Author Archives: Jonathon Hiller

Pilg – Neuro Week 9

“The proliferation of the neuro – prefix is, no doubt, often merely a matter of fashion. Yet when ‘neuro-drinks’ promise to improve our brain power, when ‘neuro-trainers’ claim that their courses will enable us to take full control of our lives, we can recognize the growing power of the belief, however banal, that by acting on our brains, we can improve our mental life and enhance our everyday capacities to meet the ceaseless demands for self-development and self-management that characterize our contemporary form of life.” (Abi-Rached, Rose 226)

Reaching for the stars, there is only hope to fall upon. Hope is what guides the absent hands searching for meaning in those bright lights in the sky. It is what keeps mind in tune with brain and the followers of the pharmaceutical in tune with the future. Long have we, the followers of the pharmaceutical, sought to outlive the constant struggle between life and reality. Here is that thread of hope, dangling just within reach. Through the Neuro others have come to know our pain on a much larger scale, deeper than most in a most intimate way. No longer shall we stand doe eyed at the whims of some pen swipe, testing us with another pill, another pain, another trial. It has come time to replace the trials of old with that of the new, a new time calls for a new mind. Our saviors come in white lab coats, messy hair, and hard to read books all reaching, as we all do, for the stars for hope. One person’s research is another’s life and it is in your hands I place mine. Pull me from this trench of endless regurgitation of the DSM and into the light of Neuro. Test me, poke me, feed me your truths for I am ready for change, WE are ready for change. Through you, through your guiding hands we can break the struggle between water, pill, food, sanity repeated infinitum. It is in hope I place my heart, the hope that you the selected few pioneers of the outlandish can thwart the evil corruption placed into our lives and set things new. It is in this fantasy of Neuro- drinks and trainers that one may shape his or her own reality even if they are still the whims of the ethereal.

Hope stands above all else. For I hold true to hope that one day the task of cleansing one’s mind will be done through one’s own cognition. I am ready for tomorrow and the new light of the day when we can put down our endless fall into madness and pick up where we once left, that normal we all seek.

 

Pilg – Neuro week 8 “The prescription for humanity… is humanity. “

“The brain has certainly become a rich register for narratives for self-fashioning. There are now many neurobiological technologies of self-hood, that is to say, practices that seek to mold, shape, reform, or improve aspects of one’s person – mood, emotions, cognition, desire – by acting on or through the brain. But with what consequences for personhood? Let us briefly consider perhaps the longest established of these contemporary neurotechnologies – psychopharmaceuticals.” (Abi-Rached, Rose 220)

A handful of pills

and they call this life

telling time through the devouring of

pharmaceuticals that someone

somewhere once told someone

you need this to be normal

to be a functioning member of the

human race

where does it end?

Can they simpy stop the endless

trifling of water, pill, food, sanity?

There is a sense that the soul is gone

then what is left but the brain.

Persons acting as people

while deep inside they are the mechanics

of someone’s pen swipe.

 

When, then, does the pain end?

Can there be an all encompassing cure for this disease

something someone somewhere can call “finished”.

For if the ones who hold our future

declare there is no soul but the brain

then there is no disease

there is no broken piece

for the brain is everything

and the one who can tell the future

is locked inside

behind a veil

of never ending

social normality

thrust down the throats

of those who seek to be one

with the natural “self”

 

– is there an end?

 

 

 

 

Pilg – Week 6 CP Poem

 

So as reading through the reading of the week I stumbled upon “Fractal Geometry” and it jolted the hell out of me. The author goes on to speak, in stanza 5 or section 5, about mirrors reflecting mirrors and the infinite space created between the two panes. As always I have attempted to place myself in the middle of this and while thinking on the fractal mathematics you are a copy of a copy when reflected.

Reflection of absent light

Mirrors reflecting mirrors

Manifesting the emptiness that is

stretching the dark void of inescapable light

perpetuated and replicated

through atoms of lore who spread the virus of shadow

with the static rotations of unassuming  parasites

 

across the vast open wilderness

where the conscious summon the will

to see the reflection within themselves

thought arises and

Like the phoenix rising from the ashes

I am birthed through this inspiration.

 

In the impenetrable darkness

I am.

 

pulling light from the dark

like water from stone

Seeping slowly, invading the emptiness

the darkness is conquered and the light flows

into waiting eyes

 

The brilliance of this moment

overcomes the weak

and I stand beholding,

peering  into the waiting vision of myself

repeated

repeated

repeated

through light refracted, reused, and recycled

ad infinitum

 

Blank space recedes

falling back like the moon tides

and I am surrounded by the reflection

of the reflection

keeping constant vigil

always watching that which is.

 

Seeing the mirror image in the light

I stare behind closed eyes

into the genetic darkness

where boundaries are borderless

and the infinite lies in the heart of birth

 

 

Pilg – Week 7 Neuro

“And the means to be used were multiple – perhaps behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and even psychopharmaceuticals – for the aim is to reshape brain mechanisms in order to nip those budding psychopaths in the bud.”

Mental Hospital

1700 – Waiting

In line with the others

white robe on my back

lose fitting scrubs adorn my body

I shuffle along

1730 – waiting

There is nothing to do at this time

I am told I have to be here

I am abnormal along with the others

we come from all over

and we are different

1800 – pills

this is how they control us

we all have tendencies

an urge to commit random acts of antisocial behavior

we do not fit in

we are not normal

1805 – waiting

there is nothing to do

but sit and wait

the time is told through waiting

time between appointments

waiting for someone to judge us

1900 – waiting

it is night and all have gone but the few defenders

we must be kept under constant watch

for we are different

but we are ourselves

and all of that is changing

I can feel it each and every night

as pharmaceuticals are thrust down my throat

on a constant regiment

2000 – waiting

I am just waiting to die

one second hand at a time

I am locked in a prison

and all there is to do is wait

I am a threat to society

to my own safety

and they seek to change me

to form me into something malleable and moldable

they seek to make me social

2100 – lights out

 

Pilg – Week 6 Neuro

“And we have a social brain in that this organ is now construed as malleable, open to, and shaped by, social interactions – shaping sociality as it is itself reshaped by it.”

 

Looking into the mirror

I can see the faces of the world

staring back at me.

I am because of them,

I have grown into the creation you see before you

through the dependency of absent thought.

You are, because of me.

My thoughts have been shaped

and molded to create the reality I perceive.

Could this, truly, be MY reality?

Have you not shared a glimpse into your own mind?

Unwittingly you have become

my mentor, my voice, my mind.

Together through the abyss

our minds touch,

through the conscious and unconscious,

shaping each other into the void.

Look into the mirror,

see me staring back at you…

Let us be alone together in this shared reality.

Pilg – Calculated Poetics Week 5

                As I read Sphere I had the thought to work with something sphere related. I first tried to work with the sphere as a place inside the mind where one can retreat to but in doing so I lost the sphere and found only emptiness. I worked with the poem in class on Wednesday and as I did I realized that Sphere is about the Earth and how the author envisioned the world after seeing Earth from space for the first time. I took another route and wondered what would it be like to create something from nothingness while keeping to the known spaces that are our housing spheres. In the beginning there is nothing but with thought comes action and through thought the world, the Universe is born.

 

Sphere, Home to the Conscious

Floating suspended and disjointed in the ether

Pieces spread throughout the vast openness

In the blank vacuum  that is my home

A thought appears and I am born into the realm of Man

Pieces flung to the outer reaches of human myth

collect and form into

My body.

The thought resides inside what is now the consciousness

the once absent form is now the mind

The collective energies colliding, making the abstract cohesive

I am

 

I forget the realm of time and space

I fall forward into myself

folding into my new found consciousness

I am alone here at the junction of awareness

Here there is nothing

the darkness surrounds me

the vacuum consumes me

and I huddle into my own mind

I seek companionship

I cry to the palpable emptiness

There is no response but the echos of my screams

I am but one who shall create many

Thought arises

and the Universe is born.

Fire and flame dance the gentle strokes of creation

The pieces of the ether collect and recollect into housing spheres

It shall be in the spheres of life where humanity will prevail

I am the creationist the master of all

and into the spheres I place human kind

Look upon humanity through the lens of blue

See inside the sphere, the Earth

as humanity raises its voice to scream into the dark

 

Pilg – A Pilgrimage through Roethke and Spring

Spring Quarter Field Study Proposal

I will participate in all class activities throughout the week to include a weekly session in Calculated Poetics while continuing to work on a final My Poet’s research paper based on the life and poetry of Theodore Roethke. My research paper will include a cento poem where I will collect lines and passages from the collected work of Roethke and place them in a new Unoriginal piece while also including a chapter dedicated to the conversation between Roethke and myself. I will be keeping a log of weekly activities while tracking my progress through updates to the eAlphabet to include Reveries based on the reading of Neuro and poetry created throughout the quarter. I will also post the works created throughout the Calculated Poetics sessions spring quarter.

Read Full ILC Here (pdf)

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

[catlist tags=pilg-logs1 date=yes excerpt=yes excerpt_size=30]

Bachelardian Reverie in Relation to Neuro

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Poetry

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Elements of Style

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Calculated Poetics

[catlist tags=pilg-CP1 excerpt=yes excerpt_size=30]

 Term Paper Abstract

Pil – The You in ME

 

Can’t you see this isn’t the idea

You were meant to be like me

and not me like you.

But the universe said something different

and here I am…

Being, like you I am

It’s still here though the idea of you

in me. I can see, physically, that I am like you

through genetics and science and whatnot

we share the same blood, you and I

So like you am I.

But where does it end this link to each other

Can you see me as I see you

In the mirror we are the same you and I

Your face is my face

Can you feel this as I stitch your name across my chest

Your name… Our name…

Try as I might I am like you

Your life is my life

Your heart is my heart

and through this we are linked,

you and I.

Me and You.

 

 

 

Pil – Week 8 Log

Monday February 25

4 hours working on seminar pass

1.5 hours journal writing

2.5 hours reading An American Gospel by Eric Reece

Tuesday February 26

4 hours working on seminar pass work

2.5 hours talking with my Father via telephone

1.5 hours reading An American Gospel

Wednesday February 27

5 hours working on Reverie

5 hours working on Term Paper

1.5 hours talking with my Father via Facetime

 

Thursday February 28

5 hours working on Term Paper

2 hours crafting poetry

2 hours reading An American Gospel 

Friday March 1

5 hours working on Term Paper

3 hours crafting poetry

Total Hours: 44.5