A Neurophysiological Apprach to Intimacy

We must excite one another. There is no other way to ensure our foothold in one another’s pockets. Nerve cells, in order to learn or retain memories, depend on this.

Nothing moves forward without transference—whether it is an electric current, potential energy, a passing hand, ions, or a glance. Each pathway, licked over by its counterpart, decides exactly how to deliver its message.

I cannot control how my words sound in your mouth any more than I can wiretap what I mean to transcribe to you through tips of fingers along sides. If I could, I’d be reinventing whole systems that lay inside the body like limestone or trans-Atlantic flight-patterns.

Area is unknown. Though the skin is graced like a brush fire or a field of wheat, the filaments decide where and how long messages reach the brain. Labeled-line codes map location.

Exactly how my touch tastes to your brain? A quick burst of impulses or a snail between the eyes and gut?

How one feels different lying between two very similar seconds.

Chemistry shifts inside the body like gold-flakes inside a wine-bottle. (I saw this, once, and drank two glasses, feeling myself gurgle with geological joy!).

We must excite one another. Geometry has much to do with this. As if the mail depended on how one traces a line. Because, in the body, to reach a sensation, to experience a touch, lines must connect, must clearly kiss correct spaces into being:

As though the body knows how difficult it is for us to find one another, as if the galaxies in us refuse intensity if all are not aligned as they should be—we work on all-or-nothing action potentials daily, depend on gates and maps to arrive, to think, to make out a lover’s face.

As though one second bundles enough energy to light whole countries or send one another sailing down some coastal region, unaware of our very real powerhouse.

Store me, for a millisecond, in one of those knots between your cells. If not me, then how it feels to anchor lines to me.

And no matter how many years pass over us, distorting memories and boxes of stored excitement, novelty can still be found: lines of communication are blind.

Inside, untangled, the other can be found, preserved, honest as the first day the maps were drawn, the eyes passed over bodies as crop-planes—necessary, immediate, beautiful as settled dust.




End Note:...because, while it can be poetic, intimacy is also scientific...which I find poetic

Between Discipline and Forgiveness

Still, having written recently about avoiding writing, I have done a great job at avoiding.

Perhaps this is because I am aware of how flawed I am. Not to say I’m an awful writer or something, but that I am a flawed human being. How can I write of beauty when I am certainly tainted? How can I write of love and vulnerability when I have been unable to give love and be vulnerable, when I have recklessly run away with someone else’s heart only to cast it into a gutter, thinking only of the swiftest path away from their humanity and pain, selfishly hoarding and protecting my defenses like children?

On Christmas Eve, I celebrate with family and feel these stains melt away. I have taken their love for granted, have betrayed them, and yet they still open their hearts, constantly open their hearts, despite my past transgressions. That’s what family is about. And perhaps one day I can be a more like them.

I walk into the study where rows and rows of my books line up, books that I couldn’t take with me but couldn’t let go of. Stories full to the belly with pain, forgiveness. And my journals from the past 24 years, various sizes, pile in a box on the top shelf. I know each one like an intimate friend or stronghold—bearing both the beautiful and painful moments I could never maneuver around or deny. Can this be what remains in the home that is not my home? What does it amount to--if I was to lie down in dirt tomorrow, how would my character sketch out?

My whole life I’ve given myself over to words. And in them, I love bravely even with my sins blotting out the insides. Even with the harshest, hardened areas within me, something always softens, gives a little under the weight of curves and lines. But as I continue, I can’t help but feel a fool and a liar for not then taking this practice and living by my OWN words. Where’s the line one must cross between discipline and forgiveness?

I have this fear, you see, of sounding smug. I have this fear of not being truthful, of coming across selfish and self-involved. Are writers, by nature, selfish? Can they craft something out of their own bones? And if my words have hurt others in the past, how to rinse them? Where do I stop at punishing myself? How long is too long looking into the interrogating mirror? To refuse self-forgiveness—is this dancing on the same line of selfish intentions?

Perhaps the best I can do is never fear displaying my very real scars. If my humanity is visible only through them, perhaps to stay true to them is to stay true to what’s real, honest.

But, still, there are times I sit before my past—the books, the diaries, and put my head in my hands, knowing all the childish words stare back, defiant, in denial, arms crossed, stamping the feet. I try and reason with them, but they have sliced their ears, slowly, day after day—so that now they are almost solid walls.

To swallow all of them, take them into me when no one in their right mind would want to claim them, my most dishonorable deeds—both against the self and others.

How can I ever ask another to love a lonely library, broken hearted and arrogant?

It keeps me up at night, sometimes, at my writing desk. It’s like trying to love and create a craft with the very instruments that were once weapons.

But still, I try to gather them all up in my arms, to spread them out on the floor and make a map of them—coordinate the mistakes to make reminders of their bodies. And in their most vulnerable state, my mistakes shine, together, imperfect and harsh—a flash among darkness, and in that moment, I could almost see a future pattern on which they depend. And in this pattern hides who I have the capacity to become. It’s only a flash, only a glimpse. And I think perhaps the photons of faith vibrate there when I let go of self-deprecation, which is, in its most basic form, fear.

I have hurt myself and others. I have allowed pride and fear to build walls and dangerous combinations of words. But I have also torn down quite a few, have rinsed whole city-streets clean.

But how do I ever write again what was once so innocently written, but serrated. How do I lovingly and carefully smooth their bodies? I don’t know. I don’t have the answers.

Me vs. Brain

Somehow I have to have faith in why I am the way I am.

I wish I could talk to my brain:

Me: what's this for? [As it hands me a bit of moss, slimed to the sides and bottom up in my hand. ]

Brain: Town and Country down the street ran out of soda, ya know? There's been a canceled flight and I'm just damage control at this point.

Me: I don't understand. Where's the translation section?

Brain: You should not ask me about my day. Terminals are jammed. It's "All Across the Board." Give us some time to recover.

Me: Can't you just concentrate on other things, like sleep?

Brain: The same was said ages ago. This isn't rational. Deconstruction at the smallest degree is pretty painful for the first 30 t0 60 days.

Me: What if I play Bach, would that get things going...am I housecleaning at this point, or should I jump into a hazard suit?

Brain: Like I would tell you. I am not a masochist.

Me: Yes you are

Brain: That's likely, if Bach has any say in the matter.

Me: Can we have a document drawn, or is this non-negotiable?

Brain: That's not up to me--that's up to the audience.

Me: I wasn't aware there was an audience

Brain: You failed to notice the rustling of feet?

Me: I thought that was just the movement of your neurons

Brain: Not since you've downsized on receptors. Do you think Unions work for free?

Me: What if I offer whole evenings to meditation?

Brain: You're not the type.

Me: No. That's true. How long must this go on?

Brain: When is it ever safe to wind-surf, really?

Me: Not since you've provided the sharks.

Brain: I just deal with what comes up. Damage control.

Me: Right.

Brain: Don't get smart.

Me: Isn't there a switch?

Brain: Yes. But you'll regret switching it.

Me: I regret this state as it stands

Brain: No you don't. Wait for the moss to grow.

Me: Grow, or explode?

Brain: You know...trust me in this.

Me: I don't fucking trust you.

Brain: But, I'm all you've got, love.

Me: Stop giving me headaches.

Brain: Stop overloading the damn system!

Me: I am not the one shutting off terminals! I have no control over the tributaries.

Brain: Shrimp, you're dealing with shrimp, my dear....while as I have had to accommodate sharks.

Me: I could say the same for myself. Add their pink bodies to the moss and I've been cultivating useless armies against your currents.

Brain: Leave me be.

Me: Again, I could say the same for myself.

Brain: ever heard of the ghost in the machine?

Me: Descartes, right? Is that what this is? dualism?

Brain: Not dualism. Mind-body problem. Like the sharks and shrimp.

Me: the mind-body problem *is* dualism

Brain: Is that my hand or yours?

Me: both, obviously?

Brain: are we co-dependent?

Me: in the true sense of the word, yes. I depend on you.

Brain: I need a bath

Me: Alright, just don't invite the sharks.

Brain: As long as you stop shipping me so many damn shrimp!

Me: Which bubble bath? Sweet Pea or Vanilla Bean?

Brain: let me check with the serotonin...yeah, the guys are pretty sold on Sweet Pea.

On Avoiding Writing & Other Circular Thoughts

I have been avoiding writing today. It’s like a silly dance in which my feet fumble around some desperate thing and I close my eyes, falling, falling to some land covered with leaves and denial. I don’t know why this is. What is it that I am afraid of? Perhaps it’s a fear of discovery—discovering something that moves even when I look away—something that grows even as I refuse to tend to it, and it still pushes through no matter the audience. So there sometimes are movements in us, feelings that charge impulses and thoughts to spring from some darkened soil in us. Even if we refuse to garden those regions, they grow, regardless. I thought briefly today about one in particular, a memory triggered, a hurtful phrase from a distant friend, and I managed to corner the feeling, interrogate it. I could have given it no license to speak, could have denied its existence or covered its mouth with tape, but chose, rather, kindness and acceptance. Though I would much prefer not to feel hurt, angry, disappointed, etc, these emotions have their merit. If I continue to deny them when they arise, I’d be denying, along with them, more beautiful emotions.

But this really has nothing to do with avoiding writing—only insomuch as it put a damper on my mood and left me watching Larry King Live or CNN for an hour. Anything to distract from the self. I ate too many M&M’s, drank two Perrier’s in a row, talked to my bird (who in turn only said “come here” “love you” in response), before deciding to take a bath and read some of C. S. Lewis’ letters.

Still, I lie here with yet another bottle of Perrier and think: how to come to some agreement with the self when the self wants nothing more than to be invisible.

I don’t know if other people experience this or not—the intense desire to fade into a swirl of outside noises, to linger in the doorway of distraction, dizzy from the constant bombardment but grateful for the drowning-out-of-things… I often come to this point and that is when the writing particularly slows down.

Yeats once said: “You must draw heaven and earth into your net.” Certainly, in this casting there is the need to include the self, all bone-grit, lungs, and heaps of hair—the body cannot be denied, like earth, nor can the mind, as in the heaven, be passed over. Just as one might say how lovely the face, but the guts passed over—this cannot be done. As one may put forth only the cleverest of thoughts, the kindest, most humble, there remains the hidden ones of ignorance and mean-spirit, of self-serving and ill-mannered. Like the lover who carelessly ignores the characteristics in his love that may one day ruin the foundation on which he builds his heart’s investments—it is foolish to overlook the same when confronting the self…all bone-grit, lungs, and heaps of hair.

But I think it’s often accepted that one should turn away from unpleasant things in the self, such as inconvenient emotions or tugging ambitions that threaten to awaken desires that might throw comfort off its railings and into an unknown sierra, and instead to surround oneself with distractions and anecdotes.

I’ve tried to approach this before, and described desire as something we smother and refuse to tend to. Not desire in the erotic sense, but the passions of ones life—I guess if I were speaking in part of the church, I’d refer to it as one’s “calling.” And yes, I think “calling” is a good word, rinsed, of course, from religious connotations for universal purpose. Because a calling is something quite physical, something to be felt in the body—perhaps, in a literal sense, vibrating in the cochlea, tingling in the brain, then felt in the chest or gut. A passion contends with no thing. It does not simply die unquestioned and unnamed. It will call on you even as you sleep, restored to life when your mind leaves those subconscious doors unlocked. I have found this quite the case for me at times of suppression, times of denying the self the attention it needs, the meditation upon one’s inner rock. I like the idea of this inner rock, as it may absorb every fleeting, flowing thought or whim, desire or fancy—and along with this absorption may store all one’s memories and transferences, interactions and thought-processes. To think: as one lays dying, even then, this inner rock keeps in it’s halls all of the body and mind’s messages and scripts.

And I think it’s a fear that at that moment, or in something similar along the way, I may feel a heaviness pull me with a stamped sign “Regret”—regret-of-the-self kid--moments where I could have paid attention but chose to “shut off” all receptors and instead tuned out, spaced out, avoided. I think this is the main cause of anxiety, in fact. And some sociologists would go so far as to label it the prime example of “death-anxiety.” Quite accurate.

So what does any of this have to do with writing? Simply that writing is an act, which, if done truthfully, is facing the self, being open to discover—in all its beauty and warts. And as Yeats said, one must draw both heaven and earth into one’s net…to account for everything, from slugs to planetary stars and whirling hurricanes.

It’s not easy. Sometimes it’s even a bit lonely—okay, it IS lonely—in fact, that’s how it should be, I suppose.