I want to update my blog but my eyes are sore and even while typing this sentence my mind wandered twelve times.  Where to?  No idea.  I will be crawling into bed when I finish this.  So I have here a quote from Juxtapoz, a magazine I discovered in Border’s yesterday.  (I was enticed by the provactive cover art).  Here it is:

“The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.”

Beautiful, angry, heart wrenching, strange, perverted, sexy, exhausting, painful, terrifying… time to go make some of my own.

I’m reading 2007’s The Best American Nonrequired Reading, a collection of (mostly) short fiction chosen by Dave Eggers’s 826 Valencia students. Included with the stories are random lists of silly stuffs collected from an assortment of magazines published throughout the past year. Best American Six-Word Memoirs, Best American Personals from Around the World, Best American Failed Televsion Pilots, Best American New Animal Plagues. I could pick any one of those topics to write about (Best American Creationist Explanations for the World’s Natural Wonders perhaps?) but I choose Best American New Words of 2006- because 30Rock is on and I need to make this snappy.

I’ve heard of some of these words (avian influenza? That’s sooooo 2005). But a lot of these are new (agroterrorism?). I should keep tabs with urban dictionary to up my street cred. Out of the 36 or so words, I was surprised with how many related to sex and (trying) to be sexy. Ah, the times we live in. And we can see it all in the pages of The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Or Merriam-Webster’s.  I don’t need Gawker anymore.

abdominoplasty- a surgical operation involving the removal of excess flesh from the abdomen

bahookie- a person’s buttocks

celebutante- a celebrity who is well known in fashionable society

mesotherapy- (in cosmetic surgery) a procedure in which multiple tiny injections of pharmaceuticals, vitamins, etc., are delivered into the mesodermal layer of tissue under the skin, to promote the loss of fat or cellulite

polamory- the state or practice of having more than one romantic relationship at a time

qigong- an ancient Chinese healing art involving meditation controlled breathing, and movement exercises

therapize or therapise- subject to psychological therapy

unibrow- a single continuous brow resulting from the growing together of eyebrows

Yogalates- fitness routine that combines Pilates exercises with the postures and breathing techniques of yoga

I was reading the latest issue of the New York Times Book Review when I came across this review of Aram Saroyan’s collection of minimalist poetry. Minimalist poetry? Hmph. Intrigued, though skeptical, because I know how I feel about minimalist writing (ick) but I think poetry is sometimes pretty. So I read on.

lighght

A one-word poem! What? My brain instantly wanted to reject this. You can’t even say this word. And it won Aram Saroyan $$$ from the National Endowment for the Arts. WTF? There are brilliant, real writers, who create beautiful prose while juggling plot, characters, setting, theme! This dude just inserted two extra letters into a word! You can only look at it on the page! I like to hear the beauty of the words, the rhythm as it rolls of the tongue, thank you very much!

My indignation egged me on and I learned that he didn’t write all one-word poems. Some were three or five or seven words long, some the same word or two repeating themselves 1, 568 times. There’s one that’s an equation with words.

Then I read this one:

whistling in the street a car turning in the room ticking

For reasons I certainly don’t understand, I kept repeating whistling turning ticking. Whistling turning ticking. My ears, I guess, liked the sound of those words and how, in that one loopy sentence a story starts to emerge.

And:

This red hood holds the mood, keeps my eye happy.

Oh…happy. I think I’m getting it. Especially when I read that Aram Saroyan was probably smoking pot when he wrote these poems. He’s sitting in this dumpy, rusty red Volvo, staring out the windshield and listening to the birds tweet tweet and suddenly! in his smoke-addled brain he sees this rusty red as the brightest and most red red in the world! And he is happy.

In conclusion, I have no idea how I feel about these crazy word/poem/sentence things. Curious, that’s for sure, wannabe wordsmith that I am. I’ll have to buy the book and then decide.

Utilitarianism: an ethical philosophy that champions the welfare of the majority over the individual.

There is an article in the most recent issue of Scientific American Mind titled: “When Morality is Hard to Like: How do we juggle evidence and emotions to make a moral decision.”

Scientists have located an area of the brain that has an impact on how we make moral decisions. There have been several studies involving people with damage to an area of the brain in the prefrontal cortex located above our eye sockets (technically called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex or VMPFC). In particular, when posed questions involving “emotionally charged, high-ambiguity situations” these people would answer in a particular utilitarian way.

An example: “If you could save five people waiting on a train platform from death by pushing one person off the platform in front of a moving train, would you do it?” Of course you would effectively kill the person you pushed off. But the people with damage to the VMPFC answered yes more often than people who had no damage or had damage in other regions of the brain.

What exactly is happening here? The VMPFC region plays a roll in “prosocial sentiments (which) include guilt, compassion and empathy, and they emerge when states such as sadness and affiliations…are integrated with other mechanisms mediated by anterior sectors of the VMPFC…” So when posed moral questions that would heighten emotions, (like pushing someone off a train platform) the damage to the brain would reduce the sway of potential inhibiters like guilt and sadness to enable the person to use “coldhearted reasoning” in forming their decision.

Whoa…so a bruise on my brain could determine how I perceive a particular moral situation?

What fascinates me most about this article is how important a role the brain plays in governing emotion, and, by extension, moral reasoning. We think of emotions in a very romantic way, as something wild and loose and untamable. They only evidence of them, is their impact on the physical body: tears, a red face, palpitating heart, a jaw drop. They are our Dark Matter, these unseen things that hold such a power over our own personal universes. But now, with advanced technologies like MRI scans, we can see what our brain actually does when we feel a certain way. Our emotions are very much based in our physical being, they are not beyond that realm at all! And we know now that certain parts of the brain, like the limbic system, play a large role in governing our emotions. So when these particular regions of our brain are damaged we become utilitarians.

Ok, that’s not necessarily true. But…

it provokes the question how we make moral decisions. To what extent is (or should be) the role of emotions in governing a moral decision? How do emotions interplay with the “coldhearted” reasoning that form a person’s morality?

What if I answered “no” when asked if I would push a person off a train platform to save five people. And then I walk out my door and get hit by a car. I survive just fine but my VMPFC is damaged and now, when posed that question, I answer yes. To save five people? Sure, I’d push someone in front of a moving train. Majority rules. Could this switch signify a whole shift in my morality, or is it a case-by-case basis?

These philosophical thought puzzles hint at a much deeper question: how much of myself, my unique personality is controlled by a brain that, in an instant of squealing brakes, could irrevocably change.

That’s one huge bleep! of a problem. One that I’m struggling with as I read V, Thomas Pynchon’s first novel.

Progress is slow, you can’t zoom through pages expecting a story to bite you in the ass- because it won’t. New characters popping up, jumbled in period references and time jumps from 1890s Egypt to Italy to contemporary New York. In the sewers hunting alligators? Psychodontia? As a Pynchon-worshipper said: “somewhere he is giggling, thinking of people who try to find plot.” And how did he describe his own plots? Something about an octopus.

He’s the crazy man with wild hair and a sadistic glint in his eye that’ll push you off a cliff into a churning ocean. It’s scary the plummet, the shock of the cold, salt in your mouth, stinging your eye. Flail faster and faster but that’s a sure way to drown yourself. Slow down and you get your bearings. Breathe and look around. It’s actually quite pretty all the fishes and things: oysters, coral, sea urchins, star fish, sea horses all in vibrant rainbow colors; a sting ray, a barracuda! sneaks up on you but shhh… they’ll drift on. Just tread along and watch for those beautiful colors that appear on every page. The slick, wriggling octopus at the bottom doesn’t matter much anyway.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, science fiction author Kilgore Trout (and Vonnegut alter-ego) writes a novel that proclaims all humanity is really robots. 

            Robots?           

Crazy Dwayne Hoover, at the mercy of his “bad chemicals” speed reads Trout’s novel.  It tells him he is the only real person, the only being with free will.  Everyone else is a robot.  His bad chemicals think this is very convincing and Dwayne Hoover proceeds on a rampage- kicking the shit out of his transvestite son, Bunny, a minimalist artist, an author, his lover, other townspeople.  Those bad chemicals even tell him to bite off Trout’s finger.

If only those bad chemicals were countered with a heavy dose of oxytocin, mayhaps Trout would still have his finger.  In one of Seed’s science blogs entitled “Your Mama’s Soul Doesn’t Love You” the blogger discusses an article that appeared in the latest issue of BioEssays.  “Emotions like love are an outcome of chemistry, and can’t be separated from our meaty natures.”  He illustrates this by a discussion of the chemical, oxytocin, which causes lactation and labor in women but also encourages “nurturing and the measurable symptoms of affection, while blocking it weakens social behavior.”  This has been shown through experiments with mice and sheep but we must look for an indication of this in people (because such experiments on people would be denounced as “inhumane”).  We find it in people with autism.  These socially challenged typically have reduced oxytocin levels BUT (and this is where it gets real interesting) is it the chemical, the oxtyocin, causing the “diminished sociability” or is it their social behavior causing the below-normal levels of oxtyocin? Either way, something is at work here, whether it is our internal wiring or external environment. 

Perhaps Kilgore Trout was on to something… 

Look at Dwayne Hoover.  He is clearly crazy- he lashes out at his friend/ co-worker, verbally assaults is lover/secretary, thinks the ground is melting at his feet and is subjected to a bout of echolalia.   (This is before his rampage).  The seeds of craziness could well have been planted before all this happens.  Mayhaps something in Midland City was encouraging his bad chemicals.  Was he sick of his Pontiac dealership, his restaurant franchises?  Had he simply not come to terms with his wife gulping Drano?  Poor Dwayen Hoover- he was just a white, middle-aged car dealership owner at the mercy of his bad chemicals.  So when he read Trout’s book, he probably just got…confused.    The bad chemicals were reacting to an external stimulus and this is what made him think he had free will when, in fact, he is at the mercy of his chemicals.  This is what caused that intense emotion rage that ended with a few people knocked out and a future prizing-winning author sans one finger.   If only Dwayne Hoover had popped some oxytocin.  At the very least it would have simmered his bad chemicals and instead of rampaging, he would have sat and listened to Bunny tickle the ivories instead of smashing his face into the piano.  Mayhaps he would have looked on Bunny with fatherly love and affection and embraced him with a warm, good chemical-induced “I love you.” 

A Comment: “Who we are is inseparable from what we are, and we’re all complicated conglomerations of intricate biochemistry with a long, long history of natural change, and we should revel in that.” 

Revel, Dwayne Hoover.  Revel.  This is who you are. 

Your emotions, those deep, profound, earth-shaking emotions, like rage, anger, lust, love, so complex that you think it could only be the soul, spirit, god- are really products of chemicals bubbling and secreting through our systems.  Mayhaps we are robots as Kilgore Trout suggests. Complex robots built of tissues and blood and neurons and hormones instead of hard-wiring and metal. 

 We squishy robots need our oxytocin.

Get your Spry on!

Spry Magazine has officially launched! Check it out here.

I went to the Printer’s Row Book Fair a couple Saturdays ago. And my, what a site to behold. From a half block away, we (myself, Chris, and Anthony) saw the tops of white tents. Ah, the books! And little did I know just how many books, how many tents, how many blocks this book fair spanned!

Once we were on the street of the book fair, my brain fizzled. It couldn’t process the amount of stuff that lined the street! So many tents with shelves packed with so many titles, how could I find anything! And then the people! They were scattered around, some just hovering in front of a certain shelves, others meandering with their heavy, book-filled bags. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I have a similar feeling when I walk into Macy’s. The size of the place alone is daunting and then it’s a barrage of stuff, so much pretty stuff, that to actually look for anything with any degree of seriousness is absurd.

The large, white-topped tents stood in the street, which were mostly bookstores, but on the periphery were small vendors and, I supposed, individuals offloading their collections. Some shelves were clearly organized by section, with nice little signs saying “fiction” or “history.” Other vendors were just a mash of whatever. James Joyce to Albert Camus in French to the newest Dean Koontz title to some travel book on Maylasia all heaped on the same shelf.

Realizing that it was impossible for anyone to find anything, I put the thought of looking for a specific book (and author) out of my head. I stopped circling the same few shelves like a headless chicken. I relaxed, breathed in the fresh, downtown Chicago air and browsed the many titles. Current fiction to nonfiction to first additions to tomes of you name it to children’s books, even posters and vintage movie magazines.

I gave myself up to the sheer enjoyment of being around books. Of just browsing, maybe you’ll happen across a new author or an old love, or that whimsical “oh my!” feeling when a title just leaps out at you and you rip it off the shelf and think “I have to buy this- now!” Thats my favorite.

I thought we were making good time, not lingering too long in any one section (unless the “oh my!” feeling struck.) I noticed the sun was setting and the breeze picked up, which caused me to shiver a little in my t-shirt. But I would conquer this book fair! Two hours later, my bag was weighing my shoulder down, the price of my fabulous finds, and Chris was running out of money (he got a little nutso buying up the Mars books). And those tents stretched for miles yet! I was defeated.

So, off for some nourishment, pizza and a Root Beer float, and now home to stay up all night reading my new babies.

I was putzing around the Internet one day at work and decided to visit The Atlantic Monthly website. There, I stumbled across the Politics Host who posed a couple questions about Sandra Tsing Loh’s article from the March 2007 issue “She’s Just not into You: Women Prefer Food to Sex with Their Husbands- and That’s OK.” Loh’s article supported Joan Sewell’s book I’d Rather Eat Chocolate about how it is really OK that women have low libidos.

One of the questions posed was “is something amiss when a woman would rather eat chocolate than respond to her husband’s advances?” My initial instinct was an indignant hellz yes! I adore chocolate as much as the next girl, but better than sex?

I’m unmarried and so know very little of what makes a marriage (besides what I’ve observed from my parents) but to a horny twenty-something, it’s so strange to think that anyone (male or female) could have a low libido. Especially in a society that nurtures such shows as “Sex and the City” and “Desperate Housewives” and where Viagra flows like water.

But women aren’t the only ones that suffer from low libidos. One response to the politics host came from Essexgirl. She tells that she is a trim, successful woman of 51 and still enjoys sex. But her husband, seven years her senior, will play video games for six or seven hours. “Where is the companionship in looking at the back of someone’s head while they stare at the computer screen every night?” she asks. I wondered if there was a time in Essexgirl’s marriage when they couldn’t keep there hands off each other, when in a moment of frenzied passion they’d disappear in a pantry for several pleasurable minutes. If there was such a time, what happened? Is this what love has to look forward to after ten, 20, 30 years?

This deeply saddened me. It was an assault to my own romantic, and now I started to think naive, sensibilities. Those being when you find someone you deeply care for, sex just happens. And not just wild lovemaking (although that is fun) but simple affection: in casual touches, a hand brushing the lower back, a neck rub, snuggling together on the couch. A quick kiss. Though there may be fights and times when you can just not be together for one reason or another, the desire to touch, to be together, never disappears. And now am I to expect that come a certain age, all the magic and passion of that love dies away and my husband will forsake me in favor of a video game?

“Yes, of course there is something amiss!” I wanted to shout. Essexgirl hit on something when she spoke of companionship. I thought of my parents, married 25 years, or my grandparents married 50. They’re all completely weird (and for my own mental health choose to believe they don’t have sex anymore), but I see them hold hands or my father kiss my mother’s forehead. Though this isn’t the clothes-ripping lust of someone in their twenties, they illustrate an affection that is softer but more enduring.

I wondered, then, what specifically Sewell and Loh meant by “low libido.” Is it an aversion to sex in favor of the hand-holding type affection? Or is it touch altogether? Do women not even want that anymore?

I was mourning my passionless future when another post gave me a flicker of hope. One married woman wrote: “Sex is about loving, transcendent interplay between two people who are stark raving crazy about each other. Refusing sex is only the tip of the iceberg of refusals to share oneself with your partner, to gives oneself from the heart.” It’s true, isn’t it? If your partner spends the majority of his waking hours involved with a computer game, it goes beyond just sex. Marriage is supposed to be about sharing your life with someone, being attuned to the other person’s needs, desires, and so on. Forsaking the world your partner inhabits in favor of a make-believe, cyber universe is the same as saying your partner’s needs and desires don’t matter.

What happens through the course of a marriage I have no idea because I haven’t experienced that. But it seems to me, from my own relationship experience, that when you find yourself shrinking away from the touch of your partner, there’s a problem rippling beneath the surface. I haven’t read Loh’s article or Joan Sewell’s book so I don’t know their arguments for asserting that so many (American) women have low libidos and why this is an OK, even a positive thing. Regardless, a life in love without a physical manifestation of that love, from simple affection to steamy sex, is no life at all.

I’ll take sex over chocolate.

“This book is just…ah…her prose…it’s..it’s… just beautiful,” my normally articulate, witty friend Jessica was reduced to nonsensical sighs as she struggled for the right words to describe Laura Argiri’s God in Flight.

“You have to read it,” she concluded, thrusting me the 478-page novel with a photograph taken by Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden on the cover. A shot of a naked man, taken in profile, his head on his knees, sitting on a jagged cliff. The blur of mountains in the background. The write-up called the book a “brilliantly realized story of dangerous love between a professor and a student at Yale University in the 1880s’.” Intriguing. Dangerous love? That certainly appealed to my romantic side. But this was no simple, bodice-ripping romance. The love was between two men, Simion Satterwhite the sharp student, and the artist and Greek professor, Doriskos Klionarios.

The subject matter itself was captivating. A love story between two men set in Victorian New England. But Jessica was right, it’s her prose that grabs you. From the beginning, with the title of her first chapter, Laura Argiri sucked me in. “A Slap on the Jaw.” It gave the first inkling of tension that flowed through the book. Sometime it was palpable and I felt my heart tightening with each sentence and my fingers gripped the pages as if I was dangling from the edge of a cliff. From the slow evolution of Doriskos’s and Simion’s relationship to the internal and external pains that follows each man in their own lives, Laura Argiri showed intelligent and flawed human beings that throughout the novel struggled to understand not only their own place in a puritanical world but what it means to love.

As an 18 year-old idealistic, wannabe writer this book blew my mind. If only I could write with such depth! And such passion! At the same time, too, I realized I knew nothing of love except these silly, adolescent romances I concocted in my mind. But The God in Flight showed me a glimmer of what love is, at its most beautiful and passionate and most ugly and destructive.

Re-reading The God in Flight now, I am still moved by this vivid world filled with such texture you think you can touch it, filled with characters you fall in love with and others you hate. Prose that makes your jaw drop. The novel has proved more inspiring to me and as I continue to write, I hope to one day create something that has such feeling that it makes the reader think their heart is being squeezed.

Since I can think of no better way to end this entry, I will leave it in the words of Laura Argiri:

“Lovemaking is the consolation for living in the body just as art is the consolation for living in the world.”