“Apple”. Neuroplacticity

 Apple”

The brain,

a cathedral of connections, 

a wilderness of lightning and silence.

for a life time words moved through me

effortlessly, from spark to sound 

from thought to speech.

Damaged in a moment, an accident

of chance in time,

neurons once fired in elegant sequence, 

across each sculpted synapse

singing its part in the orchestra of language.

After, a rupture, a loss, a sudden quiet,

blood fled, cells flattened, networks dimmed

the familiar routes went dark.

The words that once leapt from my tongue

now gone.

 

I am not still

The brain, neuroplastic, ever adaptive,

restless and alive as

old highways crumble, I send out scouts,

axons searching like roots through unseen soil.

Dendrites reach out towards the faintest 

electrical whisper.

I guide the rebuilding

Circuits reorganize, neighbouring regions 

awaken to the call.

The right hemisphere listens, hesitant at first,

visual cortex offers image, motor cortex lends rhythm, 

emotions add tone, again an orchestra,

together they begin to trace new routes 

to find the ideas once lost.

I rehearse again and again…

I feel the signal 

practice is in my pulse 

each repetition thickens my resolve,

quickens the transmission,

stabilizes the spark until one day 

the current finds home.

A light flares across a synapse and there it is

that elusive lost word 

rises from silence like a bird returning to its branch.

“Apple” I say

I say it aloud

With excitement and joy

It’s “APPLE”!

The sound is rough and alive.

The meaning complete, whole 

and unmistakable.

I can recall an imagine

think and do, 

The brain is a builder of bridges, 

a keeper of faith and languages,

When one path is lost

Another is found.

Neuroplacticity.

The Archaeological Perspective

 The Archaeological Perspective

Despite its location only 35 km inland from the Pacific Ocean the land still after several centuries remained barren with desert conditions.  Irrigation had revived the economy over the last several centuries and farming had once again thrived when massive desalination plants with new technology were brought on line to these drought prone regions of Peru.  

Unfortunately, the archaeological site including temples and palaces built to the god Pachacmac and a home where the colonial imperialist Francisco Pizarro, had once lived amongst the Incas during his conquest, all had been overwhelmed by the adobe brick homes of the poor squatters who had moved to Lima centuries later. Much of the finer antiquities and artefacts had been lost to the sands and erosion of time. 

At the time that I write, in my journals, about 1700 years after the Spaniards toppled the Inca Empire and approximately, if we are dating by empires, another 900 years after the decline and fall of the American Empire.  Now digging through time on these same historic sites that have seen sequences of abandonment and historic interest depending on finances and  public awareness.

During the Spanish conquistadors and colonial expansion, although it saw the collapse of one imperial empire, that of the Inca’s, who had conquered the surrounding tribes and drove them into submission. It also represented, at least for some a cultural renewal of European design.  This society had new elites but was also inclusive.  It thrived to the time the American empire discovered its new identity as what was called at the time, fascism. A certain propensity for the lack of democratic ideals and a new direction towards authoritarianism and a disregard for wealth division.  From an ethnographic point of view, as a Peruvian archeologist, it was an recall to the old Inca ways of centrality, authority and a perverse type of deity worship.  As it spread through the world like a cancer it took it’s toll on freedoms and prosperity, until once vibrant cultures, societies and economies were flaccid and anemic in their defeat.

From what we, as scientist, can retrieve from what few records remain as so much from the American/Western era was of a digital nature.  We have learned from those mistakes as I write in my field notes with a graphite stylus of the old design.  From this dig and from other scholars around the United World Government States (UWGS), we have discerned that America, once great, had turned to a deity worship practice combining their love of country, militarism and the rule of an authoritarian king, of which they had many, after shedding their brief history of democratic traditions.  Those traditions turned out to be more veneer that substance hiding the true nature of their culture unleashed.

Ironically, at this dig and the ones at such more remote places as the ancient capital of Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and other urban centres of the old American Empire, little of any substance remains other than plastic artifacts.

The Visit

 The Visit

As a young boy my family would travel in our 1952 blue Ford sedan. I sitting in the front between my parents, my father perpetually the driver, my siblings in the back teasing each other.  We drove on that Sunday to visit my aunt Agatha who lived in a bleak brick building on a straight street with a hundred other such houses.  Her house smelled of peppermint and was decorated with dollies of her own making. It was not a place for children, as she had none of her own.  It was not a place I liked to visit and never returned there as an adult. The dinner was very Mennonite, simple with over cooked beef and mashed potatoes with corn accompanied with stilted conversation in  German which I could not follow.  After dinner French doors were opened to the mausoleum style living room which was only opened for Sunday guests and funerals. The room had a museum quality with everything in its place to be viewed, not touched.  The couch where I avoided sitting was completely covered in plastic, as was every lamp in the room.  I believe to preserve the eloquence of a fading dream.

Western Town

 The Western Town (Depression)

The sun hangs low over saddened streets.

The coffee shop slouches on the corner.

Mediocre coffee served with a smile that 

Left with the wind years ago on the day 

hope died.

The post office stands with no purpose,

Door still ajar.

The mail scattered like dried leaves.

The church steeple tilted in prayer

To a heaven that no longer listens.

Houses stare through boarded windows.

Their memories  of people long gone

Stifled and layered in dust.

Down the road

A tumbleweed rolls slowly.

A small ghost from the past

Wandering west,

Where no one waits anymore.

The Suburb (Recession)

The sky hangs grey above silent streets,

Plastic siding faded by years of sighs,

A coffee chain squats on the corner 

With over-priced lattes, rehearsed smiles 

Their names mis-spelled on paper cups.

The church stands locked against 

The emptiness,

Yet homeless 

Sleep in the squalid retreat

They are the faithful

To survival.

Empty homes sit hollow

Down the road,

A plastic bag drifts tumbleweed-style

Wandering west 

Where no one waits any more

The Republican God wears a Red Cap

 

The Republican God Wears a Red Cap

Why is it when a Republican/Maga type is offended by a comment they often respond with things such as: “I will pray for you, or you need Jesus, you are a lost soul etc.”  It seems these Maga/Christians have a certain version of christianity which without any cognitive dissonance allows them to profess to be a devout christian while being loyal to their pedofile, adultrous corrupt leader.  They just don’t miss a beat. This is when we most definitely need the separation of church and state.  

Separating the secular from the absurd is the best way to have a parallel process, perhaps allowing real christians and anybody else to express real compassion, yet vote for a better quality of life and even promote science and education, support vaccines, human equality, quality and standard of life.

I am a Mennonite and have grown up with conservative christian values my entire life.  The Jesus I have come to know is loving, caring and compassionate.  The MAGA /Republican God and their interpretation of Jesus and the scriptures is unrecognizable to my conservative ways.  

My god does not wear a red cap, teach hate, deprive people of education, medical attention or look down on the poor.  I have come to conclude that the sect of christianity that maga identifies with is what paganism is to christianity.  

MAGA reveres their fallen leader with the expectation that he be honoured nation-wide, including football games, nor can bad things be said about him in this new era of “freedom of speech.” The vice president implores citizens, in Orwellian 1984 style, to turn on fellow citizens and report if they say bad things about christian podcasters. Talk show hosts are silenced because their satirical truths pierce the shallow sensitivities of this new ruling class of imbeciles. 

They keep it all under heir red caps.

Here Comes the Sun

 

Here Comes the Sun

A little rock and roll band that made it big

They did their ten thousand hours of practice

Their tipping point to immortality,

“Sleep pretty darling do not cry,

And I will sing a lullaby,

Golden slumbers fill your eyes…”

Perfected their style to change the world.

They changed mine.

“Something in the way she knows

Something in the things she shows me

I don’t want to leave her now.”

From Berlin in the early days to 

Beatlemania

In America

And beyond.

“When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, Let it be…”

I grew up with their tunes

Savoured every lyric,

Every hit,

It speaks to me.

Everybodies laughing

Everybody’s happy

Here comes the Sun King

Quando para mucho mi amore de felice Corazon

Mundo paparazzi mi amore chic aferdi parasol

Questo obrigado tanta mucho que

It runs deep in my being.

Music meant something then,

It was exciting, my parents didn’t understand

But they endulged it.

“Late nights all alone with a test tube…

Bang bang Maxwell’s silver hammer

Writing fifty times I must not be slow…”

As an old man I ride in a taxi in Lima, Peru

The taxi driver and I don’t speak the other’s language,

In an octopuses garden in the shade

I ask my friends to come and see

I’d like to be under the sea

I’d like to be in an octopuses garden in the shade.”

We communicate over a Beatle’s song playing

On the radio in the beat up Chinese-made taxi cab.

He looks at me through the rear view mirror, smiles

Across languages as we sing:

“Pennylane all the people come and go some

stop and say hello.  Pennylane is in my ears and my eyes…”

I wonder does he understand a word?

I pay in Peruvian sol, exit the taxi, still singing

“Here Comes the Sun” my favourite Beatle song,

“Here comes the sun and I say it’s alright,

Little darling its been a long cold lonely winter

And I say it’s alright

The smile is returning to their faces,

Here comes the Sun.”

A Republican God as Bigot

 Republican God as Bigot

Recently, I wrote a short piece on Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated and concluded that although I did not agree with his manner of death, his absence on the scene is beneficial to the divisive nature of present day American society.  Of the some two hundred responses I received, the majority were positive. Although one person took issue with the term assassination, another called me vile and what really caught my attention is that several people said they would pray for me.  

I asked these people, all women, please do not pray for me.  First, this whole “thoughts and prayers” thing does more for the individual who generated them then for the people they are intended to help.  

Secondly, to have a republican, who apparently worships a republican god, one that is all knowing, but at the same time seems to foster fear, racism, hate, bigotry of every kind, all the republican virtues, is not the kind of god I want on my side in a prayer of any kind.  

We can go two routes here, if there is a god as represented in the New Testament then he is loving, kind, generous, humanitarian…basically a libtard by today’s standards.  He would be a socialist and a union member, if she had political affiliations it would be of some sort of liberal party. In the United States since he, Jesus, is not White would be hunted down by ICE at the first opportunity. 

The second interpretation is that God is a construct of man.  This is easier because in this model republicans can just make-up a God, as in the early days, that identically represents their own value systems.  They can then follow this god with no cognitive dissonance.  Their god and their thoughts, beliefs and ideations are all one, as in the diabolical trinity…Hate, racism, greed.  God, or the imaginary “friend” made-up god has the same personality of a MAGA patriotic, nationalistic, white supremest, capitalist, bigot.  This they can grasp, understand and follow without questions. This is a god for the people, a republican god. 

That’s why when any republican says online, or anywhere that they will pray for me, I know in my heart they are not praying to the right god.  They are praying to the republican bigot they made up represented here on Earth in all his glory by Donald Trump.  To think that an immoral man like Trump is part of a spiritual divinity is the ultimate joke.  One which many people sincerely believe in with their own hearts and souls…In his name I say these words.  Amen.