History of OhWhereIsMySoul

Source: http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/pineal-gland/

In a treatise called On the difference between spirit and soul, Qusta ibn Luqa (864-923) wrote that people who want to remember look upwards because this raises the worm-like particle, opens the passage, and enables the retrieval of memories from the posterior ventricle. People who want to think, on the other hand, look down because this lowers the particle, closes the passage, and protects the spirit in the middle ventricle from being disturbed by memories stored in the posterior ventricle (Constantinus Africanus 1536, p. 310)

DESCARTES

“I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us” (AT XI:120, CSM I:99).

MEMORY:
The pores or gaps lying between the tiny fibers of the substance of the brain may become wider as a result of the flow of animal spirits through them.


MOVEMENT:

He thought that there are two types of bodily movement. First, there are movements which are caused by movements of the pineal gland. The pineal gland may be moved in three ways: (1) by “the force of the soul,” provided that there is a soul in the machine; (2) by the spirits randomly swirling about in the ventricles; and (3) as a result of stimulation of the sense organs.




SOUL:
“We need to recognize that the soul is really joined to the whole body, and that we cannot properly say that it exists in any one part of the body to the exclusion of the others. For the body is a unity which is in a sense indivisible because of the arrangement of its organs, these being so related to one another that the removal of any one of them renders the whole body defective. And the soul is of such a nature that it has no relation to extension, or to the dimensions or other properties of the matter of which the body is composed: it is related solely to the whole assemblage of the body's organs. This is obvious from our inability to conceive of a half or a third of a soul, or of the extension which a soul occupies. Nor does the soul become any smaller if we cut off some part of the body, but it becomes completely separate from the body when we break up the assemblage of the body's organs” (AT XI:351, CSM I:339). But even though the soul is joined to the whole body, “nevertheless there is a certain part of the body where it exercises its functions more particularly ... which is a certain very small gland situated in the middle of the brain's substance and suspended above the passage through which the spirits in the brain's anterior cavities communicate with those in its posterior cavities. The slightest movements on the part of this gland may alter very greatly the course of these spirits, and conversely any change, however slight, taking place in the course of the spirits may do much to change the movements of the gland” (AT XI:351, CSM I:340).

hylomorphist: thinks that the soul is not a substance but the first actuality or substantial form of the living body
epiphenomenalist: views the passions as causally ineffectual by-products of brain activity



PINEAL GLAND TODAY:
The hormone secreted by the pineal gland, melatonin, was first isolated in 1958. Melatonin is secreted in a circadian rhythm, which is interesting in view of the hypothesis that the pineal gland is a vestigial third eye.
(Images from Google images search)

Lapping up memory

We hadn't bothered to turn on the lights.

You backed me up until I hit the wall, kissing me.

You kissed my chest. You kissed strings down my arm. You kissed my grey hands. I watched you.

I thought, I always wanted to be with the person who laps up every inch. You pressed your lips on every finger pad to inhale as much of my spirit as your lungs could take. Then you made your way back up my arm, and I was there with my face waiting for you.

At some point along the path of forever, your ghost started to move away, at a slow shutter speed. Then it stirred down the hallway, into the next room, where something solid of you sat firmly on the stool and banged on the snare drum behind a drum set and a golden cymbal. When I lose my father behind the drum set, he bites his lip and squints his eyes. I can't remember your concentrated-drum-playing-expression, but I know you had one.

I swam through the noise. I went back to the dark living room to grab a conga drum. I dragged it down the hallway. I dragged it into the brightly lit room, where you were crashing on the flickering golden cymbal. You gave me a nod and a smile when you saw that I had dragged in the conga drum. Later, you would say, "Most girls would just be annoyed. But you grabbed your own drum." I was tired, and it was all noise, but I beat it and tuned my head into the banter. I tried to insert myself into the beats, until you were spent. But by then I soaked into the noise and the bright lights like a ball rolling down a hill. It wasn't until you faced me and said you were done that I slowly staggered up.

But I
was still
there,
at the wall.

My silhouette had stuck there. The blades of my back, the backs of my hands, and the tips of my heels had half-melted to the wall like a plastic bowl accidentally left leaning against the hot microwave.

And now. The drum set is sold, that house has been demolished, and you are miles and miles away.

But I am still there. 3 months later.
I am a
silhouette
sprawled against the wall,
watching fingers lap up
your lips.
Finger by finger, as
if
to count how many fingers make up forever.

No Cartwheels

"No cartwheels."

The heat rises off the cement. No bikes coming my way. Backpack well-zipped.
GO FOR IT.
I go for it.

Then it is over. I know that it has happened, but I can't remember exactly what it felt like to have my legs in the air, my weight in my hands. So I cartwheel again.

"No cartwheels."

I walk up the steps by Cubberley Auditorium, and then over to Moonbeam's Cafe. I am hungry.

TRY THE LEFT SIDE.
No.
Alright.
I try the left side.

My friend Tess is sitting by Moonbeam's with a boy. She giggles, like it is slightly ridiculous but, actually, slightly normal. So, why? she asks. I mumble about sitting in class all day.

------------------------------------------

"No cartwheels. It's very charming, but it's a health hazard," said Marv, my boss at KFUN.

KFUN is a self-proclaimed "public media" station with "content that makes people think, feel and explore new ideas."

"Don't let it consume you," he warns me about work, "Because it will."

The ceilings are high and the tall walls are gray. There are long beautiful hallways with freshly vacuumed carpet just waiting to be cartwheeled.

When I met Marv here for an interview, we talked about filmmaking and writing. An obsolete website tells me that ten years ago he made experimental films about "the disintegration of the family." He said, "I'm SO glad to meet you...I know I've said that about ten times. But really, SO good to meet you. I have a feeling you're going to keep me on my toes!"

My first day, Marv took me out to lunch. We saw his boss at the restaurant, but when we passed his table, it was as if they didn't know each other. When we got back, Marv took me with him to four meetings. I swiveled in the chair. I bit the sides of my fingernails, chewed the inside of my lip. They dragged. But if Marv, the creative no bull-shitter, could do this, I could sit through this too. I was his sidekick. His former intern, now "assistant", Manual, left him notes addressed to "Margo." I told myself: I aspire to be on a "Margo" basis with Marv.

Finally, at 6 o'clock, Marv faced me, planted both his hands on my shoulders, and said, "Well, you can go to my next meeting with me, or you can feel free to go."

"I, think, I'm baked?" I said.
Marv laughed and patted me on the back, and as I meandered around the dimly lit cubicles to make my exit, I overheard him chuckle to his colleague, "She's so cute. I just love her!"

On my second day at work, Marv sat nested in his cubicle, among a grid of plastic gray panels. He stared at the glow of the computer screen batting emails from writers, public relations managers, and editing his monthly documentaries about local art galleries.

When he would jolt up from his cubicle for his lunch break, he'd jangle his arms like an 80s break dancer. As he walked down the hallway, his arms swung like they were getting shocked with electric voltages. When we went to art galleries or on shoots to interview artists, Marv would swoop his arms in a vortex around his head and milk cows in the air in front of him as he instructed artists and curators.

"You're a dancer!" I blurted with excitement to Marv. I had realized it with a tinge of envy.



Marv didn't seem to think much of my observation.

Marv encouraged me to pitch my own project. I came in with an idea: "We cover a lot of galleries...Why don't we do a feature that focuses on just ONE piece of art?"

"Go do it!" Marv said.

Marv handed Jay, the other intern, movies to take home and review, and he got all 6 of his reviews published.

Draft after draft after draft after draft, I worked on my film about the ONE piece of art. I poked my head over to Marv's cubicle and after each draft he would give me his notes. I eventually got two 2 minute films published.

Now, it is almost the end of the summer and the end of the internship. We come to a room and he closes the door. Marv sits down across from me. He asks me if there is anything he can do better. I get 10 seconds to think about this, shirk, shrug and gurgle, before he continues:

"You need to communicate with me. When I hired you, I was really excited about you. When you get older, you fit into narrower structures," he motioned his hands together like a river getting squeezed in between the land. "But - I think I gave you too much freedom."

Then he tilts his head toward me. "You know, I think you are actually a free-er spirit than I am."

I look around the stark room. White plaster walls. Thoroughly sucked clean vacuumed carpets. My red cushioned chair. Marv's blue cushioned chair.

I want to kneel down at his feet and beg and beg and beg, until he will finally agree that my spirit is not free. If I had wings, I wouldn't have to do cartwheels.

"Everything I tell you to do, you have done. But this," he wags his finger between us, "Needs some work. You have to focus. You have to stay grounded," he says. And that reminds him-

"Oh. That reminds me. No cartwheels. It's a health hazard. You could kick a wall or something. We can't be liable."

I nod. Of course, of course. I shake my head. I slap my forehead. Of course!!!!!

--------------------------------------------------

It's months later, internship over, and I'm back at school. I email Marv to ask if he'll write me a rec letter. No response. Eventually I call him. He says sure. I stay up until 4am every night scouring the internet for possible jobs or publications to apply for. While most girls my age are having sex, I am up late revving myself up with email after email about how passionate I am and how much I want to contribute - but with no responses, no gratification, no release...

---------------------------------------------------

Now it's 3 days after the phone call with Marv.

After chatting with Tess, I go back into the buildings for class. Then I go to the computer clusters to check my email:

Hi M:

I just had a discussion with HR regarding this letter. Unfortunately, I am
unable to produce a letter of recommendation for you at this time.

Sorry about that. I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors.

Yours,
Marv

I walk up concrete steps as I dial his phone number.

"Hi Marv."

"Hi, how are you?"

"I'm good. I just... want to understand what happened?" I grip the steel rail.

"I went to HR and they said that would not be a letter of recommendation worth sending."

"Oh," I say.

I ask Marv to explain as much as he can. Lay it on me. I stagger down to a random chair under the arch of a branch, in front of the Art Building.

"You are great, ambitious, and have so much initiative," Marv replies. "But," he says, "I just would have to qualify it, and say that she needs more structure. And on some of the more mundane tasks, you didn't do very well." I am hungry. The 4am libido of emailing internships wears on me. Tears start to slip out of the crevices of my tear ducts.

"Just one second," I say to Marv. I hold the phone away from my face to take a few gasps.

"I don't want to hurt your feelings," Marv says.

"My feelings aren't hurt," I say, with all the maturity I can muster. Or at least I don't realize they are. He's right. I don't have a right to be hurt by constructive criticism. "I'm just emotional right now, because I want to improve so badly." My voice starts to crack.

"This is a learning experience for you," Marv says. "I hope you become wildly successful."

"Yeah."

I tell Marv that I've already put his name and phone number on some of my applications, so if they call him, could he please just tell them he's busy and can't talk?

"I won't say anything bad on the phone," he says. "I just can't write a letter."

"Thanks Marv."

I unplug the phone to my ear. I feel too soggy to do a cartwheel right now. My chest feels too heavy.

But as the days go on, the heaviness in my chest lightens, although some of it evaporates into sharp shards that get caught in my head.

I am at Millbrae waiting for the train to let go of my week with a Friday night in the city. I sling my purse tightly over my shoulder. I barrel myself down.

There I am, for that instant, with all of myself in my hands.

Letters to a Young Poet

I turn the silver grooved handle all the way, because I have no patience. I have no patience, even though it will be scorching hot too soon. As I step into the bath, a silk sash pours down the back of my skull, and it opens up a thought of you, and how you were like a little baby, trepid in the hot water. We had to turn it down to tepid. You with your tight tan boyish body, even though you have those eyes like chocolate smeared in circles over a bright pistachio house. There are chocolate cracks where the pistachio shows through, only in a couple of spots worn down by the dew.

Very soon the water is scorching my ankles, and so strong that I am about to keel over and vomit. I quickly crank the silver grooves on the right handle and shut off the hot left handle, so a thick stream of chill comes gushing out the tap and eddies around my feet, a swirl of hot and cold, like oil and vinegar.



I chuckle to myself about the whole about to vomit thing. I’m not going to vomit, but then I hear myself say “I can’t believe… I can’t believe…” That’s what I thought to myself less than a month ago, when all I could do was cup my forehead in my hands “I can’t believe… I can’t believe…” there I was in Foreign Cinema, the princess brought by Rainer Maria Rilke to his fancy, glamorous restaurant. I was so hungry but first we slung our elbows over the cocktail bar, and the bartender complimented me on my order as if I’d known that was her favorite. But she knew you, and you were her favorite. You took me over to the oyster bar where the boy smiled in his bandana, and you told me that you used to be there shucking oysters in your bandana, back when your hair was a dark fat mop and you had a beard. Before you were gone. The ceilings were high and the lights flickered low as we ate melted cheese and fish and your risotto, all of these dishes you used to cook, before you quit, before your 3 month trip to India. I snagged sips of your whiskey. Until we were waiting for dessert and all of a sudden my stomach tore like raging waters inside me. I slung over to your side of the table, holding my stomach in my hands. But then I slipped over to the restroom, where I sat caged into the black stalls and it became paralyzingly clear that I could not move. All I could do was sit there with my hands like crutches for my head. “I can’t believe… I can’t believe-” I thought dumbly to myself, “that this is where and when I’m having my frat boy moment.”

I was never into alcohol. I was always too good for alcohol. I was almost too good for you.

When I get into the bath and unfurl my body down into the soapy waters, I can’t imagine how you were there too. This thought comes to me at night sometimes, when I spill myself out into bed. Were you actually in the bed with me? Even the last tossed night, when I told you I was racked with bitterness and anger, and you mumbled sleepily that bitterness and anger isn’t me. It seems that since you’ve gone, this house, has inflated while the space inside has been wrung out. The furniture has swollen, and I don’t see how you fit into this space. Perhaps you’re larger than life – in my mind. And my body fills the entire tub. Where did you go? How did this air, above the tile and below the whir of the fan, contain your body?



As I lay in the water, I realize that the light is bright. Damn light. I strip my body out from the current of the bowl. My torso has already been suctioned down into the spores of the water, and as I cleave it out, little bubbles pop out from around me. Into the air like a flying fish I slash down the switch, and then in the darkness I come back down. In this darkness, this is where you were. This is where I clung to the cold tile wall with my hands behind my black while my chest and belly were sopping wet. You stood over me and you kissed me while my body tried to equilibrate. To be honest, I can’t even remember if I was uncomfortable from the heat or completely happy. I can’t remember. All I remember are shadows of that scene. I don’t even remember what your lips felt like on my lips. But I know they must have been there, and they were soft and dry because you could control your saliva. I don’t remember how wet you were, and I don’t remember the stiffness of your shoulder blade against my collarbone, or the way we both breathed heavily through the steam. I don’t remember how the cold wall felt good against my back, it simmered me like you simmered my brain. You with your metaphoric mind, you understood me. You even understood what I meant when I said you meshed with me like a drop of cold water on a sizzling stove. What I don’t remember I have to claw through my imagination to retrieve, and it hurts. It hurts.

Once I tried to whine. I tried to be like a wolf howling at the moon, “Oh you are leaving soon! You are leaving soon!” But you turned to me. Your eyes glared straight and cold.

“If this ever becomes at all uncomfortable or painful for you, I don’t want that.” You laid your face frozen toward me. I must have squirmed and given out a nervous giggle. It was almost like a teacher scolding me. It was a warning. Don’t let the pain come out, you were telling me. Don’t let the juice go sour. Don’t let it. Don’t let it. I mean, you were telling me that you didn’t want to see me suffer, but it felt almost like a threat. If I suffered, it was on your account, and you cared so much that you’d make yourself gone.

No. You were too quick to assume. See what you don’t understand, is that I was suffering before I met you. You’re like a drop of cold water on my sizzling stove.

When you walk away, the kettle wails.

I have pangs. I must miss you. Or maybe it’s just because I haven’t eaten any lunch?

The bath ends anticlimactically. The tub is unplugged, lights up, damp towel wrapped around my body, door open, I am hit across the hallway. My lower back and my butt are throbbing through my flesh.

I guess my flesh retains the heat. It throbs. But for how long?

There are no clothes that will melt me like a glove. Just my froggy pj pants that cut me at the waist and sog around my ankles, my purple turtleneck sags around my chest. My butt throbs. But with each breath, with each moment as I lean over my drawers, with whatever it is that transpires (I guess they call it time?), my hearth is escaping from me in some kind of spiraling evaporation.

I’m really trying hard to not let the pain seep out. I’m trying to not let the pain seep out, because somewhere in India you’ll see it like green smoke, or you’ll twist your nose and crinkle your brow as a whiff comes at you from around a sneaky corner, and then you’ll really be gone.

Getting Centered

A Writer on my Run

I am "momentum sensitive." Anyone who has had trouble getting out the door on a lazy Sunday morning, which turns into a lazy Sunday afternoon, which then turns into a lazy Sunday evening, will know what I am talking about.

It had been some time since I had actually felt wholeheartedly happy. Brad texted me if I'd join him for a romantic walk to some park, but I put my foot down. No. No walking. I need to sweat. The wicked San Francisco fog had parted and it was time to break into a glorious sweat under the glow of the blue sky. I couldn't feel the tremors of pleasure of sweat, instead I just felt the swell of my belly under my biker shorts and the stiffness in my calves, but nevertheless I got up off the couch and jazzed up my knees.

As I focused on the pores in the pavement and strode up the hill, I thought about that line "I don't know how to live outside of fiction" [see previous Blog Entry for further details]. When I help with the Marketing department for my newspaper internship, I make 10 calls and then I am done. Success. But if I write 10 pages? Am I done? Success?

If I were to become a writer... If I were to become a famous writer... What is it that I would want it to be that is written that makes me famous?

I look up. I am almost at the top of the hill. I slow down to a walk. The signs points to the left: "0.1 mile Inspiration point." I can do that. I pick up from the inertia, heave back into a jog, and prance until I reach the side of the hill that is Inspiration Point. A man sits with a beer and a cigarette on a bench overlooking the view. A biker woman with a lot of accessories does lunges on the other side. I straddle my legs on a short wall and reach down in between them to the ground.

"That's a good stretch," a voice startles me. It is the biker woman. She sits on the wall next to me and asks me how to do it. I push her heels up on the wall, and instruct her to imagine her knees pointed back.

"Will you push me?" she requests. I reluctantly leave my stretch and come around behind her, place the palms of my hands on her lower back, and push.

"Ahhhhh," she sighs when I release her. "Now I'll push you."

I eagerly climb back on the wall. Then we start talking about other stretches, and she has me lay on my back and pushes my leg to my chest, the way her trainer does. I notice that she has no qualms about placing her arms on the soles of my sneakers. We talk about stretching and exercise. She points to two obese women who just waddled out of their car to check out the view.

"You see those women - I was like that," she says. "350 pounds after I had my kid. But I had surgery, and then got into biking everyday."

She asks me what I do. I say that I moved up from Stanford, I have a couple internships in writing.

"I'm a writer," she says. "A famous one, actually. Have you heard of 'Elephant'?"
I shake my head. "Now to the side," she says, as she pulls my right leg closer to the side of my chest and pushes down my left thigh with her knee. "Whew, this is a good workout for me too," she pauses to wipe her brow.

Then she goes on to tell me that she's been published under a pseudonym, JT Leroy. "It's performance art, they call it," she says. "I had my sister-in-law dressed in drag."

I switch legs and she helps me push my left leg into my chest now. So, she's a famous writer, I think, but I notice that I'm not flustered. Curious, but nonplussed.

"Actually, I was just thinking on my run about what it is to be a writer," I say. "I'm writing a story with my friend, and he started to recognize himself in my pieces and feel uncomfortable. He accused me of writing too directly about life, like it wasn't fiction, and I'm post-modern..."

She says that there was a whole scandal with the New York Times who accused her work of being fiction and incorrectly labeled. But she did grow up molested and went through an institution...

"There are no rules to fiction," she says, with the word "fuck" in there somewhere. Then she says, "It all funnels through you. Your soul flavors it."

It's her turn. She lays back down on the wall and I press my body into her, in the loving and violent act of pulling her leg to her face as she winces.

We exchange knowledge of stretches. I show her a partner stretch I know where one person sits with legs straight out while the other person lays back over them and grabs their heels. She really feels that one. She shows me how her trainer pulls her skull from the base of her neck and it feels simply amazing, and then she rubs my jaw and presses the pressure points of my hairline. I do the same to her, as she tells me more about books she's written and what she's working on and her son and her super German housemate named Uber.

When we're done and limber, she makes a call home. Most people, when they are about to get on their cell phone but they are still with someone in person, will say "Hold on" or "I'll see you later," or "Excuse me, one sec," but instead, this woman says, "Squat!"

I join her in bringing my feet together and crouching over my bent legs, while she calls home. "I'm at inspiration point getting inspired with a friend," she says over the phone, and then proceeds to make dinner plans. "Okay, in an hour, sounds great..." My breathing gets heavier and my legs start to feel like lead. My calves start to vibrate and my elbows feel stiff. Get me out of this squat, my legs squeal.

But I breathe and hang on. Then, still in the squat, she asks me for my phone number. She punches it in, and I eagerly await the last number so that we can get out of this squat. Finally, she has the last number punched. But, then she says she will call me and leave a missed call with her number. I wait, but then once it rings she lets it ring. Finally my voice mail picks up, and we wait through my voice message until the beep. Then, she starts singing, "Bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum. Hi! Bum, bum, bum... Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream... Ow. Okay. We're going to end this squat NOW."

I cackle. I have an eerie flash in the future of me hearing this moment from my phone some later moment in time. She briefly shows me pictures on her phone. Her ten year old son. Uber with a super wide grin. Grayscale pictures from a photo shoot last week for Playboy. Playboy?

"How does it feel to be in Playboy?" I ask.
"It's Playboy France," she qualifies.

Then we say our goodbyes, and she says we'll be in touch, and have a good run. I am off, my momentum rolling back down the hill, unraveling now from Inspiration Point.

I barreled my body on the couch. I don't know how to live outside of fiction.

On Jul 23, 2008, at 11:22 AM, Brad Oliver wrote:

Mel,

Seriously, though, your stories have been increasingly trending towards discussing and embellishing your own specific life experiences (especially current dramas) vis-a-vis fictionalizing vague references to your past experiences; I'm curious to know why this trend has led you here, to a point where your contribution read more like a cryptic personal message than it did a work of fiction, though to anyone besides myself, it would have read like an amazing piece of fiction...

Disclaimer: If my ego deceives me, and the person in reference is not myself, than disregard everything I just said.

"A post-modern journal, replaces the truth in a diary with something
truer…something truer than objective facts; a post-modern journal replaces dull facts with rich, intoxicating near-lies, or near-truths…"

Best,

-B

----------------------------------------------------------
"He caught me," she thought, as she read between the words in his email. She dilated her eyes at the screen for a moment and didn't breathe. Caught. This caught-feeling seized her, like when she was a little girl who had slapped her father, or when she stole her sister's sweater and then lied. She knew she did wrong, even though she prided herself as a person that has something right going on inside. So, caught, she takes a moment to scramble and sift through the pages of her mind.

And that's when she wonders, am I caught lying, or am I caught telling the truth? Does my face shiver and my cheeks flash and my mouth utter "uh" "but" "I'm just trying..." to excuse myself from my near-lies, or to duck from my outspoken expose trues, where all is relevant, disheveled and unshoveled with abandon?
He caught me, I thought, I am a shit writer. I'm not even a writer, just a liar or a notary.
Let me try writing fiction. It can only garnered by 2 means: (1) name mystical characters with dramatic plights, such as: "The devil went soaring over the hills to find the woman he would curse for the evening with his purple potion." or (2) be so random that it can't be followed, personifying inanimate objects and using verbs that aren't physically possible, such as: "The golfball went laughing down the hill, licking the blade of grass as it leapt, and burped right in the side of her face."

But I've probably lost you already, reader. Why should you care about me trying to be imaginative?
No. But life - like the way he tilted his head and squinted his eyes and said, "Naw, it's good," an hour ago - I could see it and feel it even though it was just his voice lighting up a corner inside my brain and body that recognized the way he moves when he says that phrase, and the way he looks back and blinks in a staccato to step back and listen and think.
What am I losing by being such a blatant liar? Am I so post-modern that I will kill my own life? Toying on the brink of reality, like a baby recklessly teeters on the sidewalk, where a dip of his feet will make him roadkill?

The caught-feeling unseized me. I started to surrender, so I could join its ranks and find out what it meant.
Life IS fiction, to me, I realized. My thoughts are in poetry, and people talk to me in quotes.
I don't know how to live outside of fiction. And as this realization came to me, my face unswelled. I barreled my body on the couch. Proud. Terrified. I don't know how to live outside of fiction.