Instinct Versus Perception

In regards to studies on the brain, neuroscientists will categorize said vessel into five different parts: the parietal lobe, temporal lobe, frontal cortex, amygdala and cerebral cortex. However, what many neuroscientists will fail to elaborate on is the mysterious primordial region of the brain that lies somewhere in between. Rather than illustrate what this part of the brain does, many scientists prefer to spend time studying the reptilia neighborhood; the area that runs almost like a prime meridian over the cerebral cortex (the area of the brain responsible for method memory and thusly, skepticism’s birth place) In the modern human brain, the frontal cortex (the brain’s super-center) is responsible for the activity, working with the temporal lobe just beneath it (the area responsible with”keeping the soul in the body” so to speak) However, the amygdala in modern humans is seemingly overwrought along with the cerebral cortex. When these two work against each other, alongside improper nutrients in the body and thus, mutations of the myelin (the protein that helps to to form the shell of an axon) psychological disorders such as obsessive-compulsive thinking are prevalent in the species. However, what happens when these areas of the brain are shut down due to a delay in the synapses? Delays in synapses occur more commonly when psychedelic drugs are taken, so one might imagine, after smoking cannabis does the primordial region of the brain turn on ala the emergency lights in a building after the usual network of electricity is shut down? And if so, what affects does this have on the brain?

Among the affects of this region being activated, is a pure view of the world sans the intellectual property of perception. This pure view of the world can contrast same as the value and intensity of light. In smoking cannabis, this region can be relaxed with the parietal lobe to give us a clear account of what’s happening around us, not illustrated by the use of our emotions (as it would if the amygdala were being used) while I am no expert, I would be intrigued if the recent study of the woman with no amygdala could be brought to the front page of most science journals, as it seems that tiny portion of the brain is responsible for much of the way we view our world, and one wonders how it can be turned off and on or if we can find ways to naturally keep it in check. Along with this, you imagine as I’ve cited in earlier essays, that we’re raising a species to use the cerebral cortex before identifying with other areas of the brain that are naturally fluid through the birth of  child. By doing said things, the nervous system is not being allowed a chance to introduce itself into the body or grow properly, thus manifesting unhealthy brain patterns later in life (unless music is learned). I feel our species needs to take a different approach to the way it uses the brain, at least in some areas of the world. We must include the primordial region of the brain, and we must allow the brain what it is it wishes to do rather than what it is we wish our society to accomplish. By doing this, not only will we better ourselves, but more importantly, our entire world will benefit.

The novel is a powerful device, the way it digs itself into your psyche, and in this same as an actor experiences another life within the play, so does the reader divulge deeply into another place. In reading Madame Bovary, I feel myself altered under the spell of Flaubert’s prose.

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

When David Lynch’s television series, “Twin Peaks” on April 8, 1990, it was met with success, for its timeless setting (a small town in Washington) its ensemble cast (which included “West Side Story” alums Richard Beymer as Ben Horne and Russ Tamblyn as Dr. Jacoby, as well as Peggy Lipton of “The Mod Squad) and the ringleader of it all, the loveably chipper Agent Dale Cooper played by Kyle MacLachlan.

The story takes place in, what seems from the outside, a simple town in Washington, however, it is not all that it seems and Lynch strikes the proverbial matchstick to the box as we watch an alchemy unlike anything previously aired on television. What viewers might have originally suspected to be a crime drama ala “Law & Order” was spun into the gold of a psychological and science fiction thriller, raising for the enlightened crowd, a series of questions hedged on through out the show’s very rich two seasons.

The series begins with Agent Cooper investigating the death of a high school girl named Laura Palmer (played by Sheryl Lee). It is discovered through Cooper’s interrogation of her peers and the townspeople, that Laura Palmer’s life was not so innocent as one would think. Like most of Lynch’s works, “Twin Peaks” does not feed us on the first layer, but divulges deeply into the ocean of the human condition. Lynch explores life in the small town through a network of story lines.  Lynch also played on duality and the fear of shifting personalities. Through out the series and in the 1992 motion picture, philosophical questions are asked by Lynch to the audience, but only for those who pay mind to listen. There is the question of the White Lodge and the Black Lodge, and the amorphous spirit of BOB. What happens when we let our fears transform us? And what happens if we let love transform us? In season two, this question is answered by the arrivals of Windom Earle and Annie Blackburn. Earle raises fear through out the town with his vile human chess game, while Blackburn brings forth love; in both cases, the characters are struck open and vulnerable. With fear there is the question of an open wound, continually tainted by the pollution of the world, and how those two factors culminate to turn us into a completely different version of ourselves, contorting us and chaining us away from what we most desire. With love, it is more or less the same. With love there is the initial gravitation, then the opening of oneself, the revealing of secrets. In love, we are a heightened version of ourselves, vulnerable but powerful at once, we in turn, becomes the god of our universe, the master of our fate, lest we let fear crawl in. In the series finale we find the stage set just for this. as after falling deeply in love with Annie Blackburn, Cooper becomes a pawn in Earle’s game as his fear of losing Annie while his simultaneous hypnosis at her beauty, leaves him to go on a journey between two worlds.

The series ended with Dale Cooper’s evil doppleganger released into the world, while good Dale remained locked in the Black Lodge. What moved me upon seeing the finale of the series was  Cooper banging his head against the bathroom mirror, the spot of blood at his hairline, his usual chipper temperament polluted by contempt that he had indelibly lost Annie Blackburn to the fates. On a psychological level, one can gauge this is not unlike the man completely torn from the arms of the love of his life. The man goes to the depths of human misery, his melancholia mixing with malice and self-loathing at the way of the world; the fact that Cooper let Killer BOB take his soul is very clearly a metaphorical representation of this.

Lynch’s distillation of small town life in the United States is timeless and modern all at once, because he played off archetypes, not stereotypes. He was able to meld Jungian philosophy flawlessly with Native American legend. While many may be drawn out by the bizarre syntax of the series, there are still the others mesmerized by the neo-fifties cornea, but still others delve deeply into the pupil of the questions “Twin Peaks” asks through out every episode. Whereas other series only comply to thin, visceral demands; “Twin Peaks” has the right people questioning everything, but still bowing down to the magnificence of Dark Matter. Quoting the Log Lady, “The owls are not what they seem…”

The Forbidden Nation

On New Years Day, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines ripped the white from the flag of San Domingo, leaving only the red and the blue, and proclaimed the ground beneath his feet the Republic of Haiti. Dessalines was the protege of Toussaint L’Ouvertre, whom four years earlier was captured by Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother-in-law and wrongly imprisoned in the high altitudes of the Alps and left for dead. The Republic of Haiti’s victory fell short, as in no short time, the British Empire came to the United States and claimed that their chattel had “stolen themselves” and in a process that would renew itself tirelessly for years, the United States and other (White) Patriarch Nations bled the republic dry. In 2004, Jean-Bertrand Astride asked the United States why it was his nation needed to “pay debt”, when his people had been (and always were) free.

Shortly after Astride asked this, said President mysteriously “disappeared” from his nation. The CIA managed to play off a coup d’etat wherein, they kidnapped Astride and positioned him in central Africa. Not six years later, the nation was rocked by a devastating Earthquake and the US and other rich countries staged a united front in order to help Haitians. The Red Cross managed to earn $400 million dollars, however, only $300 million were given to the nation, and to this day, the nation is still faced with the unfortunate circumstances of diseases like cholera, dysentery and poverty while the United States continues to build weapons and fund undue conflicts that only suit their own interests. Whereas, Obama and Donald Trump fight over the validity of Obama’s birth certificate like kittens over yarn, the third world suffers sans aid, and god knows our tax dollars would be much better spent eradicating poverty than funding it.

When Haiti is brought up, the misfortune is meditated on only for a second before people gloss over it, but here is a nation that rose from the ashes and for that, for the bravery it showed, it is still faced with overwhelming turmoil. Why is this so when we, as a species, and we as countries are shirking our responsibility for our fellow man? Not only is it a governmental right to aid other nations, but it is a human right. For the Caucasian to divorce itself from the species and divulge into heavy spells of irresponsibility is a disservice to the rest of the species and one we should ceaselessly work to right.

Is It All That Funny?

With the release of Judd Apatow’s new motion picture, “Bridesmaids”, it is clear that the United States is farther off from feminism than it was before. As any egalitarian observer of our species will duly note, the film depicts common stereotypes of females. Judging from the trailer, we have a codependent woman, we have a trophy wife, we have a haughty aristocrat, we have a dyke and we have a dowdy, “average” and self-depricating woman. What struck me most about the trailer when I saw it in February was how the trophy wife (portrayed by Wendi McLendon-Covey) responds to the question of her new mansion. She says she wouldn’t know what it looks like as, one can assume from the context, she’s too busy being compliant in a variation of sexual positions. The shock value is inherent through the motion picture, distilled perfectly in the scenes where the women are exaggerated as being weak kittens with claws. The main rivalry which occurs between Annie (Wiig) and Helen (Byrne) only plays off the patriarchal society’s need to pit woman against woman and massage the Madonna-Whore complex in viewers. Perhaps the most offensive character is that of Becca (Ellie Kemper) who all too often needs to be involved with a man or is prone to tears. Hers is a weak distillation of the modern woman, and too often the characters seem spineless. I wish I could laugh, however, the mere fact that there are stereotypes being portrayed is irritating. I can say the same for the men in, “The Hangover”, who are put into the same position. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was by James L. Brooks’, “How Do You Know?” it was wrought from the same hands of the man who wrote and directed the far more complex and devastating, “Terms of Endearment”; but in recent years, Brooks’ films are hindered to a far more “simple” audience. The atrocities only ascend further if I call to mind my recent mistake of putting in, “No Strings Attached”, which again, thriving in shock value, did not deliver strong characters but disproportionately dumb characters interacting with each other. I ceased to watch the whole hour of it.

Hollywood these days is far more concerned with how much a film grosses (what care have we the public with that?) rather than if the storyline is developed or complex. Thankfully films such as Terence Malick’s, “The Tree of Life” are available to those in need of expanding the mind rather than inhibiting it. Our films are reflective pools of ourselves, of where we stand in the world, however high-grossing Hollywood studios assume us all to be quite stupid as the recent films seem to be churning out insipid caricatures with thin plot lines. Why examine a stereotype when you could examine the rich detail of a person or a relationship? The sacred relationship that lies within? Why limit it to such a visceral angle?

I look forward to viewing, “The Tree of Life”.

Colonialism was created for a larger, more richer country to establish it’s “roots” in the exotic and foreign landscape of a seemingly, “undiscovered place”; of course, all colonialism managed to do was to assuage the belly of the tropics and the natives living there. Years of tyranny for the natives was only equaled by more years of tyranny brought on by the autocratic dictators assigned to look after the people while the first world nations were seemingly absent. Effectively, citizens of the Caribbean Islands and the continent of Africa went from being enslaved physically to being enslaved fiscally. When in the case of an ambitious citizen such as Nelson Mandela decided to rise up and free his people from the snare of the Western World, he was met by “the most successful coup d’etat in history!” Pulled off by none other than the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, and thus he was imprisoned on Robben Island for 27 years.

You see, the United States fails to make money if there is not a conflict taking place somewhere in the world. Listening to WBEZ this afternoon, I heard the tale of the young revolutionary who in light of the crisis in Egypt was offered funding by the United States, and in the heart of a true revolutionary, denied them on several occasions. The United States, had it become involved in the matter, would have reached a detente through monetary solace which is not solace at all, and the nations would have suckled on the proverbial nipple of the United States until an all too recurring economic backlash were to have taken place.

Perhaps, what is most disturbing in this elixir is the undeniable fact that we as citizens believe we’re not like the other nations in the world due to the weak news circulation failing to tell us what is actually occurring in the world and how Uncle Sam is funding it. There is an arms race taking place, and the United States as well as Russia and China are enabling third world nations as buyers to these dangerous weapons, instead of eradicating poverty and disease (which would be a much more pragmatic use of our finances). It is not impossible to imagine that a nation in the Caribbean or a nation in Africa with an autocratic, theocratic completely totalitarian dictator (not unlike Castro & Sons) could have their hands on these dangerous weapons and use them, too.

What astonishes me about all of this, is how heartless and ruthless the nation is when it comes to making money. Our nation spends trillions funding wars and building weapons, massaging the chaos already prevalent in third world nations, while never stopping once to consider the consequences. Or perhaps my heart is too pure and I cannot open my eyes to see the corruption that exists in the world.

How strange that our nations claim there is, “no money” when our tax dollars are being “lavishly” in Africa to keep totalitarian dictators and the colonist infrastructure in power while in the Middle East, unbeknownst to any of us, there is a large wall being built on the border between Israel and Palestine. How dear of our America to fund civil wars in Africa and the Middle East while god fearing, narrow minded Americans everywhere are being fed nonsense that we don’t have enough money to cure AIDS and Cancer. No, we have the money, America it’s just the trouble that Nick Rockefeller and his boys are playing a huge Risk game across the globe. What you may think are terrorist attacks are actually clients of our beloved nation scaring you into not seeing the truth as it blinks at you.

The most tragic part about all of this, is the fact that we could end poverty tomorrow if our money was being spent properly. Instead of racking up casualties, we could save the people. I’m ashamed to be living in a fascist empire.

Curious Alchemy

All artists must be bon vivants, and not in the thin manner of the word. An artist must portray the attributes of an immortal gratefulness at being lavished, and how this serves to transform the world as they know it. It is through the curiosity of pleasure that we truly see our world for the magic it possesses.

Not having a facebook is so wonderful because it forces me to use my imagination and go write! YES! Also, facebook was only good for one circumstance in my life. I’ll play Dora the Explora and ask if you know when?

Correct!

Writing is so much better when it’s not done in a competitive nature.

I’ve found myself making connections between people and how they all relate back to myself. It’s a most fascinating game I play in my free time, I’ve yet to create a diagram of all the branches, but it shouldn’t be too far off. Why I say this, is because Gustave Flaubert was one of George Sand’s confidantes and I’ve been fascinated by her since the time I first heard her name brought up in one of my classes.  I applied for a hold on a biography about her life entitled Naked in the Marketplace which sounds like a biography title she’d adore. I’ve been chewing on the idea of rewriting her and Chopin’s affair and blending it with this other story I’ve been writing, updating and renovating it. I plan on writing a biography or two in my lifetime as well, so if I could have undivided access to both their lives I would be enamored. Their chemistry is still palpable through the information I’ve discovered, and of course, it’s translated timelessly in Chopin’s nocturnes.

I never tire of history.