Thursday, December 14, 2006


MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

And At the End You Will Begin Again

When I was 25 years old - oh god how long ago that seems now, so many, many lifetimes ago - I read a book called The Three Pound Universe. I still have it - although I think it was originally my brother's book. Had to be - it's a fascinating albeit reductionistic, mechanistic tome on the nature of the brain and human consciousness. Yeah, there I was getting my M.A. in art history, waitressing for a living and reading about things like split brain research at night. This book frightened me like nothing ever had. I remember it so vividly, though I feel no fear now. I suppose at 25 I still had so many luxuries - my father was still alive, my grandmother was alive and I hadn't become ill yet. So I had time and time and nothing but time to spend my days studying Neoclassical painters, serving cheeseburgers to grumpy customers and trying to pin down the very nature of human existence and consciousness. Fourteen years later I look back on this person and laugh, wearily, knowingly. Oh you had it all, I think. You young, naive fool. But how was I to know? We are all only responsible for our present; we cannot know what is to come, what will forever alter every fiber and cell and neuron of our beings.

So I read this book, which scared the holy hell out of me because it was written by scientists who essentially believe there is not only no God, but no soul. It's a little difficult to explain. Suffice it to say, I remember vividly the night I was in bed reading this, and seeking the answers to the Great Questions, I had turned to science, as religion had failed me too many times. Suddenly these scientists were my Gods. And they were prophets and seers and sages and they fascinated me with their data and experiments and tales from the laboratory and I read of deja vu's occurring in the temporal lobe in the brain and Roger Sperry splitting brains in half and men who no longer had short term memories and lived in Twilight Zone-like perpetual hells. And somehow, someway, these men and women, with their research and smoke and mirrors and test tubes, convinced me that there was indeed no me. That there was no soul, no permanent consciousness to be found anywhere within my being. And I sat there and thought, I am one severe head injury away from not being me. I mean come on, think about it. Where do people with Alzheimer's go? Are the brain and the mind the same thing? Is there not only no life after death, but no real life in our minds? Would I disappear if hit in the head hard enough? Where are people in comas? Vegetative states? Are they in a nether-world, waiting to return? Or have they left even themselves, not even knowing they were once people, and are now simply shells???

I don't know the answers today to any of these questions, just like I didn't know the answers almost 15 years ago. I suppose the major difference today is that I don't seem to care much anymore. I find this ironic - I was the 5 year old child whose first question to my mother was "Am I going to die?" - I was the child who was obsessed with death and the afterlife. I was always trying to find some kind of answer, some peace. Oddly, by not caring about the questions anymore, perhaps I have found it.

Nevertheless, I was utterly devastated. Why I chose to put all my faith, pun intended, in these scientists and their theories - for that's all they are really - just theories - and call them reality is beyond me. I walked around in a daze. I remember taking people's orders at the restaurant and wanting to say "Do you realize there is no you?" Luckily I refrained and didn't end up in a rubber room. So I really bought into this whole idea of there being no soul, no me. I was constantly changing. There was nothing permanent about me. Oh I can see that now, physically. I can finally start to see the signs of aging, on the tops of my hands, around my eyes...it's happening. I'm succumbing to what I never really believed would happen because when you are young and healthy and everything is basically OK in your world you are never going to get old. That only happens to other people. Aging and growing older - it's happening. My body has taken a beating by the fibro the last 13 years. I learned a lot of lessons a lot sooner than my friends and peers. Such is life.

So what got me thinking about all this now...all these years later. I'm no longer obsessed with the idea of there being no real me. Lately I've been far, far too busy to even have the luxury of having a philosophical thought. But I started thinking about 2006 as my first semester finally, finally winds down. I thought about who I was and where I was at the beginning of the year, and who I am and where I am at the end of the year. And two more different people you'd be hard pressed to find.

I don't know where I'm going with this because frankly my brain has pretty much turned to mush and I've beaten this poor tired body down into a heap of pain. I've spent the entire year working towards this credential program and the last three months in the program and all I can say is I never, never, never, never want to be that busy again in my life. Slowly but surely I lost all contact with everyone and everything. I guess student teaching and taking 6 graduate classes will do that to you. Plus my health took a dive - like I thought it would. I keep telling myself it'll be worth it in June. Right? Right?

So last January I began this insane race. I spent six months studing for three CSET exams and being a T.A. for a kindergarten class in one of the wealthiest areas of Southern California. I spent time with kids so young they had no idea how rich they were. Too young to act like spoiled brats, but I suppose it will come in time. In between days I did strange things...I met my journalistic hero, Anderson Cooper in June...that experience feels like it happened about 10,000 years ago. I saw a play with Al Pacino in May, and spent a wildly surrealistic time with the Church in June and August. Did that really happen? Perhaps that's what I mean about there being no real me anymore. Who was the girl running around selling Church merch? Santa Barbara? Steve's paintings? Who was I? Why does it all seem like a dream now? Who was that girl? Was she the same girl painting the feet of 5 year olds in January? The same girl taking the State-mandated tests in March and July? The same girl who spent three and half months in a nightmare LAUSD elementary school on lockdown half the time trying to avoid gang bangers on the way to her car every day? I feel like I've been a thousand different people this year.

Certainly I am not the same person I was when I started this program. You cannot go into the crime-ridden, poverty striken area I did and come out unscathed. If you do, then I feel sorry for you. And yet I did get to come out of there. What of my beautiful kids who don't get to leave? What will become of them? How I grew to love these children. My crazy, unruly, wild, loving fifth graders. So smart, so troubled, so sad, so funny. So many tragic stories I couldn't list them here. Student teaching ended December 8th, the day I took my mom to the hospital for a small outpatient surgery. I came back to the class on the 13th to give the kids their Christmas cards and stickers and candy and unless you've experienced it you have no idea what it feels like to walk into a room and have 28 kids scream your name, run at you like banshees, hug you for dear life and clap like you've just performed a great concerto! Gosh I felt like a rock star! Yep, we bonded. I didn't get to teach the whole class as much as I'd liked, but I worked very hard with them, in small groups and one on one, which might've worked out better in the end because they so desperately need the attention and the caring and I got the wonderful chance to get to know them as individuals and people.

When I came to see them on the last day before Christmas break, they were writing essays for a contest sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild. The essay topic is "What Love Means to Me" and I was in tears as they read me their essays. These kids may not know perfect English (but their English is still better than my Spanish!) but there hearts are still so amazingly pure and grateful despite their living conditions. They are so, so grateful...so amazingly grateful for any little thing you give them. A bag of candy? It might as well be a bag of diamonds. A card with a note in it? I saw a boy staring at it like he'd found the Rosetta Stone.

And what they gave me...can never be measured in gifts...although they did give me some wonderful gifts. The best gifts were their plain, pencil-written notes written on plain college-ruled paper in wonderful albeit broken English - notes I will keep and treasure for the rest of my life. Yessenia gave me a snow angel and Ariana gave me a beautiful little teapot and for a moment I feared they were giving me things from their own homes. That is how poor they are. I promised them 2 things: I would come back in January to spend a day with them and I would come to their graduation in June. And come hell or high water I will be there for them. People come in and out of their lives; they have no consistency and I do not want to let them down.

So who am I now? After the lockdowns and shootings and months spent with the children of illegal immigrants? Where do I stand now on all these issues? I started the year with children who have every material thing in the world and ended the year with children who are lucky to eat and wear decent clothes. And yet what grateful, happy hearts they have so much of the time. I didn't think my place could ever be in an urban school; now I see that that is where you truly make the biggest difference.

I feel like I am wholly changed; like every cell within me died and has been replaced. I feel like my soul is different and my views I held in August are different than the ones I hold now. Perhaps those scientists were right. Perhaps there is no permanent me.

I am still so sorry that aside from the kids the program was such a miserable experience. At the end of January we will be taking all our classes and not teaching; just 6 weeks of intense classes and then 9 weeks of full-day student teaching. I think I will be teaching second grade - probably at a different school - but that's another story. Let's just say I had a meeting with the program director and I wasn't the only one unhappy with my situation there. The kids were great - the school and its staff sucked. Articulate, I know.

I lost total and complete touch with the outside world and although I have one final on Thursday I feel like I am re-entering the world again. I don't suppose anyone could or would believe how busy I have been. Hell, even I wouldn't have believed it. How busy can you be? I'd think. Well, sadly, between my fibro, getting about 4-5 hours of sleep a night, getting up at 5am, teaching til noon, classes til 4pm, homework, errrands and pain...I lost the world and everyone in it. I never, ever ever want to be that busy again and pray that next semester is a little better. I knew I'd be busy but that was insane. It was worse than my M.A. program.

But now, I am a new person again....a person who just wants to take this stupid final, get it over with and relax for 6 weeks. I must have 70 magazines piled up around here, unread. I gave up on watching TV a long, long time ago. I think I saw three movies over the last 3 months and I haven't rented one video. For me, the movie queen, that's crazy! I have a lot to catch up on.

So as the year comes to a close, I wonder. Who will I be next year? Who will I be in the program? I will be turning 40 in April; it's a big one no matter how I play it. Because in my mind, in so many ways, I am still that 25 year old girl, stuck forever reading The Three Pound Universe, walkind around and wondering if there is really a me inside of me.

Photo: Five of my kids, at the annual Halloween parade.