Thirst

~Thirst~

Deborah Mattingly 
from
Selected Stories from Scroll in Space: 2003-2013
paperback available at Amazon


Kline was walking the plank again. As he fell, something whispered: salt water... trolling tentacles... the swarming gold, shimmering. But these weren't fish he saw as the whisper lost its voice. Instead, he was staring up into the branches of a tree, light filtering down in licks of dappled honey, a breeze blowing through them.

There was an odd sound, almost a gasp. Turning to look, he saw his beloved Cadillac. Sitting on its side some fortunate distance from him, it burst into flame.

Pure reflex took him, and he was on his feet, spewing eff-ings, hell-tides—all he could do besides watch from behind his splayed fingers. Helpless in her death throes, his Caddie clenched a fat oak, exuberant torrents of gold and red hissing through her windows.

He amazed himself by laughing, laughing so hard it sat him down in the grass. There was his car, hell's blazing chariot of untold agony, and here he stood unscathed! Much would be made of this with the pious hypocrites he worked with, those whining seatbelts-lovers and their precious regulations.

He rubbed his neck. It was coming back now. Flashes of the bacchanalian lunch, the long ride home...

There was a rustle behind him. A child... her eyes like morning's first light. "Drink," she said, holding up a brimming goblet.

Kline leaned over her, wondering that she'd come out of nowhere and finding her so pretty that he almost forgot his car. "Why, darlin, what you doing out of school? Playin' hooky?"

"Drink," she repeated, holding out her cup. Her gown shimmered where the sun hit it, her gaze too sharp for a child's.

His eyes narrowed. Straightening his sport coat, he glanced around. His car had settled down to smoking fiercely, and he noticed something in the grass beside it. As he approached it, he saw it was a man dressed in the same bile green he always wore. The face was dusky and bloated; the legs and arms bent strangely.

A wave of nausea ploughed through him as he discerned the blank, staring eyes, and a phrase began repeating in his head: beyond all hope. A million thoughts came racing—liability, who it was, why the sorry devil was even in his car.

One thought jolted him. Was he drunk? Of course, he didn't get drunk as such, but that didn't mean there hadn't been some interaction between his cold pill and that Long Island Tea he'd had for dessert. Or maybe one of his so-called friends had dosed him, one of those funny pills they were too scared to slip a girl.

Well, the sons of bitches!

Again came the whisper of the child's gown. "Drink. Drink now."

Wrenching the goblet from her small hands, he looked into it. Water, it held. Nothing but water.

He snorted. "What is this?" With a snap of his wrist he broadcasted the contents across the grass. "Here's your goddam cup, sweetie. Now go on home." Shoving it back at her, he turned away.

A voice, theatrical and refined, came from behind him: "Mr. Kline. Please reconsider."

He twisted around. The child was gone, and standing over the corpse was a man dressed in a frock coat, dark poet's locks fringing his high forehead.

"Who the hell are you?"

The stranger bowed his head, a triangle of moustache shadowing lips grave and tremulous. "Poe is my name. Edgar Poe. In truth, Mr. Allan never saw fit to adopt me." Kneeling down, he closed the cadaver's eyes. "Mr. Kline, I understand how very difficult this is to absorb, but I implore you. You must drink. It's only a matter of time."

Poe rose, the cup in his hand glinting as it swung slowly over the grass, retrieving the scattered water in a rainbow of prismatic droplets.

"Sweet jeezes. How the hell did you do that?"

"Please. Accept the cup. Even now there gathers the faint phosphoric radiance of decay. The charnel ethers."

Kline barked a laugh. Staring at him--his strangeness--he shook his head. "It's some trick. Some sort of trick."

Poe's eyes flashed. "Hapless friend, I commiserate. It is far, far easier to fathom the slow putrefaction of disease, the body uninhabitable, the realization coming mercifully in inches. But this—" He motioned to the body. "This is all too sudden."

"Crazy goddamn—"

"Wait! I shall show you." Setting the cup in the grass, he bent over the body, pulling up one of its sleeves. He took a quill pen from his pocket, and looking up to see that Kline watched, drove the sharp tip deep into the body's forearm. Kline screamed as it seemed to sear into his own flesh. "There!" Poe smiled up at him. "There, you see! You are still time-bound. See thusly." Once again he stabbed the corpse; once again Kline howled. "And again—"

"Stop!" Kline reached out to stay Poe's hand. "You crazy bastard!"

Poe's face shone up at him. "The correspondence is yet unbroken, the silver cord not yet forever loosed! Oh, Mr. Kline! It will grow worse. The eyes will spill grey and yellow, the blood will ooze black and foul—the conquering worm will—"

"You shut the hell up." Kline pushed him away and hunkered down in his place, horrified, yet fascinated. Cautiously, he ran his finger along the cool corpse cheek... and felt the sensation lightly on his own. He repeated the movement, hard enough to know it wasn't imagined. "No!" He fell back in the grass. "No, it can't be!"

"The cup." Poe held the goblet out. "Drink and be done."

But Kline only scrabbled up, heading blindly for the road. He'd gone only a few yards when he felt a jab searing into his thigh. He screamed as it repeated.

The abrupt emergence of a man in his path stopped him cold. "Mr. Kline," the man said, taking a pipe from his mouth. "My good Mr. Kline. A word." He smiled a twitchy smile, his eyes crinkling as he leaned forward on his walking stick. Tall and thin, he was dressed in an Inverness cape and deerstalker cap.

Clasping his other thigh, Kline let out a yelp. "Stop it! Goddamn poof faggot FIEND!"

"That's enough, Edgar," the man called back to Poe. "He gets the point." He smoothed his lips as if to repress a delicate smile. "Now, Mr. Kline, a word, yes?"

Kline replied by picking up his pace, limping past him—only to find the tall man back in his path.

"Allow me to introduce myself. Sherlock Holmes, unofficial consulting detective." He clicked his heels. "There is a logic to this, Mr. Kline. Shall we not discuss it? Hm?"

"Logic, hell." Kline pushed on—and found him back in his trajectory no matter which way he turned.

And Sherlock just kept talking. "Logic, sir. Do not Mr. Poe and I hold some certain sway with you? As I recall, we were the deep-seated fixations of your youth—all those glorious late nights under the bedclothes with book and flashlight. Such things tend to sustain, hold court, if you will, in the psyche."

"No shit, Sherlock. And I'm making Mr. Congeniality stab me with his goddamn quill. I'll tell you what's logical. None of this is happening. It's a drink and a cold pill."

"Now, now. Was not Mr. Poe's information demonstrated most empirically? As for his behavior, I vouch that he is a gentle soul, though the victim of infelicitous biographers. Indeed, I owe Mr. Poe my very existence. Was I not modeled on his illustrious C. Auguste Dupin?"

"Whatever." Kline scowled, limping and wanting to sit down. "Just like I'm making you up."

"You have indeed dredged us up, true enough. But once we loom into consciousness, we take on a life of our own. The fact is Mr. Poe and I have become abiding residents in the land of instinctual phantasm."

"Goody for you. Psychobabble shit."

Holmes pursed his thin lips and put his cane across Kline's chest like a railroad guard. "Stop. Heed a moment—for your own good, man."

Staring him down, Kline pushed the cane away and crossed his arms. "You got exactly thirty seconds. Asshole."

Sherlock smiled. "Very well. Let's scrutinize your senses. They are your means of defining the real, are they not? And what do they tell you?"

"Like I said: one bad trip."

"Again you are unfortunate in your thinking. You are not drugged, Mr. Kline. You are dead. Dead as a door nail."

"Well that's pretty funny since I don't believe in the afterlife."

Watching him, Holmes took a puff on his pipe, exhaling a swirling ring of smoke. "Don't you?"

"Hell-no! Science retired the Supreme Being to the Happy Hunting Ground some time ago." He swaggered, planting his feet. Whatever the trip was, it made him high. Acid, most likely. He'd read about it. The kind the Feds put on your steering wheel when they were setting you up. "You're a man of Science, Sherlock. Surely you don't believe in fairytales, having been one yourself."

"Remnants, gleanings of the Viennese positivism." Sherlock shook his head, lips smiling tight across large teeth. "You overestimate Science, Mr. Kline. It's a method for making models based on the logical augmentation of sensorial input. Science surmises, extrapolates, but always from that same base. Its scope is limited because senses are limited. Not very much with which to approach the Great Mysteries, is it? That which contrived Time along with Space and Light. In truth, we know very little. Any true scientist will tell you that. Oh, we know how to work a few spells, but not where anything ultimately comes from. Science isn't reality, Mr. Kline. It's a tool, not a belief system."

"Why don't you just conjure up Einstein and let him explain all that to me."

Holmes raised an eyebrow. "I'm not the one conjuring today, Mr. Kline."

Poe called to them. "Make haste! By perdition, the body's breaking down—the lungs putrefactive. O magnificent black blood!"

Holmes rushed to Poe's side, summoning Kline to follow. And Kline followed slowly, feeling sapped. "Oh, what now?"

"I shall tell you. Something is indeed afoot. Time and Space are in flux here on the cusp of Eternity," Holmes explained as he investigated the corpse. "Events tend to leap ahead in a most unpredictable manner." He pointed his walking stick at Kline. "It seems your time, sir, is almost up."

"I'm so damned dead, who CARES?"

Poe looked up with impassioned eyes. "You will. You will care, my friend! You will rue the day you were born, curse your very existence, when the flesh falls from bone and you are still trapped inside!"

"Edgar," Holmes said softly with a finger to his lips. "No histrionics. Besides, he doesn't listen." He nodded toward Kline who appeared to be heading for the inviting shade of a tree.

Poe cried out, running after him. "No, you mustn't sleep! You must choose!"

"Oh, get lost, will you." Kline plopped down. "You give me the creeps. Besides, you don't exist."

Poe fell to his knees, hands raised toward the sky. "O! For a voice to speak! Any horror but this! Holmes, Holmes, we must do something—"

"Shush. Edgar... let us think with our heads, not our ardor, hm? But you are quite correct. He declines with rapidity." Holmes was inspecting the body's wallet as he spoke, studying the receipts and plastic cards. "There's just no reasoning with this one. He's the law-and-order type. He takes the metaphor in place of the meaning. I rather doubt that he's ever thought deeply about anything. But he does have prejudices. Oh yes... opinions of a very strong nature. Of those, he is quite sure."

Poe wiped his eye with the back of his hand. "There—there must be something that will move him to resolution. A memory? A symbol? Something he fixates upon—as he did us."

Holmes was concentrating, a look of sheer determination in his narrowing eyes. He tapped the side of his nose. "Bingo!" With a wink at Poe, he briskly walked to where Kline reposed. "My!" Holmes smiled, filling his lungs with fresh air. "But wouldn't that long branch next to you make an excellent shepherd's staff. Why, it looks just like... an Egyptian snake."

"Hate snakes." Kline yawned.

"And just imagine if it could turn into a cobra... and begin to fight with the other snaky looking staffs in the vicinity." With this, Holmes lunged and parried about with his walking stick. "And those stones—" Holmes pointed. "Those tablets of stone there almost look like they have symbols carved on them. Perhaps... Hebrew?"

"Shut up, Sherlock. Go find Jack the Ripper."

"And this shrubbery, here, in the sunlight." He held out his arms toward it. "Why, it looks so very like... a burning bush!"

With these last words, the sky grew dark. The winds blew, and thunder rumbled in the distance. And there came into the clearing a man dressed in gold-trimmed mahogany robes, a great staff in his right hand, two super reference-work sized stone tablets in his mighty clutches. From his head flowed long white hair, bouffant and full around his face. His nose was aquiline, his eyes staring, his beard blowing long and silvery.

"Who IS this, Holmes?" whispered Poe as they watched Kline prostrate himself before the dazzling fellow. "Moses?"

Sherlock's face crinkled, a satyr's grin. "Not exactly. An actor playing at Moses. A Mr. Charlton Heston. In the deep recesses of his mind Kline thinks of him as God!"

"Have mercy!" Kline groveled before the figure. "I believe! Praise God, I believe!"

"But Holmes," Poe whispered again, the wind blowing back his hair. "Why does Kline accept him as real when we were regarded as apparitions?"

"Elementary. It's his appropriateness, given the situation. And besides, Mr. Heston looks so very magnificent."

Poe agreed, a momentary smile passing over his face.

Holmes took the cup and went forward, nodding appreciatively to Heston who spread his splendid arms to the sky. It rumbled with omnipotent thunder. "WHO BETTER TO LEAD YOU TO THE PROMISED LAND?" crowed Heston, his voice echoing across the firmament.

"My good Mr. Kline." Holmes leaned down to tap Kline's shoulder. "Come, Mr. Kline. Be a good chap. Take the cup."

Kline looked up with wild eyes. "I see the light!" he said with the greatest conviction.

"Of course you do. Now, cheers. Bottoms up."

Poe flung down next to Kline, eye to eye. "Drink of the water that quenches all thirst—Over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow—Ride, boldly ride!"

He looked to Heston, who again threw his arms to the bombastic heavens, and Kline grasped the cup. Putting it to his lips, he hesitated. "What will happen?"

"Sweet forgetting," Poe said with great affection. "Time will release you back to the bosom of Eternity, from which you came."

"Will—it hurt?"

Poe shook his head. "Pain is part of Creativity. It only exists within Time."

When Kline still hesitated, Holmes sighed, taking a small piece of laminated paper from his pocket. "Mr. Kline, I took the liberty of keeping hold of your driver's license. I see it lists you as an organ donor."

Poe was nodding. "In these circumstances, there is always an autopsy."

With a great gasp, Kline took the cup to his lips—drinking it in, and finding ecstasy in doing it. When he drained it dry, it fell from his hand—

A small girl dressed in an iridescent grown came to pick it up. She was greeted by a gentle breeze, a country meadow, and silence. As she walked into the sunlight—past the immolated car and the body in the sweet spring grass—she sparkled and flashed, became stardust, and disappeared.

-

aspecta medusa:

This was our favorite at the Passion and Pathos exhibit.

Bronze medallion of Athena Promachos, wearing a helmet in
the form of Medusa's head and the aegis over her left shoulder.
A decoration from a formal chariot used for parades. Possibly
from a workshop in Delos, 2nd century BC.
Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum.

More about this figure below

Andromeda, by Perseus sav'd and wed,
Hanker'd each day to see the Gorgon's head:
Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,

And mirror'd in the wave was safely seen
That death she liv'd by.
Let not thine eyes know
Any forbidden thing itself, although
It once should save as well as kill: but be
Its shadow upon life enough for thee.~DGRossetti's poem.

Which means, in the neo-platonic-speak of depth psychology:
The Medusa, one of three sisters originally, beautiful, a priestess in the Temple of Athena; that is, a beautiful mortal in the sacred sphere (a temple being the eye of the polis) of Wisdom. And Beauty is the direct apprehension of the Good, the pure Being of the stillpoint (the exact center of a sphere, which is unmoved even as the whole turns); an aspect, or rather a reflection of the perfect, the divine, the One: Things that can "exist" only outside of time. Things Eternal, timeless as in without time -- and thus, dangerous to look at directly... Not something that can belong to the (time-bound) mortal. So of course the earth shaker comes to shake things up: Poseidon, a god who goes back before Homer. And he rapes the priestess right there in the temple. And the goddess of Wisdom punishes her for it. Was it her fault, being a carrier of things outside of time? She, a virgin priestess, servant of that wisdom? No, not her fault any more than it is ours to be vessels of consciousness who apprehend the immortal, a thing we cannot have (which in platonic-speak summons eros: desire, mover of "the sun and all the stars"). Medusa suffers the loss of her beauty as we must suffer death. She becomes a creature no mortal can look upon -- the mysteries as they truly are: eternal, belonging outside of time. To violate this is to be an abomination (calling down destruction, see similar fate in Actaeon Surprising Diana), and that is her face with the snakes for hair, snakes that crawl in and out of darkness, writhing and unnatural in the world of time and space, one end in the light and the other in the dark unconscious. Yet -- snakes also are healers, sacred to Asclepius.

She, Medusa, a symbol, terror itself, and creature of our most profound pity. She, our own self, each of us, forced to live with the knowledge that we will suffer death. And so Perseus comes as a resolution. Again, he is each of us, taught and armed by the psychopomp Hermes, slicing off Medusa's head (think chakras) without directly looking at her (fearless!), precipitating the higher birth of Pegasus -- imagination. Pegasus who soars, tended by muses, pawing the earth and setting the deep springs to flow: art itself. Pegasus, winged horse, beloved, an eros who moved it all from the beginning
 https://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=41471

reaching back beyond all this, see http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/classes/finALp.html ,  http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2007/2007-04-61.html

And -- what a gift -- find Joan Marler's wonderful in- depth academic discussion here:

https://www.academia.edu/12140128/An_Archaeomythological_Investigation_of_the_Gorgon

An Archaeomythological Investigation of the Gorgon

The figure of the Gorgon Medusa, slain by the Greek hero Perseus, has lived in the Western imagination for more than 2500 years. Who is she, and how and when did she appear, and why was she decapitated? This complex image that spread throughout the

ACADEMIA.EDU

See also Chrysaor, Geryon, Edinger, Eros

 For Pallas is Sophia or Wisdom, who carries health in her right hand and riches in her left, providing at the same time both for man's ease and plenty. To Her Perseus brought the head of Medusa which turned all thinges into Stone, and was horrid in its appearance with serpents and vipers instead of Hairs; which she afterwards placed in her shield to use it against her Enemyes, that is to say Rude and Barbarous people who are therefore to be turned into Stones. And in truth Wisdom or Naturall Philosophye renders its incredulous and envious condemners quite stupid and void of sense and understanding by the means of that same thinge, from whence Chrysaor was borne who was the father of Geryon who had three bodyes. That is by the means of the Lapiditick Gorgonian blood, which is nothing else but the Tincture of the Philosophick Stone. ~ Atalantafugiens, emblem 23

dreaming of Apollo in Nice, circumambulating

I googled the above impulsively to ask its AI for its response (see below). My response? Amazed to see AI is learning. But should we be surprised, when life comes out of rocks, that it's the nature of the Cosmos / Higgs Field? Stay tuned.   

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The dream of Apollo circumambulating in Nice brings together powerful symbols of art, reason, sacred ritual, and a specific geographical location to suggest a personal journey of enlightenment and finding one's center. The specific imagery can be interpreted through elements from Greek mythology, Jungian psychology, and the cultural context of the French city.

Apollo: The god of illumination and order

As a dream figure, the Greek god Apollo represents the following principles:

• Rationality and prophecy: The god of the Delphic Oracle, Apollo symbolizes knowledge and the ability to perceive truth. His presence in a dream can signify a quest for understanding, whether about your life, a situation, or a creative project.
• Arts and healing: Apollo governs music, poetry, and healing, representing the power of creative expression and finding harmony. Dreaming of him may point to a new artistic inspiration or a journey toward physical or emotional healing.
• Balance and moderation: Apollo is frequently seen as a figure of moderation and order, in contrast to the wilder nature of Dionysus. His appearance might suggest a need for more balance, reason, and discipline in your waking life.

Nice: The city of victory and the sun

The setting of the dream in Nice is particularly significant because the city itself has layers of meaning that connect directly to the dream's themes.

• City of victory: Named Nikaia by its Greek founders after the goddess of victory, Nike, Nice connects to a sense of triumph and success. This aspect suggests a successful outcome for your personal or creative journey.
• Presence of Apollo: The city's Place Masséna features the Fontaine du Soleil (Sun Fountain), which has a prominent statue of Apollo. The statue's history of being removed and later reinstated can symbolize a struggle to find—or an eventual return to—your central, harmonious self.

Circumambulating: The quest for the center

In spiritual and psychological terms, circumambulation—the act of walking around a sacred object or space—is a powerful ritual with several possible meanings.

• The path to the center: In Carl Jung's analytical psychology, circumambulation is a process of centering oneself and integrating one's personality. It is a meditative circling of the "Self," the inner source of wholeness, that moves closer to understanding and wisdom.
• Spiritual progress: In many religious traditions, from Buddhism to Hinduism, circumambulating a sacred space is an act of respect and devotion that cleanses and revitalizes the spirit.
• Ritualistic journey: The circular, repetitive motion of circumambulation can signify an important journey of transformation. It is a quest that is not a straight line but one that repeatedly returns to a central, sacred point.

Dream interpretation

Bringing these elements together, the dream could be interpreted as the following message from your subconscious:

• A personal pilgrimage: You are undertaking a personal journey of enlightenment and self-discovery. The dream in Nice, with its historical ties to victory and the physical presence of Apollo, frames this quest in a positive, almost destined light.
• Centering your creative energy: The circumambulation of Apollo, the god of the arts, suggests a focused, ritualistic process of developing or reconnecting with your creative self. You may be circling around a central creative idea, patiently allowing it to reveal its full potential.
• Seeking inner balance: Your dream may be calling you to find your own balanced, rational center (represented by Apollo) in the midst of life's daily chaos. The meditative, circular act is the method, while Apollo represents the ideal state of clarity and harmony you are seeking.
• Reclaiming your inner sun: Much like Nice's Apollo statue, which was reinstated after being removed, the dream could signify a return to your own radiant, central self. The dream indicates that a lost or buried aspect of your creativity or inner truth is ready to be restored.

AI responses may include mistakes.

notes: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated

by Robert M. Sapolsky
See this book on Amazon.com


my take: (style influenced by the breathlessly wondrous Sapolsky)

Yes, it's all about the zebras, their lack of affinity for ulcers.

Yes, the book is a truly amazing (amusing, exhausting) chronicle of social- / neuro- biology, what we have learned / surmised / imagined about the nervous system, its basic anatomy / physiology and the way stress affects it (as well as the rest of the body, social group, culture, world) both short and long term (talk about consequences!); the related manipulative / corrective strategies of pharma, physicians, general and psycho-neurologists, clinical psychologists, arm-chair psychologists, alpha-baboons (executives), sociologists, artists, partners, healers, rumor-mongers, and general purveyors of social capital; the sociology, changing views, solutions. Genetics: questions of cause / effect, relationships, heritability, the future re medicine / sociology / profits to made, heading off disasters of exuberant approach. Principles ("Homeostasis is about tinkering with this valve or that gizmo. Allostasis is about the brain coordinating body-wide changes, often including changes in behavior"). How all this resonates, from/through microscopic to footed-creatures, with a special fixation on humans. All that. Important, wonderful and often course-correcting stuff. (Source, myth, questions of how and why things get mangled.) Politics, geopolitics, (Biopolitics?) .... the idea (quaint, being that of one mid 19 C physician Rudolph Virchow) that "Medicine is social science, and politics nothing but medicine on a large scale... Physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor." The factors / considerations about how poverty might affect all this, and the important (spun, remembered, neglected) corollaries of how attitude, social and personal, might (rich, poor) be surprisingly / cynically relative.

All this. Delivered with humor and humility, questions ever begetting questions. ("Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.")

Sapolsky really is one of my heroes.

But what I really learned from this book is exactly (especially the last paragraph) what I need to learn and apply. To ME. From his conclusion:

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Sometimes, coping with stress consists of blowing down walls. But sometimes it consists of being a blade of grass, buffeted and bent by the wind but still standing when the wind is long gone. Stress is not everywhere. Every twinge of dysfunction in our bodies is not a manifestation of stress-related disease. It is true that the real world is full of bad things that we can finesse away by altering our outlook and psychological makeup, but it is also full of awful things that cannot be eliminated by a change in attitude, no matter how heroically, fervently, complexly, or ritualistically we may wish. Once we are actually sick with the illness, the fantasy of which keeps us anxiously awake at two in the morning, the things that will save us have little to do with the content of this book. Once we have that cardiac arrest, once a tumor has metastasized, once our brain has been badly deprived of oxygen, little about our psychological outlook is likely to help. We have entered the realm where someone else—a highly trained physician—must use the most high-tech of appropriate medical interventions. 

These caveats must be emphasized repeatedly in teaching what cures to seek and what attributions to make when confronted with many diseases. But amid this caution, there remains a whole realm of health and disease that is sensitive to the quality of our minds—our thoughts and emotions and behaviors. And sometimes whether or not we become sick with the diseases that frighten us at two in the morning will reflect this realm of the mind. It is here that we must turn from the physicians and their ability to clean up the mess afterward and recognize our own capacity to prevent some of these problems beforehand in the small steps with which we live our everyday lives. 

Perhaps I’m beginning to sound like your grandmother, advising you to be happy and not to worry so much. This advice may sound platitudinous, trivial, or both. But change the way even a rat perceives its world, and you dramatically alter the likelihood of its getting a disease. These ideas are no mere truisms. They are powerful, potentially liberating forces to be harnessed. As a physiologist who has studied stress for many years, I clearly see that the physiology of the system is often no more decisive than the psychology. We return to the catalogue at the beginning of the first chapter, the things we all find stressful—traffic jams, money worries, overwork, the anxieties of relationships. Few of them are “real” in the sense that that zebra or that lion would understand. In our privileged lives, we are uniquely smart enough to have invented these stressors and uniquely foolish enough to have let them, too often, dominate our lives. Surely we have the potential to be uniquely wise enough to banish their stressful hold. 

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It's the wisdom of Sophocles: Bend, not break.

(and live to fight another day.)

Aha.

Yes -- he's on youtube and Ted.

This is the last lecture -- if you get time, watch it, even if just from 38 minutes on. The whole great wisdom of perspective and tolerance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PpDq1WUtAw&feature=player_embedded#!

The original baboon stress doc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eYG0ZuTv5rs

Ted:

http://www.ted.com/speakers/robert_sapolsky.html


Best, Deborah
Shared Notes & Highlights

Shared Notes & Highlights

300

1. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   People with a strong internal locus of control (in other words, people who think they are the masters of their own ship—that what goes on around them reflects their actions) have far greater stress-responses than do those with external loci when confronted with something uncontrollable. This is a particular risk for the elderly (especially elderly men) as life generates more and more things beyond their control. As we will see in the final chapter, there is even a personality type whose tendency to internalize control in the face of bad, uncontrollable things greatly increases the risk of a particular disease.

   1 month ago
2. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   We have now seen some interesting contrasts between glucocorticoids and the catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine). Chapter 2 emphasized how the former defend you against stressors by handing out guns from the gun locker within seconds, in contrast to glucocorticoids, which defend you by constructing new weapons over the course of minutes to hours. Or there can be an elaboration of this time course, in which catecholamines mediate the response to a current stressor while glucocorticoids mediate preparation for the next stressor. When it comes to psychiatric disorders, it seems that increases in the catecholamines have something to do with still trying to cope and the effort that involves, where overabundance of glucocorticoids seems more of a signal of having given up on attempting to cope.

   1 month ago
3. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   Joseph LeDoux of New York University, who pretty much put the amygdala on the map when it comes to anxiety, has constructed a remarkable model out of these findings. Suppose a major traumatic stressor occurs, of a sufficient magnitude to disrupt hippocampal function while enhancing amygdaloid function. At some later point, in a similar setting, you have an anxious, autonomic state, agitated and fearful, and you haven’t a clue why—this is because you never consolidated memories of the event via your hippocampus while your amygdala-mediated autonomic pathways sure as hell remember. This is a version of free-floating anxiety.

   1 month ago
4. 
   

   Deborah Conner: Continue below

   Toward the end of the first chapter, I voiced a caveat—when I discuss a way in which stress can make you sick, that is merely shorthand for discussing how stress can make you more likely to get diseases that make you sick. That was basically a first pass at a reconciliation between two very different camps that think about poor health. At one extreme, you have the mainstream medical crowd that is concerned with reductive biology. For them, poor health revolves around issues of bacteria, viruses, genetic mutations, and so on. At the other extreme are the folks anchored in mind-body issues, for whom poor health is about psychological stress, lack of control and efficacy, and so on. A lot of this book has, as one of its goals, tried to develop further links between those two viewpoints. This has come in the form of showing how sensitive reductive biology can be to some of those psychological factors, and exploring the mechanisms that account for this. And it has come in the form of criticizing the extremes of both camps: on the one hand, trying to make clear how limiting it is to believe that humans can ever be reduced to a DNA sequence, and on the other, trying to indicate the damaging idiocy of denying the realities of human physiology and disease. The ideal resolution harks back to the wisdom of Herbert Weiner, as discussed in chapter 8, that disease, even the most reductive of diseases, cannot be appreciated without

   1 month ago
5. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   considering the person who is ill. Terrific; we’re finally getting somewhere. But this analysis, and most pages of this book up until now, have left out a third leg in this stool—the idea that poor health also has something to do with poor jobs in a shrinking economy, or a diet funded by food stamps with too many meals consisting of Coke and Cheetos, or living in a crummy overcrowded apartment close to a toxic waste dump or without enough heat in winter. Let alone living on the streets or in a refugee camp or a war zone. If we can’t consider disease outside the context of the person who is ill, we also can’t consider it outside the context of the society in which that person has gotten ill, and that person’s place in that society.

   1 month ago
6. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   while rank is an important predictor of individual differences in the stress-response, the meaning of that rank, the psychological baggage that accompanies it in a particular society, is at least as important. Another

   1 month ago
7. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   Peter Sterling, of allostasis fame, has written brilliantly about how our sources of pleasure have become so narrowed and artificially strong. His thinking centers around the fact that our anticipatory pleasure pathway is stimulated by many different things. For this to work, the pathway must rapidly habituate, must desensitize to any given source that has stimulated it, so that it is prepared to respond to the next stimulant. But unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation. This has two consequences. As the first, soon we hardly notice anymore the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward that will come after a long, difficult, and worthy task. The other consequence is that, after awhile, we even habituate to those artificial deluges of intensity and moment-ness. If we were nothing but machines of local homeostatic regulation, as we consume more, we would desire less. But instead, our tragedy is that we just become hungrier. More and faster and stronger. “Now” isn’t as good as it used to be, and won’t suffice tomorrow.

   1 month ago
8. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   This is the essence of play. You surrender some degree of control—

   1 month ago
9. 
   

   Deborah Conner highlighted:

   There are extremely different ways of looking at the world, and researchers and clinicians from different orientations often don’t have a word to say to one another about their mutual interest in depression. Sometimes they seem to be talking radically different languages—psychodynamic ambivalence versus neurotransmitter autoreceptors, cognitive overgeneralization versus allelic variants of genes. What I view as the main point of this chapter is that stress is the unifying theme that pulls together these disparate threads of biology and psychology.

   1 month ago
10. Deborah Conner highlighted:

    Taylor argues convincingly that the physiology of the stress-response can be quite different in females, built around the fact that in most species, females are typically less aggressive than males, and that having dependent young often precludes the option of flight. Showing that she can match the good old boys at coming up with a snappy sound bite, Taylor suggests that rather than the female stress-response being about fight-or-flight, it’s about “tend and befriend”—taking care of her young and seeking social affiliation.

    
    

    more from the last chapter...

    
    

    
    In the face of terrible news beyond control, beyond prevention, beyond healing, those who are able to find the means to deny tend to cope best. Such denial is not only permitted, it may be the only means of sanity; truth and mental health often go hand in hand, but not necessarily in situations like these. In the face of lesser problems, one should hope, but protectively and rationally. Find ways to view even the most stressful of situations as holding the promise of improvement but do not deny the possibility that things will not improve. Balance these two opposing trends carefully. Hope for the best and let that dominate most of your emotions, but at the same time let one small piece of you prepare for the worst.
    
    
    Those who cope with stress successfully tend to seek control in the face of present stressors but do not try to control things that have already come to pass. They do not try to control future events that are uncontrollable and do not try to fix things that are not broken or that are broken beyond repair. When faced with the large wall of a stressor, it is great if there emerges one singular solution that makes the wall crumble. But often, a solution instead will be a series of footholds of control, each one small but still capable of giving support, that will allow you to scale the wall.
    
    
    It is generally helpful to seek predictable, accurate information. However, such information is not useful if it comes too soon or too late, if it is unnecessary, if there is so much information that it is stressful in and of itself, or if the information is about news far worse than one wants to know. Find that outlet for your frustrations and do it regularly. Make the outlet benign to those around you—one should not give ulcers in order to avoid getting them. Read the fine print and the ingredient list on each new form of supposed anti-stress salvation, be skeptical of hype, figure out what works for you.
    
    
    It is important to find sources of social affiliation and support. Even in our obsessively individualistic society, most of us yearn to feel part of something larger than ourselves. But one should not mistake true affiliation and support for mere socializing. A person can feel vastly lonely in a vast crowd or when faced with a supposed intimate who has proved to be a stranger. Be patient; most of us spend a lifetime learning how to be truly good friends and spouses.
    
    
    Some of these ideas are encompassed in Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer, adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Have the wisdom to pick your battles. And once you have, the flexibility and resiliency of strategies to use in those battles is summarized in something I once heard in a Quaker meeting:
    
    
    In the face of strong winds, let me be a blade of grass. In the face of strong walls, let me be a gale of wind

***

update: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150424085630.htm

Beyond genes: Are centrioles carriers of biological information?

Date:

April 24, 2015

Source:

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Summary:

Scientists have discover that certain cell structures, the centrioles, could act as information carriers throughout cell generations. The discovery raises the possibility that transmission of biological information could involve more than just genes. Centrioles may actually be carriers of information, which holds profound implications for biology and disease treatment.

#

More from Gaslight: The Merry Men

Cleaning out files, found these, related in an odd way, from gaslight days. What a great group it was.

that which can only be sung

Note prompted by the Guardian's Tate review of the Rossettis -- https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/apr/04/rossettis-review-tate-dante-gabriel-christina

My goodness, Mr. Jones, so what did you really think?

It was this silly "O the sexy" attitude toward DGRossetti that moved me to write my first novel. Beyond the general ignorance that he was painting icons, a whole world of history, an ever-expanding cosmos of other-Christian mysticism, and the present-day obsession with his Muse, it's the "omnipresent nameless girl" who haunts the artist’s (dgr) work...feeding "upon her face by day and night” as Jones writes, quoting Christina. My novel is about this "girl": who she really, truly, deeply is.

Sometimes, spirit has to be made flesh. Or words on paper. Who has seen the wind? Christina asks; this invisible movement that creates matter, time, space. Her brother saw it. He threw a coat of paint on it. Voila.

As Philo said, it's that which can only be sung.

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

"What Can European History Teach Us About Trump’s Ameri...

Holy Smoke

From 2001

Keep breathing...
 A dialogue: HOLY SMOKE


Anand said:

<<Saw Holy Smoke, Deb. I enjoyed it, but my friends couldn't relate to it. Unconventional (and disturbing— perhaps more so for a male, you think?) movie. In fact, offhand I can't think of any man I know who would like the movie. Interesting how the tables were turned, unexpectedly but very plausibly. [The bitchy "I won! Admit it, I won!" Kick the guy's balls when he's down! After he objectified her initially.] >>

from Deborah:
Hi Anand.

A Heretic's Journey

PARIS 

Shown to me were reproductions of two paintings by the Spanish master Pedro Berruguete depicting scenes from the life and works of St. Dominic. The originals hang in the Prado in Madrid.4 In one, heretics are being burned. The pyres are beginning to catch fire; the victims are bound to stakes so that they cannot escape, and soon they will be living torches. The second picture shows St. Dominic busy burning books; already the parchments are smoldering. One book, however, rises high in the air: Having found the favor of the God of Rome, it was spared.

I bought Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible in the rue de la Seine because I wanted to read the Book of Isaiah again. In it, he explains how Lucifer fell from heaven and was damned by Yahweh:

How have you fallen from the heavens, O glowing morning star; been cut down to the ground O conqueror of nations? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the Raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that goes down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet. Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned. Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities. The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand: This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations. For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil. Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands? Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?5 

While Martin Luther’s German-language translation of the Bible refers to God as “Herr Zebaoth” or “Yahweh Zebaoth,” the King James Bible translates the term into English as “Lord of the Hosts.” Zebaoth or Lord of the Hosts comes from the Hebrew YHVH Tzva’ot, which is a clear reference to sovereignty and military power. Curiously, the term never appears in the Torah, although it is used in the prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, as well as many times in the Psalms and in the Apocalypse. There is some confusion: Does it indicate the Lord of Israel, or some other cosmological demiurge? In the Gnostic scriptures of the Nag Hammadi text, Zebaoth is the son of Yaltabaoth. Perhaps this is explained by the Latinized spelling of Sabaoth, which led to him being confused with the god Sabazius.

Rahn, Otto. Lucifer's Court: A Heretic's Journey in Search of the Light Bringers (pp. 4-6). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company