Amy

I know Amy from the university. She is drop-dead gorgeous, even though she wears no make-up and dresses down in black jeans, torn sweatshirts and biker boots. She kinda resembles Mary Louise Parker ..only not so baby-faced. I really enjoy talking with her ..she has crazy-off-center ideas. She’s an honors-student majoring in chemistry. I ran into her the other night at the springs. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. She was cheerful but in trouble. The university had expelled her, her fiancé bailed on her and the police were considering charges against her. What charges ..? Something about being an accessory in the death of her roommate. I’m like, WTF ..? She goes on to tell me there wasn’t a day that went by she didn’t hear her roommate talk about committing suicide. I guess Amy didn’t take her seriously after hearing this for like, seven months. She borrowed a gun from her fiancé and brought it home. Her roommate shot herself the next day. Amy shows no remorse. She did not think her roommate would do it “I mean, if she was really going to do it she’d have done it already.” I’m stunned ..a hundred things run through my head. Things like, you get help for people in distress, not a gun. Now I feel repelled, telling myself I could have expected something like this from someone like her. However, when I look a little closer, what I’m really doing is re-interpreting my experiences, and some of her outrageous, but perfectly innocent remarks ..to fit this unforeseeably tragic turn of events.

Paul

Paul was classified mentally unfit for service during the Vietnam war. He wasn’t crazy, nor did he try to act crazy ..it’s just that LSD mimics the effects of psychosis.That action persists even after the drug has left the system ..especially among frequent users. Fortunately, most of them know the difference, at least Paul did. There was a small celebration at his apartment (he’d been sweating his possible induction for weeks). After that, I lost track of him. Years later, while I was moving to Santa Barbara, I noticed a banana plantation growing on a hillside above highway 101. My puny brain told me that bananas don’t grow in the US. Then I learned that Paul had found a micro-climate where they did. With the help of a professor of wine-making at UC Davis, he started a business growing specialty bananas for high-end markets, as well as regular bananas for times when local supplies ran short. Not bad for a mentally unfit hippie. Actually, I did not make the connection between Paul and the plantation right away. I read about it in the paper the next day ..and saw a picture of him standing inside the plantation. Blew me away. I dropped by after surfing one day and met the professor’s daughter ..who told me that I had just missed Paul. She said that Paul sold his interest in the place a week before ..then disappeared. They couldn’t tell me where he went, but then they said ..well, that’s just like Paul now, isn’t it.

LaLonnie

LaLonnie likes to call me a snake oil salesman. He tells me that psychology is nothing more than a pseudo-science. I agree with him, a lot of claims don’t have much merit ..but then, I like to point out that there are many that do. He just looks at me with disdain and dismisses me as a ‘flat-lander’. I can only guess what that means. This time I took it as my cue to duck out ..I had no interest in sticking around to watch his slide show at Dennis’. Dennis invited me over earlier going: “hey man, you gotta’ come see this.”

Weeks go by then, out of the blue, I get a call from the psychiatric unit of Long Beach Memorial. LaLonnie is asking for me. They tell me he’s sedated (1,200 mg of Thorazine) and I can come visit him now. I’m shocked. I had no idea. I look back for signs but I really don't know him well. I tell the nurse I had no idea ..and that I’m not his therapist. She says that’s OK, he’s already seen a therapist ..he’s asking for a friend. I tell her I think he’s asking for someone else, and I’m about to give her Dennis’ number, when she says no, he specifically asked for me. I call Dennis anyway, saying: “hey man, you gotta’ come see this.”

LaLonnie is sitting in his room, definitely sedated. I go “Hey LaLonnie, what brings you here?” His speech is measured but slurred. He tells me a police car brought him here. “OK, what were you doing when the police car brought you here?” “The first time?” he asks. “Yeah, the first time.” “S-s-standing in front of my house, givin’ way books.” “You mean the police came because you were giving away books?” “Nooo, of course not ..that wouldn’t make sense, would it?” “OK, why did the police come?” He thinks about it for a minute and says: “Oh, the neighbors called ’em cuz’ of a disturrbance.” It turns out, he was shouting at anyone who took a book, as well as anyone who didn’t take a book ..either way ..they were idiots. “So, what did the police do?” “They told me to s-stop sh-sh-shouting and go back inside the house.” “OK, what were you doing the next time the police arrived ?” “Throwin’ money out in the s-s-streeet.” “I see, was it your money?” (No, it was his aunt’s money, he’s in charge of her estate). “What did they do this time?” “they told me I better get back inside the house and s-s-stop throwin’ money in’ the streeet, and ..hey, I already explain’d alla’dissh to m-my attoorney, why’m’ I talking about it again? N-n-not to talk ’bout this with anybody.” “OK, so ..tell me what you were doing the next time the police arrived?” “Pulling f-f-furniture out on the lawn.” This time his neighbors stopped by to ask if he was having a yard sale. He told them no, it was perfectly good furniture .. he was taking it out of the house to protect it. Protect it from what, they asked. “A fire” he said. What fire, they asked. “The fire I’m going to light to burn the house down.” I'm like ..WTF LaLonnie (!?) He goes: “Oh m-m-man, I told ’em I was gonna’ build it back up again, only this time with b-b-better mat’rials, like t-t-titanium and p-pre-stressed concreete ..that way it will last hundr’ds of thous’nds of years, instead of just two or three d-d-decades.

He’s tired and it turns out the real reason he called was to get someone to fetch his address book. Dennis and I go. The house (which also belongs to his aunt) looks normal from the outside ..but it looks like squalor on the inside. There are piles of dishes, caked with hardened food, everywhere. Dennis goes looking for the address book while I poke around. The other rooms look about the same. Back at the hospital, Dennis asks about things at home. LaLonnie explains he’s working on it. He joined a dating service to help him find a girl who, as he put it “..will feel so honored to sleep with me that she’ll have the place cleaned up in no time.” “That’s pretty slick” says Dennis “I don’t believe a woman's ever felt that honored by me before ..how do you do it?” “First I d-dazzle ’em with brilliance, then I crussh ’em with a chunk of s-silence.” As we’re leaving, I say to Dennis: “I think it's ironic, the poor guy has just been hit by an awfully big chunk of pseudo-science .”

In praise of the homemaker

“The triumph of man was due entirely to the female of our species.” ~ Harold Klawans, MD

I wonder when 'child rearing' was relegated to a lesser role than tax-preparer. Maybe we need a new word for it. I’m proposing ‘director of development’ and I am putting it up there with medical doctor and other workers in the helping professions. I mean, the farther I went in life, the more I realized how essential motherhood is to the vitality and continuity of the human species. The mother’s heartbeat is the first language we learn. Outside the womb, the mother’s voice shapes the formation of language centers in the brain. Neuroscience informs us that the development of the brain takes place mostly outside the womb. The role of child rearing is to nurture this development. Messages conveyed by speech, touch and human interaction actually guide the growth of nerve-pathways to their destination. Without this, the human species would have become extinct a long time ago. We have to shake-off the stereotype that child rearing is somehow an unproductive activity .. little more than a burdensome ‘maternity leave’ in the workplace. Otherwise, we treat our own children like second-class citizens.

Duane

Duane had some tumors removed from his head. They also took out part of his ability to contain his impulses. This caused him to launch pre-emptive strikes at the first sign of perceived (or misperceived) threat ..as well as anything that violated his standards of appearance. If the strap on the back of my cap was showing, he’d abruptly stop what he was saying, mid-sentence, and demand that I cut it off saying it was distracting and made me look silly. He would then get up and start searching the room for a pair of scissors. At Trader Joes, heaven help the unsuspecting shopper blocking his way. He would ram them with his cart. When behavior therapy helped bring his physical outbursts under control ..he learned to gently pull the offending shopper aside and scold them for being rude and inconsiderate ..letting them know that they’d been making his life miserable, not only that afternoon, but their whole insignificant life, which was so far beneath his, they didn’t even rate being this close to him. He stopped coming to the support group and I lost track of him ..until he wound up in jail. Highway patrol pulled him over for speeding and running red lights. They found him rambling incoherently. When I heard this, it surprised me because his verbal outbursts had always been pretty articulate. Anyway, they told me he’d been cooperative, showing them his license and registration and everything, but just not making any sense, so they brought him in as a precaution. He blood-alcohol level barely registered so they put in a call to me (my card was in his wallet) and Atascadero (state mental hospital). He could not tell them what month or what year it was. Nor could he say where he was, or why he was there. He was, however, ranting about his civil liberties and the rights of an Englishman. When I got there, I shouted at him to tell me the name of that thing in the corner ..and pointed to the chrome toilet. I got the name of some car parts and surgical instruments. So much for trying to get him ‘grounded’. The cops just shook their head like, see ..we told you so.

I tried one more thing ..I wrote down a list of words and asked him to pick out the ones that best described his predicament. He correctly pointed to ‘jail’, ‘police’ and ‘traffic stop’ He even found the word ‘john’ somewhere down the list without me asking, and looked at me like .. ‘see, you asshole’. He wasn’t crazy, he knew exactly where he was and why. Somewhere he had acquired an ‘aphasia’, or a problem finding words or the names of things. I sort of suspected that because it’s related to impulse-control. Word searches also require the ability to constrain choices. Mess with that action and word choices become creative and sometimes barely relevant. That’s when expressions like ‘civil liberties violation’ pop-up in place of ‘traffic stop’. It gave the impression he was talking around the subject. Anyway, it also kept him out of a mental institution and got him into the hospital much faster. Last time I saw him he was speaking well ..but still telling me how silly I looked.

Biodynamic wine

Do California wineries really pack cow-horns full of cow manure and crystals, then plant them at various locations selected by a Shaman, during the autumnal equinox ..? Yes they do. Is that the whole story ..? No it’s not, otherwise I’d have to agree with folks from out-of-state who call us loco. No wait, I may have to agree with them anyway. The point is, manure from dairy cows is superior to shit from horses or chickens. Why?

“Because a dairy cow has an unequaled digestive process which is enhanced by cosmic life-giving forces in her hooves and horns that enable the nitrogen in her manure to rekindle life within the earth.”>

Does the story end there ..? No, otherwise I really would have to concede lunacy. The story continues:

“When vintners dig up the horns six months later, they find the manure transformed into a dark, rich, moist substance that smells surprisingly sweet and earthy. Then they mix it with water and spray it over the crops like regular fertilizer.”

Does it work ..? Research is slim, but it has been practiced in Bavaria since 1924, when Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner introduced biodynamicsto the farming industry. I mean, there’s good reason why Bavaria scores the most stellar dairy products on the planet.

Information courtesy of the folks at
Barefoot Winery

HAPPY EARTH DAY EVERYONE ..!

Light show

I woke up in the middle of the night to the tune of Windows XP starting up on my laptop. I thought I heard other noises as well, but couldn’t be sure. I slithered downstairs with a bat, but there was no one there ..my laptop was lit-up however (had been in sleep-mode). I mentioned it to my neighbor this morning expecting to get a laugh. Instead, I got an appeal to install lights and motion sensors along the creek. She said it was probably something on my deck that triggered it, and while I was thinking coyotes, possibly deer ..she was thinking people. She says there’s no substantial barrier between us and the street, and the creek bed invites who-knows-who. She goes on to say that the homeless population is definitely on the rise ..and wonders if I’d been in town recently. Her husband runs into them every now and then looking for a place to crash. She tells me we need motion detectors and lights to fend them off. I tell her I think that’s a good idea, and even act approvingly, but I’m thinking what a light show that would be. I may have run into one or two people in the past, looking for a back entrance to a concert at the bowl ..but mostly it’s members of the wildlife community I see.

Jorge

Jorge is having a beer on the steps of the high school stadium around sunset. He offers me one, but I tell him no thanks ..I haven’t finished my laps yet. He tells me that he just got through working-out in the weight room. He’s a former gang-banger who is re-directing his life to focus on his health and family. He’s got a kid who he wants to be there for. Seems to be working ..he’s 29 but looks like he’s 18. He tells me he had an uncle who died of cirrhosis. I tell him not to worry ..a couple of beers after work aren’t going to set him back health-wise, especially considering he’s got the resolve to wait until he’s finished with his work-out. He asks what the liver does. I tell him the liver is like the body’s ‘detox’ center. That’s its job. If it didn’t do its job ..his beer buzz that would last a lifetime. He laughs. He tells be about his high school days spent drinking and smoking weed. I tell him about my high school days spent taking hallucinogens and smoking weed. He says he’s done that too ..but now he’s worried about the long-term effects. I tell him not to worry, I think the mind is resilient ..it’ll recover from whatever damage’s been done. I mean, look at me ..no wait, bad idea. I tell him that the nervous system does something similar as the liver ..it cleanses itself in order to regain balance for the next round of punches. If it didn’t, we’d all be hallucinating still. He laughs ..but looks even more concerned. He says he often gets flashbacks and can’t tell if they’re real or not. I suddenly feel insensitive because I did not see this coming ..and maybe wasn’t taking him seriously enough. I backtrack and tell him that memory has it’s own filtration system ..past episodes that don’t fit-in today, will weaken and either get revised or cycled-out tomorrow. I also tell him I’ll take that beer he was offering.

Online mirror

I’m sitting watching a flickering candle and wondering if I’m following the process. What process ..? The process I learned in a writing workshop I once took. Actually, I already know that I’m not. I say this because I’m not starting from the present moment, but from a place I remember yesterday, and the day before. Anyway, I want to say that I’m moving forward with a topic in mind ..but no clear idea of where it will lead. I have found that putting my journal online has been revealing. It’s put a mirror to my face and shown me what a pompous ass I am. Perhaps I’m not always so, but my writing often sounds pretentious and boastful. What do I mean boastful ..? Like I’ve got something to prove. What am I trying to prove ..? That I haven’t been slack ..I learned my lesson ..I can write from a so-called west coast literary tradition with the best of them ..whatever that means. Sort of stream of consciousness, I suppose. But that’s not how it sounds. It sounds crafted and arrogant. I want to say it sounds like I write from my head too much, but that’s not quite right. I write from the heart as well, but mostly with feelings of concern over how it’s going to sound to other people. Will it be entertaining enough, or engaging enough. But more importantly, does it fit the image I want others to have of myself. What image ..? That I’m smart and lead a fulfilling and eventful life. How embarrassing is that ..and downright vain. I may not be fully conscious of these feelings while I’m writing, but I get a sense of them now, while I’m reading. It sounds like I’m trying awfully hard to impress someone. I have no pretensions of being a good writer ..but at least an honest one, but these don’t even sound honest to me. Instead, I feel like my writing-practice becomes an exercise in impression-formation once I start thinking about putting it online.

Split-level head

"I'm so happy I live in a split-level head"

It wasn’t long ago that psychologists regarded memory as a single-thread of stimulus-response associations; strengthened by repetition. What went on between the time information was stored and retrieved was terra incognito. Memory was commonly thought to be a passive record of stimulus-events. Once events were stored, they became a reliable part of memory. The information was always there; forgetting was blamed on a failure of retrieval.

Associative principles of memory no longer apply. They fail to take into account clinical reports of patients with aphasia or Alzheimer’s. Aphasia patients, for instance, can usually remember current events, but they forget long-term information such as the meaning of words or the names of familiar objects. On the other hand, Alzheimer’s patients can usually remember long-term information, such as the meaning of words, but they forget recent events such as a visit by a relative or their arrival at the clinic. These observations suggest different types of memory at work. Some temporarily hold events in our immediate surroundings while others preserve them on a more lasting basis.

Memory is now considered to be like a multi-level interchange. It has many locations, and each location has it’s own shelf-life. Instead of being a passive record of events, memory is more like an active participant constructing events. When listening to someone speak, for instance, sound enters sensory storage, which has finite capacity for registering immediate impressions, but decays within milliseconds ..allowing just enough time for the sound to be parsed into phonemes. Phonemes are transferred to short-term memory where sentences are constructed and their meaning identified. Meaning is then encoded and transferred to long-term memory based on its perceived informative-value (feelings, relevance, consequences, etc). Although long-term memory is what we traditionally think of as durable memory; it is not as reliable as once thought. Instead of being a passive record of things past, it is more like an active construction-site, integrating and revising things past, present and future (predicted). Dr. Elizabeth Loftus offers compelling evidence for this when she writes about the effect of interrogation and publicity on eyewitness testimony. She’s a good read on the state-of-the arts, if you’re interested.

Paper presented at a seminar in ~>Cognitive science

Sammy

Sammy was sixteen before he could decipher the meaning of words in a textbook. He says they looked like they were written in a foreign alphabet or something. He tells me about the whippings he received unless he stayed in his room and studied after school. He remembers hours spent staring at the pages of a book until they went white on him ..then he’d stare at the walls until images would appear from them. He considered a career in graphic design. Since then he has had to hustle to finish high school and the University. His field was anthropology instead of graphic arts because it was familiar to him from watching the National Geographic channel. I ask him if he can recognize most of the words he sees now. Only if they have a familiar pattern or shape to them, he says. Hopefully they’re keywords, he adds. I’m thinking about all the hurdles he’s had to jump to get through school. I also suspect he’s not suffering from a problem with his eyesight. “Where are you from originally ..?” I ask “Palm Springs” he says “Where are your parents from ..?” “Korea” “Can you read in Korean ..?” “No, never tried ..my parents didn’t want anything interfering with my education here” “What language was spoken in the home while you were growing up ..?” “Korean” That’s it, I tell him ..he probably would have learned to read in Korean just fine. He asks me how I know that. I tell him because he jumped from a verbal environment of spoken-Korean to an education of written-English. It happens all the time with kids from Spanish-speaking households around here. During infancy, our system gets tuned to receive the sounds our parents make, in his case ..Korean. The first step in learning to read is parsing the words you see, into the sounds that your system was tuned for. Since Spanish and Korean have fewer sounds than English ..parsing breaks down. On the other hand, reading by sight, or ‘pattern recognition’, is not a natural way to learn to read and takes a lot longer.

Unstuck

I measure time by the distance between significant events in memory. I’m not talking about the day Kennedy was shot or anything. For me, relationships are the best milestones of time-travel ..especially the endings. If I can locate an event between two meaningful relationships, I get a sense of time passing. When I was a younger dood, events in life were relatively new, so they had greater significance ..like my first high ..my first lay ..my first meaningful relationship and first tragic ending. I could feel myself moving through time. Not anymore. Now I think of events that occurred before my marriage, and those that occurred after. Since many don’t measure up, I discount them and they dissolve ..leaving me without anything to hang on to. I feel like Billy Pilgrim who became unstuck in time. Prior episodes blend together and occasionally replay as though they just happened, or worse, as though they’re happening now. I’m having lunch with friends the other day when a prior visit to Laguna Beach pops into my head. Suddenly the table disappears and I’m plunging into the water. “Where’s Bill ..?” “Oh, he’s time-tripping again.” Now I’m traveling back to the time when I first heard that term used.