Current Animal: Coyote

Been looking at different objects in the room, trying to focus on two at the same time. Trying to see it all at once. Trying to have visual units in my mind that are less separated. Hoping to make it all feel more connected from the ground up. The soil of the senses to the flowers of the mind. Coyotes like to beam their identity over large swaths of the world. They beam it at each other, and at the dens they roost in, the fields they run, the rabbits they spy. There was an old Coyote who I liked to say, "Don't blame me, I am what I see!" Sometimes when we run together, each of us is everyone else, so that everyone's a little bit different, because each lacks himself. When you make a catch, you're back to you, and you want to make sure you get a good portion of it. It's strange how no matter who you become over the course of the day, at the moment you wake up you are only yourself.

Head Fake

The other night I had a headache. It was on the bad side of fun, but the good side of incapacitating. It didn't keep me up. Tremble the cat woke me up at 7ish the next morning and the headache was monstrous. It was nearby train tracks. It was bad conversation that you can't even hear but you know it's bad. It made movement offensive. It made chairs defensive. I did a visualization trick that I've used to wipe out past headaches, but no dice this time. I massaged my temples and did some energy work, which didn't kill it, but was enough to get me back to sleep.

When I woke up it was Tylenol Time. My understanding of pain-killers is that they shoot the messenger, not the message. Whatever was a problem is still a problem, but at least now you can't feel it. With that in mind, I told my body to try and work out whatever issues it was having while I blocked the pain with drugs. Shook out two pills, and already had the water ready to go (had been sipping since the night before). As I was about to take the first, I noticed my headache slipping away. I've noticed that with other drugs too- sometimes they hit you just before they hit you.

Just for kicks, I faked taking the pills to see what would happen. I picked up the first, pretended to swallow it, then repeated the process for the second pill. The headache was gone in 5 minutes. It didn't come back. The pills are still on the table.

The placebo effect is not something restricted to the control group of clinical trials. It happens every time your body expects something and reacts accordingly. More than a few sparrows and giraffes have trouble opening their noses to certain ideas about this. People can get drunk, pass out, even throw up from non-alcoholic beer as long as they think it's alcoholic. People on strong medications often develop side-effects not associated with the med (the "nocebo" effect). One person even cured his real measles by pretending to fling them off with a fake magic wand. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here. All I'm saying is that I got the effects of Tylenol by pretending to take it. I kept the song and dance, I just took out the actual drug. Drugs work, but it's not just chemistry- if it is then what the hell is up with the guy throwing up in the trash can after 5 O'douls? Bodies know how to heal themselves, they just need to be convinced that this is the time and place, and drugs can help with that. (So can other things.)

There's more to say about this, but I'll leave it at that for now. Rock over London. Rock home Chicago. Avocados: where would you be without them?

The Orphanage

On the way there, I pointed out a billboard for a new history channel show about life after humans. It seems the history channel has become expert at the important skill of remembering the future. The guy driving- I wish I could remember his name- said, "It's like we're over ourselves. We're ready for the next thing." We made jokes about how the human condition has been done, played, the horse is dead- you can show reruns, but there's no need to keep beating it.

Horse aside: A lot of expressions were once something you might say literally in the context from which it came. What I want to know is, was there ever a time when someone might say, "You're wasting your energy Jim, that horse is dead." When is it a good use of energy to beat a live horse? This isn't an animal rights thing, I'm just confused. I guess it could be about horse racing. Maybe it's such a good expression, that after the first time someone said it, it's rise to idiomatic stardom was unstoppable. I wonder if it will fade as horses occupy less time in the media and our minds. A lot of their camera time came from being "noble steeds," but these days are steeds are made of metal, eat gasoline intead of hay, go really fast, and usually don't get named by their owners. So what's happened to the cowboy? I'm not sure, but I'll say this: Last night I watched a few hands of professional poker. Cowboys outnumbered non-cowboys 3.5 to 2.5 (one guy had a mixed aesthetic).

We arrived at the Orphanage. It's capitalized, because it's not actually a place where parentless children eat porridge and are in bed by 8. It's a place on the south side of Chicago where on Sundays, you can pay $10 at the door and then spend the rest of the night enjoying amateur bands and yummy, mostly vegan food. A girl tossing a flag around, sometimes to the music, sometimes to her own beat, says "Welcome to the Orphanage," when you come in. The bands I saw were talented and expessive. The dance floor was generally occupied by just 1 or 2 people, but they all put on great shows. The first dancer was a fantastic hula-hooper. She had a fluidity and trust with the hoop that reminded me of some pairs of swing dancers I've seen. Next up was an older guy in a mostly young crowd. He was also the only dark-skinned black person there. He had been sitting alone on one side of the room until he got up to dance. He boogied his heart out, loving the music and the attention. If you'd tweaked the context a little- made him your uncle, made it your high school, tinged the environment with more negative judgement- it could have been a cringe-worthy affair. But it was a relaxed place that offered a respite from the snerks and sneers of some other worlds. I heard somewhere that your body needs waking rest in addition to sleep. The Orphanage rested a part of me that I can't put my finger on, but was probably working overtime. Humans have been mapped over and over, but some muscles you don't know about until they relax.

Beezlehop and Sneezlepop

Beezlehop and Sneezlepop
Walked into a something shop
"Have you any Nothing?" Beezlehop asked the shopkeep
"There's no Nothing at the Something Shop," she replied, fast asleep.
An eavesdropping salamander said "I've had nothing for days.
If something's what you want, perhaps we can make a trade."
The salamander all is life never had a better day,
He kept things green and purple, and gave the rest away.
Beezlehop and Sneezlepop walked away with nothing.
Free from all the silly things over which they'd interacted.
Free from everything that had kept their love distracted.

MPD

There are intelligent and knowledgable people who doubt the very existence of something we can define as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). To them, MPD is a fake. The line drawn around it is incorrect. It doesn’t actually follow the observed energy flows. The patterns that are gathered up disperse at the slightest thing in all different directions.

If I recall correctly, it has little neural consistency- multiple identities welcome various brains, and the neuroanatomists of the world have been unable to draw a picture of what your brain looks like when there is more than one person in there. Furthermore, some people who have it seem to defiantly challenge sense. They have 1000 personalities. One of them’s a duck. Two are Abe Lincoln. As they go through their day, their minds are like the House of Commons on a bad day with some comic book characters thrown in. You could make a good case for not bothering with the specific symptoms, and just calling them crazy.

To me, MPD is real enough, it’s just more mind than body. To some, perhaps including some of the aforementioned neuroanatomists, minds are less real than bodies. I think that focus has helped advance Western medicine by leaps and bounds, but it is time to start filling in that medical blind spot called the mind. (That might be a little harsh, but remember, among neurologists, Oliver Sacks is the exception, not the rule.) Many physical issues merely reflect unsolved mental problems, as the body tries to cope with clashing instructions from the mind. Perhaps MPD is the mental reflection of a spiritual crisis. The soul needs to express itself, and if the mind won’t let it, there will be tension, friction, a buildup of energy. One can only sustain so much. Clouds burst, dams collapse, or maybe drainage systems are installed or some of the flow is rerouted, perhaps into an alternate personality.

MPD is an extreme case- most people find less jarring ways to be more fully themselves (and that issue is virtually universal among humans). Those who define these things, and those who use those definitions may do better to call MPD a solution, not a problem. The problem is whatever required a second personality to solve. Whatever therapies are used should look toward finding a solution that harmonizes better with the person and the world around them.

What did we look like to the gemsbok?

The gemsbok believe in nothing. They shoo each other away with their horns. They play the piano while the sun sets. When the sun sets on the gemsbok it leaves them in a pitch black African night. There is nothing but darkness and the wishes of the wind and the light step of predators, and the gemsbok believe in nothing.
Some years ago I was at the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side with Jarnow the Penguin. We walked amongst the African mammals. Speaking at and to them. A few creatures hanging out and acting natural in their natural habitat. A day in the life. The monkeys permanently playful and relaxed. The lions and tigers never asleep.
We reached the gemsbok. They are savannah mammals similar to oryx and gazelles, with long horns that could spell the end of anyone who became acquainted with them. All the other animals had been angled toward each other. They were interacting in one way or another. The gemsbok were different. They stood in formation with the middle one in front, and the other four fanning behind. They stood straight ahead looking out the glass like they could see us. Sentry to the painted grasslands behind them, all day watching humans walk over, look at them, make noises muffled by the glass, and walk away. Jarnow said: “We are gemsbok. We believe in nothing.”

Plantalk

It’s good to commune with planty things. They sing wallows at your knees. They snangle to the breeze. They gobble up the sun and dance in the rain. They help out bees and live on trees. They know shit. In our world of synthetic caves where we dwell, eating honey and pawing at salmon, we have more control over the elements we experience, and our bodies are keeping an eye out for dinosaurs (I know I know) and staking out territories and mates. Sure our minds are incomparably different from the other creatures but our bodies are not so different. There are a few unique physical attributes of the human being. Upright, good at throwing, etc. Those made it advantageous to become super smart over the next however many thousands of years. The platypus’ situation back in primordial times made it advantageous to be an egg-laying mammal with a duck bill and a poison foot. All in all I like our deal better, though I can think of more than a few dicey situations that would have been solved by a poison foot.

Our bodies may know flora and fauna in ways minds don't. To minds, poison feet belong in punchlines and comic books. Plants supposedly slurp up CO2 and produce O2. I guess that makes them pretty C removers. Bodies ain’t so wordy-termy-mathy. Human bodies have relationships to the other beings that may be disfigured by over-labeling. That doesn’t matter as long as you can put those words in the laundry hamper long enough to talk. That’s a good way to wash off potentially infectious meanings. It's enjoyable maintenance

Current animal: Bear

I am a bear.

I wander my heated cave, eating raw honey and talking to the cat. I do stuff with my mind and fingers. I dream big. Inside I am awake, but outside I sleep, and I dream of life in front of a podium and infinite confetti. Outside I am awake, but inside I sleep, and I form a new animal to be when I find the pattern to this labyrinth. The bear thing appeals to me, and it's found a home in my solar plexus, but the inner shapeshifter calls, and if I'm going to sprout wings I ought to find a more aerodynamic body.

To bear or not to bear. I can't bear it. Bear with me. It's hibernation in high bear nation. It's too bad our friend was eaten by bears. Bear in mind that we will need 14 ball bearings to cross the bearing strait. Tonight on Jay Leno: Dennis Kucinich (applause) and... a bear (applause) musical guest, Young MC. Hey, nice goatee. Actually it's a beard. Hey nice goat. Actually, it's a bear.

For those of you considering bearing, hopefully this has given you a sense of what it's like. For those of you who are or have been bears, you know just what I mean. Even if you've been eaten by bears in the past, maybe this could give you perspective of what it was like for the bear. I'm not sure where it's coming from, but this cave has wifi, so holler at your bear!