Memory

Words and events fade in an instant. What isn’t remembered is doomed to be repeated. Who knows how long this exchange has been going on, or will continue to go on, without memory.

Antidepressants

I think I like this guy! He certainly makes a convincing argument. He's saying that medication for depression (SSRIs, MAOIs and Tricyclics) may actually be turning single/acute episodes of depression into chronic conditions. I wonder what this means for children who are medicated for, what may only turn out to be, a rough period of adolescence ..that they would eventually outgrow.

Ramón

After his 2nd tour of duty, Ramón’s world was a fuzzier place. Milkier too ..until he got the cataracts removed. The ground feels spongy when he walks because of the loss of sensation in his lower legs. I have a theory that says: what the body can’t feel, the mind fills in ..and sometimes with bizarre effect. For Ramón, it can make a dusty street feel like a rocky stream .. or level ground feel like an uphill slope. He says he’s learned to look for visual confirmation, but sometimes his eyes deceive him. He went to an optometrist but couldn’t pass the eye exam. He says he could see the letters clearly enough, but they would rapidly morph into other letters. For instance, an ‘M’ would become an ‘N’ then a ‘U’ then an ‘O’. When he mentioned this to the eye doctor ..she let him take the test over a few times. Ramón learned that if he blurted out the first letter he saw, he did much better. Out on the street however, phone numbers dissolve before he has a chance to repeat them. He can’t remember things he just read because when he gets to the end of a sentence, he’s forgotten the beginning. Now whole movies fade away by the time they reach the end, which he says is cool ..he can watch them over and over again as though he were watching them for the first time. I’d say the things that tethered him to mother earth have slackened a little, which accounts for the sliding sensation he gets in the pit of his stomach, the one he says feels like his car is skidding off the road even when he’s sitting at his desk.

Footnote: Music that used to annoy him ..dissonant-sounding jazz from performers like Coltrane or Björk ..now appeals to him. I put on the Beatles Revolution number 9 ..which sounds like a loop of recorded chaos and impromptu screaming. He was delighted. Then I put on a track of improvised rock recorded at a Grateful Dead concert. He said it sounded natural to him, like riding in the back of a truck on a winding road through the woods. This leads me to another theory ..when the mind adjusts to blur ..it can also make a melody out of noise.

Across the universe

Stephen Hawkings recently said that any space aliens we are likely to encounter would be nomadic in nature. They will be traveling through interstellar space, going from one galactic replenishment opportunity to the next. It’s best that we avoid contact with them, he says. Extraterrestrials, arriving on Earth, would lead to a scenario not too unlike Christopher Columbus landing in the new world. As I recall, it did not go well for the indigenous people of the new world. Apparently Dr. Hawking believes that self-preserving behaviour is selected for by evolution across the universe, as it is here on Earth. I, on the other hand, do not have a clue.

He's gone

“He’s just not the same anymore” his mother says “Does he ever talk about it ..?” I ask “The only thing he ever mentioned was the time he had to retrieve his friend’s body from a supply truck that exploded. It was too gruesome for me ..he’s just not the same anymore.” He can sit at a crowded table with friends and just smile and not say anything for hours. His prior relationships have ended and he can’t remember most of the people he went to high school with. “He isn’t who he was when he went in” a former girlfriend tells me. He can’t drive ..traffic laws and street signs elude him. It scared her to death one night when he drove for miles and did not stop for a single red light. Later on I find out he didn’t really learn to drive until he was in Iraq, and that was mostly on unmarked desert roads. He’s not aware of it when he hits curbs on both side of a residential street. He misses other customary signs of danger as well. He’ll blindly walk across a busy boulevard to reach a starbucks and meet friends. I’m reminded of a line from a book by John Irving and tell him to keep passing the open windows.

Santa Barbara Bowl

I live by the Santa Barbara County Bowl, a concert venue I enjoy immensely. It is one of only two natural amphitheaters in the country ..the other being Red Rocks in Colorado. It is now at risk of over-development.

The natural, park-like area surrounding the Santa Barbara County Bowl is about to disappear. The city has recently approved plans by out-of-town developer Charles Crail and local Architect Brian Cearnal, to build a 13-unit apartment complex adjacent to the County Bowl as part of the ‘915 E Anapamu project’. These plans call for the removal of the historic Cove Mound hill as well as the destruction of many native and mature oaks trees that currently fill the landscape between the gated entrance to the County Bowl and Milpas Street. A two-to-three story apartment complex, as well as uncovered and subterranean parking will take their place. Neighbors of the Bowl decry the loss of the green space that surrounds the Bowl. It provides a natural setting for concertgoers, natural drainage for creeks and a sound barrier for the neighboring community. Furthermore, the site backs up to the undeveloped slopes of the Bowl which itself is a natural wildlife corridor. We believe these open lands and green spaces should be preserved and protected for the benefit of all.

Anybody who enjoys the Santa Barbara Bowl as much as I do please let your objections be heard by appealing to:

• City Council, Das Williams, DasWilliams@SantaBarbaraCA.gov
• City Council, Bendy White,HWhite@SantaBarbaraCA.gov 
• City Planning, Kelly Brodison, KBrodison@SantaBarbaraCA.gov

Thank you, Bill Robertson,leefarer@gmail.com

Amber alert

Early records show that Amber couldn’t read. However, this wasn’t the case. Amber was actually reading too much into what she read. The way she describes it, when she reads books, she sees smaller books emerging from the text. When she reads these smaller books, they warn her not to believe what she’s reading in the bigger book. Her test scores weren’t measuring lack of comprehension ..they were measuring lack of credibility. These warning-messages persisted and began to change the way she perceived instructors and educators ..convincing her she was a test subject in some kind of mind-control experiment. Paranoia ensued ..disrupting not only her reading performance, but performance in other subjects as well. Somewhere along the way, a sharp-eyed therapist picked up on this and convinced her that she didn’t have to actually believe what she read ..just as long as she could repeat it on a test. It was an “ah ha” moment. She became an honor student. She graduated and went to Berkeley, fortified with the knowledge that she was entering an institution of high-rate disinformation. She figured the best way to protect herself was to get fully informed of her adversaries. Her instructors and classmates found her vibrant and engaging ..and also dead serious. Now idea-bombs, armed with mixed message, were exploding inside her head during lecture. She says she could see right through their masked attempt at mental subversion. Nobody took her seriously, and her friends, who were initially charmed and entranced, became frightened and distant ..resulting in her first arrest on assault charges. Undeterred, she volunteered with social service groups in the community. When they asked her to leave, she tried starting one by herself, modeled after her own beliefs. But members quickly disappeared once they saw her rational and seductive ideas turn into radical conspiracy theories. “Brain-dead zombies” was the way she referred to them. During treatment at an outpatient facility in town, someone suspected epilepsy. A functional fMRI was performed revealing that words triggered seizure–like activity in her brain ..resulting in activation of not only correct word meanings, but contradictory and confounding meanings as well.

May day

May 1st 2009
Los Angeles, CA

An immigration rally began peacefully. The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. When police in riot gear arrived and attempted to deny people that right, some took a stand to protect their rights. Then it turned less peaceful ..giving police the authority to forcefully disperse the rally.

Macarthur Park, Los Angeles May 1st 2009

A police helicopter hovers above ..a voice over the loudspeaker gives the order to ‘disperse or be arrested’. Police in riot gear charge ..unarmed citizens flee ..some are trampled and beaten ..a peaceful assembly turns into chaos ..bullets fly. This was the scene at Macarthur Park in Los Angeles May 1st 2009 ..but my mind is also receiving images from 1969 ~ People’s Park in Berkeley ..and they don’t look much different. Furthermore, I’m experiencing the same feelings of revulsion that I felt then ..and I'm not the only one ..those early images were burned into the psyche of nearly all the school-age children of my generation. It occurs to me that the ‘class of 2010 is graduating next month ..after attending all four years of high school ..during wartime. Experiencing a culture at war, at this age ..is something you never forget. It becomes part of you ..like the Vietnam War is part of me. I have a built-in mistrust of government ..ongoing problems with authority ..and an uncertain career in ‘conspiracy theory’. History repeats itself, not only when government leaders ignore it ..but also when their minds become so scripted by it ..they can’t do anything different.

People’s Park, Berkeley in 1969

Paranoid visions

Undocumented, as in undocumented immigrant, means unknown. Unknown is scary. So we react out of fear of the unknown by building walls, discriminating and incarcerating undocumented immigrants. In other words, criminalizing what we don’t know. I believe that, what we don’t know, or can’t see ..we fill in with our worst nightmare dreams. Pretty soon we’re seeing illegals everywhere .. suffocating us ..overrunning our schools, workplaces and neighborhoods. So, we start encoding these paranoid visions into law. My question is, if undocumented workers are so productive, don’t they deserve some of the same benefits as working citizens ..? Instead of wasting so much energy battling the unknown, I say we get informed. I suggest that we actually document them at the workplace, kind of like an information-only social security number, then start collecting statistics. I’m not talking about legitimizing or prosecuting anyone, I'm talking about getting informed and seeing if it's really as bad as we fear. I suspect not. But I also suspect this may not be so easy to do ..they are just as afraid of us as we are of them.