Yesterday afternoon, while sitting in our “entertainment room” watching Jeopardy with mi novia and mi cuñada, I was struck by the amazing scope of knowledge of the television participants…and by the people sitting alongside me. How, I wondered, can the human brain be so flexible and so capable of storing such enormous amounts of facts, figures, and general information? My appreciation of the brain’s capacities goes well beyond the mere ability to recall information. Our brains do not simply store data. They also allow us to develop a deeper understanding of what the data tell us by interpreting and manipulating it. That means we can use our creativity to magnify the value and density of the data we absorb. Simply by dedicating mental energy to understanding relationships between the abstract and the concrete, we multiply the impact of exposure to information, as well as the practical application of that exposure. Sitting here at my desk, that concept seems remarkable. But, then, everything is.
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When I was hired by an association management company in Chicago in 1985, I was assigned a client I was to serve as executive director, the Association of Rotational Molders. Before my first day on the job, though, the association decided to contract with a different association management company. Perhaps that should have been a sign for me. Yet I did not read it that way. Things might have been very different had I seen matters through a different prism.
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Isolation imposes on us a cost, while simultaneously creating a barrier between us and the dangers of seclusion. Isolation separates us from the damage of being “too close” to harmful circumstances. The costs of isolation are counterbalanced by the reduction of the dangers that often accompany seclusion. It could take me pages and pages to adequately explain what I have just written; but the value of the explanation might never reach a point at which I think the explanation adequate. My head is spinning in confusion. I need to empty my mind of the chaos that has infected it for so long. Quiet stillness and softness, alone, can permit me to achieve the serenity I want and need.
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Sometimes, I feel like I am at the point of breaking; shattering into thousands of brittle, sharp fragments. Yet I do not know whether such a “coming undone” would be a good or a bad thing. If I were to splinter in such a way, I might be forced to form a new entity; possibly an entity that would have no remnants of its chaotic foundational roots. On the other hand, I might discover that the fracture left only dust and debris—the same composition as before, just more distorted and unsatisfactory. No matter what followed, though, a web of jagged, tangled nerves and a mist of confusion probably would envelope me. Years ago, I watched a television movie called The Shout, starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, and John Hurt. I feel like I am the title character of the film (the shout, claimed by Bates), who claims he can kill a person with a mystical shout. No, that’s not quite how I feel; I feel like the dark energy that channels the horrible sound and its destructive power. But I cannot know that’s how I feel, can I? Why, I wonder, does that crippling darkness seem like it lives alongside me; occupying the same brain, the same space, the same timeframe, and the same disturbing proximity to both my surface and my substance?
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The pills, the chemo, the radiation, the distance between who and where I am, and a thousand other factors cover me, as if I have been dropped into a tank filled with white flour. I only imagine that is how I feel; new realities have nothing against which they can be compared, so we can only create artificial experiences. Nothing new can he experienced entirely on its own. We compare and contrast what was to what may be or may become.
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Sleep. Again. That must be the answer. Even without knowing the question, I think sleep must be the answer. We shall see, sha’n’t we?
Phaedra is hungry, she claims. She wants food and attention. I have given her both. I hope she finds them sufficient.
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