Category Archives: Spring Reveries

To provide a prompt for the development of poetry that recycles neurons, that jolts, that cleaves our heads, that mediates our passions, that evokes the sensation of reading in the brain, a weekly reverie based on that week’s reading assignment from Neuro is required. You may choose your own favorite passage from the assigned chapter of Neuro and then create a reverie in response to it modeled on the form of reverie Bachelard demonstrates in The Poetics of Reverie. (Students new to the program spring quarter will want to purchase this book, which is available in the TESC Bookstore and browse peers’ winter quarter versions of Bachelardian reveries.) Post your weekly 100 word reverie on the assigned chapters of Neuro here no later than midnight Wednesday during weeks 6-9 of spring quarter. Your poetic reverie (or riff) should begin with what you experienced as a particularly evocative passage from that week’s reading, including page number. Your quote does NOT count in terms of your 100 words of writing. Rather, quote this passage of 1-3 lines from Neuro and then create your own reverie.. The work here is to feel, trace or map the network of meanings associated in your brain/mind with a given word or phrase. While these weekly reveries are brief, they might develop into poems for inclusion in your field study term paper.

Ms – Week 8 Bachelardian Reverie

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“This individualized inwardness, with its interiority and its continuity, is both unique to each and common to all (it was not always so, consider slaves, women, ‘primatives’, children, idiots, the mad): it grounds the claim of each individual to membership in the human race and to the consideration that such membership implies” (Rose & Abi-Rached 202).

As a drift myself inward in reverie, I dream of revelry.

This dream consists of me

encapsulated in a crowd

clinking glasses

confetti

in celebration of

…who cares.

It’s just a party.

No one can see me.

Most dreams are like this one.

I can see everything,

but no one pays any attention

to my body taking up space.

It’s like being high

without the daze.

So, I fold inward once more.

Now I am staring at my self

not myself but my self.

They look,

different.

Blissful, but not happy.

My self does not believe

in happy.

In the dream state,

there are no words

and no need to vocalize.

There is only thought

everything is thought.

Smiles and frown and tears

and joy

and just thought.

Me thinks my self

knows more than me.

Perhaps she

knows better

than me.

In any case,

she says,

this time you watch

me,

watch your self.

Do not drift here

or there.

Just watch and see

look and feel

how you and me

are a part of something

bigger.

Week 8 Reverie

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“The weight of evidence now implies that it is the brain, rather than some non-physical stuff, that feels, thinks, and decides. That means that there is no soul to fall in love.”

 

~Churchland

Heart, Mind, and Soul

 

Synapsys fire,

and blood boils up

through my vains,

upward, and outward

from my heart on out to

that grey mass within my cranium.

 

Yes the grey-mass which

fits snug with in my Cranium,

(causing so much fuss and what not up there)

that is the only reason that I could

ever have truly loved you.

 

Yes,

you with the brow ridge,

you with the lederhosen lineage,

you who thought it was wise

to put a crow in my bathroom.

why my mind saw it fit?

well,

maybe it’s because there are

no souls now.

 

A soul might have,

However,

explained the ignorance of the brain

to realize when it has been had,

maybe my figurative soul would

have been the blame, for such

a lame brain, but

allase,

No.

 

Now there is research as to why!

my love for such a dullard

could now be blamed on many aspects of my brain

from the perception of pheromones

(I’m not known for my keen nose)

or from faulty wiring upstairs

(I told the cable man to fix that,

does he listen?

No!)

 

So there you see,

that was why,

All faulty circuitry

(and perhaps a head-cold on top of that)

was to blame for love,

and you with your silly

notion of “soul mates”

Hah! there is no soul,

only grey matter,

blood,

and self-awareness,

though sometimes

the grey one

is not wise,

and makes me do

some stupid things.

 

At least I do not have a soul,

so one thing you said in the end

was probably the most intelligent

that you ever said.

Ms – Week 7 Bachelardian Reverie

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“Anglo-American legal systems conceptualize their subjects – with specific exceptions – as individuals with minds, or mental states, who intend to commit, and who foresee their outcome to the extent that any reasonable person could do so (Morse 2004, 2006, 2008; Morse and Hoffman 2007)” (Rose & Abi-Rached 178).

I am already spoken for.

Brain scans and testing and

the stamp on my chart.

The condemned

the condamned,

condamnation

condemning the nation

with red stamps,

yellowing papers nailed

to the front doors

of my mind.

“Doesn’t work well with others”

What the hell is this?

One picture of

my gray matters.

The only matter

that really matters.

But “I” matters.

Why can’t I matter?

That white tube

that whirrs and blurrs

and spits me out

with a stamp that reads:

“Not suitable

for this society”.

Ms – Week 6 Bachelardian Reverie

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“Where human life is concerned, scientific tools are not neutral: ‘the mind has been recreated in their image'” (Rose & Abi-Rached 159).

To be more specific… the collective ‘we’ defines the brain through the instruments created to define the brain. If the rapidity of the synapses firing when watching a bird drink from a fountain needs to be measured (for example) then an instrument will be tailored specifically to measure that function. We only know what we know from what we create to measure what we want to know.

Neuroscience is like language. In language, tools (letters, numbers, words, and other symbols) are created to express emotions, actions, etc. In the neurosciences, tools are created to measure these specific things. In language these tools are arbitrary (in the modern sense) and in neuroscience these tools are created to narrowly define specific actions in the brain.

That brings me to the impossible notion that the mind can be undefined or defined definitely because the mind is the one defining its self. But even thinking about defining the mind forces you to use your mind and thus the whole notion is off-set. The mind is constantly re-defining its self based upon what it knows and for what it does not know, it creates and instrument to figure it out and the process begins again and again.

Hh – Week 8 Reverie

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“Many from the social and human sciences regard this neurobiologization of the self as the most challenging feature of contemporary neuroscience. It seems to threaten the very conception of the human being that lies at the heart of their work: the idea that personhood is a matter of internal mental states, consciousness, intention, beliefs, and the like, existing in a uniquely human psychological realm of mind, embodied in a self-conscious subjectivity, and created in a world of meaning, culture, and history.” (Neuro, 201)

Where is my I?

Who is my self, WHAT is my self. Is there any self to begin with?

Am I just a biological machine?

And are my thoughts just left over steam from the working machine?

I don’t know.

My I is a combination of many things.

Sometimes I feel as though my I is more metaphorical than literal

I can play with my I through music.

I can become whatever I want I to be.

I can become animate or inanimate

Feminine or masculine

Black or white

Machine or human

So what is my self?

To me, myself, my physical self,

It doesn’t matter

Because through music I can expand and extend my self to be anything I want.

Ab – Spring Reverie Week 8

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Marisa Malone

Neuro Reverie ch. 7

Wk.8

Word count: 150

“Goldsmith’s “transcriptions” is thus hardly passive recycling.” (Perloff, 161)

“The self is not a thing but a process…we are ‘selfing’ organisms…” (Metzinger, 213)

We are creatures that find our “selves” in what surrounds us. Perhaps that makes Goethe’s approach to science even more compelling—by incorporating, projecting and relating ones self to an object or environment, we distort the separateness between our self and the other. We become what we create and we create what we become. We are transcribing ourselves constantly as our minds make sense of the moments flashing before us, remembering, fastening, and firing within the structure of our hardwire. Through this process of “selfing” we are continually forming the pathways of synapsis that remind us of who we are, where we just were and where we might go. This brings a sense of consistency but allows for fluctuation. When we consciously decide to include “our selves” in that which surrounds us we are no longer passive receivers of outside data, but we become both architects and structures of that data.

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

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“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?

 

 

 

 

V – Neuro Reverie week 8

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Liberty.

“…selves are memories, and memories are patterns of synaptic interconnections. How are these patterns of synaptic connections established? […the understanding is that] it is now ‘experience’ that shapes the patterns of connections that are strengthened”.  (217)

The life blood of my living in this world can only be shaped by what I come into contact with. This contact being the cultural world and the sensual encounters I internally face, taking shape in the form of tiny microscopic neurons.  They shape, mold, form and break my understandings of the world in various ways. These tiny synaptic firings either form or erupt my patterns of being in the world.   A sense of connection to the old or to the new comes from the recharging of memories. Tiny fires evolve self.

 The microscopic even goes through metamorphosis.

The microscopic has the power to reverberate and make great change.

The microscopic consists of a great transformation, transforming mind, patterns and memories.

Connection begins at the microscopic level.

Whether we see it or not,

everything must start somewhere.

So why not, dream big

lp-Bachelard Reverie .3

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“In the course of centuries the naive self-love of men had had to submit to two major blows at the hands of science, the first was when they the earth was not the center of the universe but only a tiny fragment of a cosmic system of scarcely imaginable vastness.” (199)

 

Our lives are not our own.

Neurons spreading like mycelium,

we are the fungi of the world.

Our roots connecting like telephone wires we have created.

We are everything and everything is us.

Our minds grow like trees

changing every year,

Adding rings to the stories of our lives,

stories of the universe.

You are on a rock hurdling through space, which is located in a galaxy, which is located in the universe.

As our minds stretch to the stars fires ignite in our brains,

information traveling like shooting stars, changing the way we forever exist.

We are everything and everything is us.

Infinitely.

S – Week 8 Bachelardian Reverie

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“…Individuals observing a rubber hand will sometimes attribute sensation to that hand rather than to their own. For example, experimental subjects will make this false attribution if they see the ‘alien hand’ being stroked by a brush while their own equivalent hand is stroked in the same way but is hidden from sight. After a few minutes, they will ‘feel’ the stroking on the rubber hand , even though it is separate from their body, rather than in their own, hidden, hand. It seems that the brain has attributed the sensation to a physically distinct object within its field of vision, and in the process, it has somehow incorporated that alien object into the body.” (Rose & Abi-Rached, 207)

“The chosen fragment converts itself into a text no longer a bit of a text, a part of a sentence or a discourse, but a chosen bit, an amputated limb, not yet a transplant, but already an organ, cut off and placed in reserve.” Antoine Compagnon

I fear the revelation of seams: I will wake up and realize I am patchwork—

An integration of many, assemblages of technology.

Joints are just operable disjunctions, and I have learned to ignore the sutures. If I spend my hours parsing parts,

Organizing organs,

I’ll lose my self between the meat.

 

Stroked hands stroking hands

My neurons are phonemes placed in synaptic sentences.

The prosthetics of text,

Language accumulates language accumulates body.

 

Hands are a point of manipulation: sculpting, digits to clay.

Hands are a point of integration: eating, digits to lips.

 

How much trust must we lend before something is rendered identifiable?

How absent must our own hands be before we begin to feel for another’s?

Empathy is a loophole in our theory of mind—

Will our own hands dissolve if we don’t look at them enough?

 

Hands signify humanity: they are flesh turned culture, rods of carbon capable of theft.

Hands, organs of bunched flesh, are the means of mediating self and other, to a point of contamination: hands become other. Culturally portent, there is a reason for the cinematic trope of the revolting hand—a hand in revolt. Although disembodied, a hand refuses to die; it has yet to recognize a dis-integration.

 

We incorporate, and wait for our body to betray us.

Trust comes easy.

Trust, our fleshless organ.