How many people will get to this entry by googling cancer, and then be mad at me?

There's been lots of things going on recently, but mostly they're things I'm thinking about to myself, so not like anything real. I've been vaguely following politics and you know, have quick vague anger about. I think my body is just resting up from the struggle of the last decade. It's like recovering from cancer. After chemo, your body needs to refuel and get its strength back before it can muster up a second attack. See, in this scenario your body is trying to kill itself rather than involve itself deeply in the mire of ridiculousness and hopelessness that is politics.



It's been beautiful outside, so I guess that's good. For a few days everything was swollen and really really green, which kind of reminded me of Akira in slow motion, or really more like if there were tiny sentient jelly drop aliens growing like fish spawn inside all the plants. Then there was the news story about the oldest gas blob we've ever seen, and stories about seeing back in time to the universe's creation always freak me the fuck out.

There was an interview on NPR yesterday. Terri was talking to this mega-neuroscientist who wrote a book about when she had a stroke, and she called it "My Stroke of Insight" which I thought was an incredibly well thought out title. I think I look at neuro-scientists like rockstars, it's a total turn on. And I think of rockstars as assholes, which is not. Even Weezer. So she's talking about how when she had her stroke, she was incredibly aware of everything that was happening to her brain, because that's what she does for a living after all. She said it was like feeling the left hemisphere of your brain detaching, and your brain fighting to keep it. But every time she stopped fighting, she would drift into this state of pure disassociative euphoria, where she was completely in the present moment and could draw nothing from past experience or form any words. And she would bounce back and forth between this extremely painful clarity as her brain tried to survive, and this enormously beautiful nothingness/everythingness.



I think that really sounds like a description of Nirvana, escaping the cycle of suffering and being one with the universe. Having no emotions or desire. Deathlessness. So what if Buddhism as a religion, which is as different from the other major religions as Russian is from the Romantics, what if it started because Siddartha suffered from a stroke? Or multiple strokes? I know, I would have thought seizures first too. But the experience she describes, which is basically a near death experience, is very different. When she first started talking, I almost turned the channel cause she had one of those East Coast accents that drive me batshit. But as she started getting into the recalling of the stroke, this new tone of reverence entered her voice, and she became almost hushed and awed. With a very professional overtone.

I love when really really smart articulate people are amazed by something and tell you about it. There's almost nothing better.

Now yes, I could explore this idea of religion founded on strokes further. I could devote hours to it. I could thoroughly research it and learn new things about neurology and brain mapping and mythology. What a time sink. How do people ever figure out which one idea is important enough to them to invest everything in it?

I guess, if I wanted, I could probably commit to unicorns.