Conduits
I had a daydream in O'Hare this morning. I had nowhere to go for several hours and was watching fellow travelers walk by on the concourse. Then, I imagined putting on a pair of glasses that allowed me to see, in every person that went by, a visual representation of all of the emotional connections that they've made - a profusion of conduits. The conduits were long lines that started in a person's chest and spread out all over the globe, each one ending in the chest of someone he or she cared about. Sometimes I thought the conduits looked like a shaft of light in a dusty room, sometimes they looked like worn, rusted wires. Sometimes the conduits would pulse or beat. Some were bright and vibrant, others more ethereal and hard to make out, like a star you can barely see. But they were all taut and numerous.
I thought about what the world would look like through these glasses. Two people exchange glances across a room for the first time, and a new conduit reaches out across the space between them. A couple in a bar gets into an argument and their conduit withers. A friend lives far away and their conduit runs through the earth. Someone drops a loved one off at the airport, and one of their conduits makes an arc across the sky. An airplane would have thousands of conduits sticking out of it, almost like it was tethered to the planet. A wedding would be beautiful, like a tree or a spot of cortex - a galaxy of conduits. An airport would look more sparse - more people on their own, with their own separate galaxies.
What would it look like when a person died? Would all of their conduits get intensely bright? Or would they flicker a bit, and go out? I couldn't decide.
It occured to me that, as a brain researcher, I might rather the conduits terminate in the brain. But I decided that my daydream's choice of anatomy was due to the heart's role as a life force and traditional location for love or the soul. As much as I love and respect and am in awe of the brain, I can't deny that the strongest emotional moments are punctuated by that feeling in the chest, like someone is clutching your aorta (I could go on about the connection between emotions and physiological reactions, but this is already pretty long and that's not my bag). And like these conduits, the heart is always there, pumping away, but we very rarely pay it any attention.
My grandfather died this morning. I found out when I landed in Chicago. We knew this had been coming for awhile, but no one expected him to hang on as long as he did. He was a strong man, and if he hadn't smoked earlier in his life, could have easily been around to see great-grandchildren. I'm going back to Iowa in a couple of days for the funeral, which I'm actually looking forward to, a little bit, since perhaps I'll find out more of what he was like a as younger man. I only really knew him as old and sick. The last few years, in particular, got pretty hard, so everyone's sadness is tinged by a bit of relief.
My flight to Nashville was delayed a couple of times, so I sat there in Concourse C, watching people rush by, when this daydream came to me. I was listening to Sufjan Stevens' album "Illinois" over and over again, especially "Casimir Pulaski Day."
Epilogue: On the flight to Nashville, I was sitting next to a guy who got out his laptop and started reading a NYT article about the plane crash in Kentucky earlier this morning. I found this simultaneously creepy and morbidly funny, seeing that we were on the exact same plane, in the same part of the country, experiencing heavy turbulence. I hate regional jets - I've never had a pleasant experience on them. But I did see some of the most amazing clouds on the approach. We were coming down through some thunderclouds and seemed to flying through vast, secret vaults inside clouds. Some were dark, others were brilliantly lit by the sun. This seems completely hokey, but damn, some of those clouds were straight out of a stained-glass version of heaven. But was almost more striking was how secret this view was. I wondered - am I crazy? Is anyone else here seeing this?
I thought about what the world would look like through these glasses. Two people exchange glances across a room for the first time, and a new conduit reaches out across the space between them. A couple in a bar gets into an argument and their conduit withers. A friend lives far away and their conduit runs through the earth. Someone drops a loved one off at the airport, and one of their conduits makes an arc across the sky. An airplane would have thousands of conduits sticking out of it, almost like it was tethered to the planet. A wedding would be beautiful, like a tree or a spot of cortex - a galaxy of conduits. An airport would look more sparse - more people on their own, with their own separate galaxies.
What would it look like when a person died? Would all of their conduits get intensely bright? Or would they flicker a bit, and go out? I couldn't decide.
It occured to me that, as a brain researcher, I might rather the conduits terminate in the brain. But I decided that my daydream's choice of anatomy was due to the heart's role as a life force and traditional location for love or the soul. As much as I love and respect and am in awe of the brain, I can't deny that the strongest emotional moments are punctuated by that feeling in the chest, like someone is clutching your aorta (I could go on about the connection between emotions and physiological reactions, but this is already pretty long and that's not my bag). And like these conduits, the heart is always there, pumping away, but we very rarely pay it any attention.
My grandfather died this morning. I found out when I landed in Chicago. We knew this had been coming for awhile, but no one expected him to hang on as long as he did. He was a strong man, and if he hadn't smoked earlier in his life, could have easily been around to see great-grandchildren. I'm going back to Iowa in a couple of days for the funeral, which I'm actually looking forward to, a little bit, since perhaps I'll find out more of what he was like a as younger man. I only really knew him as old and sick. The last few years, in particular, got pretty hard, so everyone's sadness is tinged by a bit of relief.
My flight to Nashville was delayed a couple of times, so I sat there in Concourse C, watching people rush by, when this daydream came to me. I was listening to Sufjan Stevens' album "Illinois" over and over again, especially "Casimir Pulaski Day."
Epilogue: On the flight to Nashville, I was sitting next to a guy who got out his laptop and started reading a NYT article about the plane crash in Kentucky earlier this morning. I found this simultaneously creepy and morbidly funny, seeing that we were on the exact same plane, in the same part of the country, experiencing heavy turbulence. I hate regional jets - I've never had a pleasant experience on them. But I did see some of the most amazing clouds on the approach. We were coming down through some thunderclouds and seemed to flying through vast, secret vaults inside clouds. Some were dark, others were brilliantly lit by the sun. This seems completely hokey, but damn, some of those clouds were straight out of a stained-glass version of heaven. But was almost more striking was how secret this view was. I wondered - am I crazy? Is anyone else here seeing this?