawn at first to a right angle which seemed penciled onto the glass as though with a straight edge, cleanly, sharply ― and, as I followed the line across the plane, I noticed it was bisected by other lines, which in turn met with others.
The logic that followed was jagged; the phenomenon of several near-perfect angles on my mirror, the causal linkage to a finger drawing them, the realization that the network of angles formed a shape, then the conflicting knowledge that I was not the one who'd drawn it. This all happened in the span of a second or two. These thoughts and half-thoughts converged and flipped themselves inward, resolving to a kind of cold aching drippy sensation in my abdomen.
Who? When?
It was a geometric figure ― a diagram like any you might see in a math textbook.
I listened. The water lapped the side of the tub. Muffled footsteps clomped from upstairs. Then I leapt up and rushed stark naked and dripping into the bedroom. What was I expecting? I looked through the blinds. I went through my shelves, checked for my purse. Everything was intact, nothing missing. I felt like the rats in Lab 6, the ones they stuff into plastic bags and "agitate" to induce stress.
Was there cause for alarm? It wasn't a threat. Nor was it even a statement. It was just this funny marking ― a cryptic and ephemeral inscription in my bathroom. But it had been composed by a human being whose intentions were utterly confounding.
I rushed back into the bathroom to see if I'd simply imagined it. The smudgy figure was indeed real, though it had faded considerably since I'd left the door open and the steam had dissipated. I grabbed my notebook and copied as much as I could make out of the patchy fingeroil construction onto a fresh page.
The more I looked at this strange design, the more unsettling it became. My heart thumped audibly in my chest. My throat was hot and constricted. How long had it been since I'd felt real fright? It's an electrifying sensation, almost ecstatic except that it's awful. The world unfurls and repaginates. Adjusts the brightness and tint of the picture, reminding you it knows something you don't. You can almost feel the amygdala itself, that tiny conductive hub hiding tortoise-like beneath the cortex, swelling with metabolic energy, quickening the pulse.
That this could happen. That it did! A stranger in my room composing this mysterious shape? I imagined a shadowy blur of a character ― trenchcoated like a film noir villain and wearing green rubber gloves. Studied, clinical.
Possibilities enumerated: the maid with a sudden pedagogical impulse? The remnant of a previous tenant? Had the intruder returned?
Riddles
"Neuroscientists are somewhat unevenly divided on the issue of 'dualism.'"
I look out at the crowd ― perhaps not a crowd but an ample group, maybe 40 kids with wizened expressions ― and they're looking back at me, a sharp fixed line of attention as I pace stage left, stage right. Pause.
"The so-called 'Monists' propose the straightforward-seeming theory that mind and brain are one. That what is thought to be the 'soul' ― your thoughts, your ambitions, your memories, etc. ― are simply the product of electrochemical signals between neurons. This is a perfectly acceptable doctrine, but incomplete, and I'll explain why in a second. The 'Dualists,' conversely, think that while the brain ― that is, the grey cottage cheese engine that sits inside your skull ― regulates all the body-maintenance tasks necessary to keep you alive, the mind ― that is, your emotions, your sense of personal identity ― is somehow 'above and beyond' the body, and comes from some as-yet-unexplained epi-phenomenon."
I try to avoid making the "finger-quotes" gesture, the wiggling bunny ears, but the habit is too ingrained for me not to.
"Few in science really believe the latter, though many still cling to the idea that mind and brain are separate, because, well, they're felt as being separate."
Posture, I tell myself, posture. I pick up the chalk and write 'Monist' on one side of the board and 'Dualist' on the other. The words look like Sanskrit. How professors manage to write intelligibly with chalk is beyond me.
"But just because it is a feeling doesn't mean it should be dismissed. The fact that You, i.e., subject/spirit, feel feelings and The World, i.e., object/matter, does not, is singularly important, and the distinction turns out to be totally necessary. After all, if I pound my finger with a hammer, I feel pain. It's my subjective pain. But if I bang your finger with the hammer, I don't. Your pain is, to me, only an objective event."
The sound of scribbling pens, the flipping of notebook pages. Some students have brought laptops, they type as fast as I talk. Every word I utter is committed to the record like a State of the Union Address.
"Imagine looking at yourself in the mirror," I say, drawing from the old-fashioned example. "In the glass, you are there. You are part of the World, an object. But the 'you' that is doing the viewing of yourself is You, a subject, and you know that because you feel yourself being You. That feeling is consciousness proper."
I make momentary eye contact with Theo, who is sitting towards the center of the room. He's wearing brown-rimmed glasses and a rumpled school sweatshirt. I'm quick to make sure I look at least two other students in the eye to give him the impression he's not being singled-out, that they are all equal to me.
"And the fact that the reflection is not felt as You does not mean that there are two yous, but rather a single you that is being perceived from two different perspectives simultaneously. Which means that the whole mind/body, subject/object division is, in a sense, just a matter of perception and semantics."
Have I lost them? Are they getting this? Are they paying attention? Do they think I'm cool? Am I showing too much leg? Did that kid just look at his watch? How can I know if they're with me?
"So, yes, the Monists are right," I continue. "Brain and mind are one in that they are made of the same physical stuff. But the Dualists are also right, because from that stuff arises a Self which feels separate ― and is separate in the ontological sense, just as color is separate from the objects which reflect it. Color, like the mind, is a kind of hologram projected by the brain, an illusion every bit as natural as it is artificial." I pause. "Questions?"
We are the robots
So, the significance of my findings. The word "significance" is problematic since it is usually associated with utilitarian purpose. I work in so-called "pure" science, meaning non-applied, or more accurately, not yet applied ― which is generally considered to be at the top of the pecking order because its concerns are deeper and more general. Often our results eventually get used for some commercial purpose ― did you know that the GPS in your parents' car actually uses Einsteinian relativity? ― but until then we content ourselves with pure theory. In fact, many of us don't care for application at all. Most practical uses of math go towards economics, towards making big companies bigger, just as chemistry and physics get funneled into hair products, household cleaners and weapons manufacturing.
I find it all unspeakably vulgar.
Contrary to popular belief, science is not really concerned with progress, or with making the world a better place. All that lip service comes from the mouths of politicians ― pure PR. Or from people who confuse science with technology, which is like comparing wine to a corkscrew. Science, real science, is at its best when it behaves like art or poetry. As an end in-itself. A mathematical proof can be as graceful and profound as a Chopin mazurka. Does music need to serve a practical function? Utility simply isn't the point. An elegantly stated theory can capture the magnificent patterns embedded in ocean waves or bird songs or the elliptical arc of galaxies in a single, refined expression. It creates meaning where there is void. It makes the invisible, visible.
"I have a question."
Theo again. In my office again, after class. I'd known it was him before he knocked; heard the signature squeegee-flop of his boots on the hallway tiles.
"What's on your mind, Mr. Pickett?"
"I don't get it."
He slumped into the chair, unwound his olive-green scarf.
"What don't you get?"
"This whole mind/body paradox."
"Well, that's your first mistake. It's a problem, not a paradox."
"What's the difference?"
"One is intractable, the other is unsolveable."
"Whatever."
Bold, this little brat with the chapped lips.
"No, not 'whatever.' The two are opposites. A problem is like a riddle, an apparently illogical scenario with a logical solution. Conversely, a paradox is an apparently logical scenario with an illogical solution. One goes from nonsense to sense, the other goes from sense to nonsense."
"Okay. I just meant, like, that's not the question I had."
His stubble was flecked with little sparks of red.
"Okay, then. What was it?"
"Well, you've been talking about consciousness like it's this totally mechanical phenomenon."
"It is a totally mechanical phenomenon."
"See, that's what I don't get. I understand that the brain is made up of neurons and synapses. I get that. And I get that they process information or whatever. But I don't see how studying microscopic cells tells you anything about immaterial stuff like thoughts and feelings."
The expression on his face registered an authentic concern, the bloated existential horror and attendant pornographic vim of someone recently discovering how babies are made, or that pollution makes sunsets more beautiful. I relished it.
"That's your second mistake," I said. "You're assuming that minds are not causally related to brains. That consciousness is somehow 'above and beyond' material reality. But think about it ― if I give you a drug that activates your melatonin receptors, you'll get sleepy. If I show you a picture of a beautiful woman, you'll get aroused. If I cut out a chunk of your hippocampus, you won't be able to form memories. These are all qualitative, mental phenomena arising from quantative, physical changes in the brain, and we needn't enlist any elan vitale to explain them."
Undaunted: "But how can I have consiousness if the individual cells in my brain aren't themselves conscious?"
"The same way the cogs and dials inside your watch don't themselves tick. The same way hydrogen and oxygen atoms are not themselves wet. It's not just about the constituent elements, Theo, but the way they function together as a system. Most of nature works like this. Consciousness is what we call an emergent property of the working brain, just as solidity emerges from the vibratory motion of molecules."
"I don't know. I really don't think you're right about this."
Suddenly his hair looked yankable.
"You're not alone," I said with a complacent sigh.
"So, but wait. If you're so sure the brain is just a big, fancy machine, then why is the mind/body problem a problem?"
"Because we still don't know how it works."
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
Dreamt of Dad again last night. It's always some variation on the same theme. This time, we're in this bungalow on the water ― a place we'd actually lived in briefly, this little station with a thatched roof off the coast of New Zealand ― and there's this invading tribe of Maori coming upon us. You can see them approaching slowly and silently along the river in long wooden canoes. They just keep getting closer and there is nowhere to go and I am paralyzed with doom. I look everywhere for my dad, desperately, with a bizarre mixture of needing to protect him and to have him protect me. I can never find him. I wake up just as the invaders seize the house ― I see deadly eyes everywhere, through the slats, through the braided twine of the ceiling ― and the terror is so acute, it expels me from the dream.
When I dream about him, he is there again. I'm there now. He's showing me how fast ice melts in boiling water. It's called a phase transition, he says. He's showing me how warped glass refracts light. He singes a mint leaf with his reading glasses to demonstrate, as if it's his own personal secret he's confiding to me.
Now I am wiping the spittle from his lower lip with a tissue. He's dying. Slowly, incrementally. Though it will be four more years of this before he finally goes.
I learn to treat him. It requires a kind of doubling of mind ― to see my dad as both a Him and an It, a conscious Subject and an afflicted Object ― if I am to work with composure as well as compassion. Neurosurgeons typically veil their patient's face during intracranial surgery so as not to associate the tissue they're slicing with the personality it yields, lest they become timid with the knife and risk botching the operation; a caretaker is afforded no such luxury.
My personal way of coping was to see the illness as a system.
His brain deteriorated in roughly the opposite manner at which an infant brain grows. In the womb, the first to appear is the spinal cord, then the brain stem, and it builds its way up from there ― the cerebellum, basal ganglia, the mid-brain, the limbic system, and finally the cortex, which keeps expanding through the first few years of life as the child learns language, mathematics, abstract thought. Conversely, my father's elusive disease attacked the top first and slowly worked its way down. First to go was the ability to plan or think far ahead, to articulate his thoughts properly, followed by memory and the ability to recognize faces and voices, and finally by basic motor functions; eating, walking, swallowing.
His life was a palindrome. One long movement from oblivion to order and back again.
I followed the research closely. Kept up with the trades, attended symposiums. Had to teach myself enough basic neurology if I was to understand what was happening. And as my understanding of the illness grew over time I started to see a literal connection between the biology of the disease and the behavior of its host. The affected neurons actually became emplaqued one by one, "unplugged" from one another, just as his awareness of time and space, cause and effect, his very identity, was corroded day by day like a grimy starter cable.
"Je suis mort."
"What, Dad?"
"I am dead. I've been telling you that for six months."
"What's it like?"
"Better than here."
"Than here?"
"I hear it, too. Don't go."
"I won't."
Like pulling circuits on an electrical grid, lights out on each block until the whole city is shrouded in darkness.
I am still there. I'm there now. I am watching an identity, the one I know better than anyone's, being taken apart piece by piece, cell by cell.
The Confessions of St. Bloom: Book I
So.
Last night I was at this bar/club type-thing downtown with Steph and Miranda, wearing my fabulous and fabulously flattering rainbow-striped skirt and, yes, there were some harmless, potentially lethal substances floating around. So, even if I didn't take that pill, I'm sure I would have been residually high. Which, as you may know, is often much better than the real thing. Anyway, so in no time I'm shaking it, as they say. And all modesty aside, this is something I can do with great skill. So everything is glittering and seems to be in exalted accordance with everything else; it's all just in agreement ― and the feeling is like five drinks mixed with five coffees, just this incredibly smooth, even awareness, both intense and soothing at the same time. And of course part of me is removed from all this, evaluating the experience, wondering about the neuropharmacology, the flow of endorphin, ions shivering down a cylindrical axon, little glutamate crystals sliding across a synaptic gap, and I'm loving the fact that my brain is actually changing this very moment, actual connections are sprouting as I am living and building these memories, and as you yourself are doing just reading about them...
...and it is precisely the moment when I have reached the apex of this high that I am approached by a GUY. A boy, really; maybe college-aged. The worst boys have the best sense of how wasted you are, and we are suckers for it every time, we actually credit them for this ability. And he slithers his way into my private shadowbox, and I'm trying not to notice or give any indication that I have noticed how adorable he is. Seemed. I'm wearing very thick, very high-prescription beer goggles at this point, remember. And his dancing skills are sub-genius, but I'm willing to overlook it because he has this stupidly endearing haircut and a kind of warmly self-conscious expression. Like he has his own little joke going on. And he's very careful not to touch me or stare at my chest, which, if we are being honest here, is not so easy (especially with this neckline) and in fact he's barely looking at me at all! So then I find myself trying to get him to look at me, clearly his goal, and before I know it we are dancing close. So close that my tits are grazing his chest. So close that I can smell the chemical-lime after-scent of his shaving cream, the chalky mint of his deodorant.
By association, these things have become pheromonic. The antiseptics are absorbed by the skin, and when the skin is lubricated by sweat, their smells are unleashed. And I'm inhaling these little airborne molecules of perfumed boysweat and suddenly ― I can't help it ― I start to get that sweet runniness in my place. O, bliss! O, blessed evolution, what you have endowed us with! How lovely the swellings and slicknesses you've slipped into our genome when we weren't looking!
But then something happened.
I was just about to whisper a lascivious suggestion in my underaged companion's ear when I saw someone I thought I knew. A man at the bar was looking at me, an older man. He had a pinstripe suit and a handlebar mustache. Self-consciously retro or obliviously old fashioned? The very question is post-modern, the distinction. He could have been a pedophile with that mustache. A post-modern pedophile. A metaphile.
I can't say exactly why I felt what I did ― probably a paranoid side-effect of the drug, a weird pre-emptive guilt for doing what I had almost commited to doing in the bathroom with this barely-legal pretty boy ― but something about the way the pinstriped stranger looked at me, that curious sidelong glance from across the room struck a dissonant chime of the most acute deja vu.
I sometimes wonder if deja vu is like a worm-hole, a synapse between otherwise uncrossable bodies in memory-space. Are such connection-points conduits of information? Can that information be preserved and tapped?
In any case, I was, how-you-say, spooked. The erotic spell was broken and I left alone.