Under the Canopy Chapter 7

 Chapter 7. Social Contract

    Eventually, his rebellion and perception of life led him to a remote, forsaken pasture in rural Switzerland, tending sheep. As he sat there shaking his head, tending his flock deep in thought, thinking, “How did I get here? Where do I go next? What the fuck am I doing?” He thought back to his goodbye with Elaina.

   

The bells of Basil chimed in the distance, dull and hollow.  They too seemed weary of the city’s rhythm.  Ernest Masters stood by the river, his hands deep in the pockets of a wool coat that once seemed to fit his life but now hung too heavily on him, like a burden.  The Rhine shimmered beneath a grey morning sky.  It stirred memories but no regrets.

   

Although Ernest had told his professors he was leaving. Not quite yet. His books still sat in neat rows on his desk, anatomy, pathology, the anatomy of ambition itself.  He had been the Masters family’s promise, the son of a prominent economist and a teacher, bred to be respectable, useful, polished.  Yet, lately every lecture had sounded like a hymn to life he could no longer worship, like sitting in a pew listening to a sermon he could no longer understand. 

   

Elaina’s letter had arrived the night before, ink smudged where she had tried to hold back the tears. “Ernest,” she had written, “you cannot throw it all away.  You cannot trade a future for a flock of sheep.”

   

Now she stood before him pleading her case, their case as a couple, eyes brimming with tears in disbelief and love.  “You’re not serious,” she whispered. “You’re talking like one of your Rousseau Social Contract fantasies again. Is it? Is this just another phase for you? If so, it will pass. What’s happening?  Make sense!”  She pleaded.

   

He shook his head slowly.  “No, Elaina.  It isn’t a phase.  It’s the only honest thought I’ve had in years.  I must follow through and be true to myself.”

   

“Honest?”  She laughed softly, but her voice broke with emotion.  “You call abandoning everything, abandoning us, honest?  What about your future here, our future together?  Isn’t that honest?”

   

Ernest looked past her to the slow-moving river. ”I have studied the body until I know every vein and vessel, every organ and cell.  Yet, I feel hollow inside.  Every diagnosis feels like a rehearsal of something false in my life.  I want to understand life before I try to save it.”

    

She stared in utter disbelief as if searching for the young man she loved, the one who had quoted Camus and sketched the Alps from the university rooftops.  “And you think you will find life in the mountains, with sheep.  Perhaps you are a genius or a fool.  I’m confused.  If you eventually go on to Borneo, as seems to be your wild plan, you’ll certainly die out there, of that I am sure.  Do you know how naive you sound?  Ernest Masters, you will die chasing a dream.”

   

“Then I will die awake,” he said simply.

   

A gust of wind carried the scent of rain and wet stone.  For a long moment, they stood together in silence, two lives now like a river divided at a fork.  He wanted to tell her he would come back for her, that this was only for a time, but he knew that to be a lie.  Some doors once opened, never closed again.

   

He gently kissed her forehead, like a benediction.  Elaina, he murmured, “Some of us are built to heal the body while others must try and heal the soul.”

   

Too overwhelmed, she did not answer.  She had no more words.  When she finally turned away in her sorrow, the city swallowed her, the sound of her footsteps fading into the hum of trams and church bells.  She disappeared like a ghost.

Under the Canopy Chapter 6

 

Chapter 6

    Even as a small boy, Ernest felt a strong, close affinity for nature.  He would make a bed on his family’s Basel apartment balcony from branches and ferns he collected from local parks. He would sleep on them and make camp in autumn and early winter to the tacit approval of his parents, who thought his behaviour odd but did not wish to discourage whatever creativity Ernest was taking in his life.

    Master’s, as a child, meticulously recorded the natural world around him, everything from the pattern of a butterfly’s wing to how a spider formed a web on the balcony railing. His skill set, which his parents found curious, would serve him well in later life.

     As a young adult, Ernest was actively denying his own legacy, fully understanding why, but he didn’t f why.  He was either introspective or self-destructive. He wasn’t sure of his own motivations at times.  He was at a confusing turning point in his life. 

   

Ernest had voiced his doubts and misgivings to a university friend, Lukas, almost hoping he could be talked down from the cliff he had put himself on, one of potential self-destruction. 

    The Cafe Fruhling-Kaffeemocher was located on Klybeckstrasse near the University of Basel, where Ernest’s future lay in the balance.  He was sharing a Schale, and a specialty of the house, a Basler Leckerli, with his friend Lukas; the place smelled of burnt espresso and rain-soaked wool.  Students murmured over textbooks as Ernest and Lukas sat at a corner table, discussing current issues concerning Ernest and his somewhat reckless plans for the future.

    “You look like shit, like you haven’t slept in a decade. What’s happening with you, Ernest?”

    Ernest exhaled long and thin, as if releasing weeks of pressure.  “Thanks for that, much appreciated. Maybe I haven’t slept.  Maybe too I'm done pretending I know where any of this is going.”

    Lukas, surprised by his friend's dismal comment, responds, “My God, Ernest, let’s get right to the core, what on earth are you talking about?  If it’s school and classes you are talking about, well, you aren’t alone, my friend.  It’s getting everyone down. You’ve always managed to push through. It’s brutal, but it will pass.”

    “That’s just the problem Ernest responded. “I wish it were just that simple. Sure, that may be some of what’s bothering me, but it’s more, much more.  All this time I’ve been pushing through a life I did not choose; well, I did, but it’s not what I ultimately want for myself. You know, ever since I was a kid, all I wanted…” He paused, searching for the right words to help his friend understand the dilemma, to help himself understand, “Purity, I guess.  Nature, the world before the rot.  I mean, look at this world!  Everything is competition, growth and greed. Look at those tribes in Borneo or Brazil, people who still live inside the world instead of fighting it.  The noble savages I read about in books as a kid.  They knew who they were.  Do we now, I mean, really? Life is upside down and inside out.”

    Lukas stirred his coffee, watching Ernest carefully. “And you think med school is what…a betrayal of all of that?  Ernest, look at all the good you can do here, or wherever you choose, when you graduate, and you will.  You will be a great doctor, one who makes a difference, and that can easily be you.  Just hang in there a little longer, is all I’m saying.  You know you’ve come so far, done so much.”

    “I think what I’m doing now is a betrayal of myself,” Ernest whispered.  “I’m about to graduate into a life of fluorescent lights and artificiality.  I’m denying myself the one thing I’ve always felt in my bones.  I can’t do it anymore.  I’m dropping out, plain and simple.”

    Lukas blinked, stunned.  “Ernest, that’s not some small course correction.  That’s jumping off a cliff.”

    “Maybe cliffs are where you have to go to see the horizon, to get perspective.”

    “That’s poetic,” Lukas said.  “And terrifying.”

    Ernest laughed softly, but it cracked halfway. “You think I’m being self-destructive?”

    “I think you are running from something,” Lukas said carefully. “Have you spoken to Elaina about all of this?” You are guilty of idealizing places you haven’t lived and people you don’t actually know, stories that are not your own. To me, that defines artificial. You might be throwing away a future you don't know, one you’ve worked for, for a dream built on mist.”

    Ernest looked down at the table, tracing a groove in the wood with his thumb.  “Maybe the dream is the only thing that feels real.”

    Silence settled between them, broken only by the occasional hiss of milk steaming behind the counter.

    Finally, Lukas sighed.  “I won’t talk you down if you are ready to step off the path.  I’ve known you long enough to know you don’t speak like this unless you’ve made up your mind.”

    Ernest glanced up, surprised.  “So that’s it?  You’re just letting me go?”

    “Not letting you go,” Lukas said gently.  “Just…letting you be who you think you need to be.” He reached across the table, giving Ernest’s arm a brief squeeze.  “I don’t know if this is courage or self-sabotage.  Maybe both.  But if you really believe that your future is out there somewhere in the world, somewhere between rainforest canopies and river villages, then…I hope you find it.”

    Ernest swallowed, his throat tight.  “Thank you,” he murmured.  “For not calling me insane.”

    “Oh no, you’re insane, alright, and certifiable,” Lukas said with a faint smile.  “But sometimes that’s how people find their truth.”

    Outside, the clouds broke just enough for a thin shaft of light to catch Ernest’s face.  He closed his eyes, as if receiving a blessing or a warning.

    Lukas lifted his cup.  “To whatever comes next,” he toasted, although the words felt both fragile and monumental.

    And in that moment in the quiet cafe, surrounded by the ordinary hum of student life, Ernest Masters felt the first tremor of a life unmade and remade, all at once.  Now all he had to do was explain this one more time to Elaina, his fiancée.

Apple/neuroplacticity

APPLE

MARTY REMPEL

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 and 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

Neuroplasticity.

WWW.NORTHWORDMAGAZINE.COM

Chapter Five: The Social Activist

 Chapter 5

“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”

John Muir

The Social Activist

Ernest Masters(1984)

    Ernest rested on a Swiss mountainside while on hire, tending a local farmer’s flock of approximately 500 sheep.  As a former medical student, he knew of no better way to escape his fast-paced, high-pressure life in his home city of Basel and to live what he considered a near off-the-grid existence, close to nature and more in line with his deep-rooted Taoist/Buddhist beliefs.  These same beliefs caused him to rebel and refuse the mandatory Swiss military service that earned him a six-month prison sentence, to the great shame of his upper-middle-class family. 

    Ernest felt suffocated with his middle-class lifestyle, the direction his life was taking, and the choices he had made under family pressure.  He questioned the idea of even becoming a medical doctor.  Ernest, instead of feeling he had a future life in his homeland with his chosen profession, only felt an overwhelming emptiness as if some void needed to be filled, but he wasn’t really certain of how and why at age 23, he was a lost soul looking for, as the cliche goes, meaning and direction in life.  He had dropped out of medical school to the horror of his rigid father, who saw this as an affront to the family's dignity and traditions.  Ernest's father was a successful economist with a flourishing career at the prestigious University of Basil.  He had the whole package of wealth and status. This was true of his father before him. Ernest was now the weak link in the family legacy chain.

    The final conversation with his father, on these topics, did not go well, making Ernest’s inevitable departure all the more difficult and emotionally painful. 

    The rain was coming down in fine, silver needles outside the Master’s home.  The scent from the gardens and wet earth drifted faintly through the half-opened window in Otto Master’s study, mingled with the sharp pungent odour of pipe smoke. Ernest’s father sat stiffly, looking awkward and uncomfortable behind his mahogany desk, hands clasped firmly, eyes fixed on the wall clock as if waiting for it to deliver a verdict. Across from him, his son, Ernest, stood in the doorway, not committed to entering the room, coat half buttoned, eyes restless, as if even the air in the room was plotting to suffocate him by closing in around him.

    “You can’t possibly be serious about this, Ernest.  You’re throwing away three years of the best medical training in Switzerland.  For what?  To wander aimlessly.”

    “To breathe, Father.  To see the world before it hardens me into something I won’t recognize any more. It’s about being true to myself !”  Ernest said in exasperation.

    “True to yourself, that doesn’t even make sense.  Can you even listen to yourself talk?  This is your life, Ernest. Wake up before it is too late, and you do something you truly regret.”  Otto’s jaw tightened as he spoke these words.  He had seen this coming in his son, the quiet defiance, the distracted eyes during family dinners, the way Ernest would linger by the window and drift out of conversations while others spoke of internships.  He added, “Son, you speak as if duty were a prison.  Medicine is the most honourable profession.  It gives life true meaning.  It can give you meaning.”

    “Meaning for whom?  For you?  If my mother were still here, she would be pushing me to marry some banker’s daughter and spend my life listening to the complaints of the comfortable?  You call that meaning? I call that the ultimate surrender. You aren’t any better.”

    A muscle twitched beneath Otto’s temple. “Don’t you dare invoke the memory of your mother in these discussions.  Your mother only wanted the best for you and this family.  If you valued, no, if you loved, your mother, you would change this insane course you have set yourself on.  You are only twenty-three.  You have no idea what surrender means.  The world is not one of your poems, Ernest.  It is a serious set of obligations.  Men who forget that end up broken, or worse, forgotten.”

    Ernest’s gaze wandered to the window.  Beyond the rain, the Rhine shimmered like a dull blade.  He imagined following it, letting it lead him through forests and mountains, to places where no one cared about the respectability of rank.  “When I was a child, you used to take me walking in the hills.  I remember how quiet and introspective you became when the city fell further behind us.  If you remember that time, you can understand what I feel now.  There is more to life than climbing ladders built by other men.”

    For a moment, Otto’s eyes softened.  But quickly his old rigidity returned, the armour of habit and expectations.  “That was before I learned that dreams don’t pay bills.  You think you can live on air and idealism? The world will crush that kind of naïveté.”

    “Then let it try.”

    Silence filled the room, thick as the rain outside.  The clock ticked between them like a slow heartbeat.  Otto rose from his chair.  “All I can say is that you will regret this decision.  Ernest, a man without a profession, is a man without a future.”

    Ernest took a step toward the door, his voice quiet but steady.  “No, father. A man without freedom has no future.  I’d rather be lost for a while than live someone else’s map.”  He left his father standing in the dim light of the study, the rain still whispering on the glass panes.

    And for the first time, Otto Masters wondered whether the emptiness he feared for his son wasn’t already his own.