Saturday, August 31, 2013

Along for the Ride

Riding in the back seat of a car recently, I was enjoying the ride and the lack of responsibility. My daughter, Shirley, was driving and involved in a lively conversation with my wife, Judith. Not driving used to be a luxury for me, but in recent years it has become pretty much the norm. Younger people have taken over many aspects of my life. Where we go and when, what we eat and where we will have dinner, which movie we’ll see—all these decisions are often made by others, leaving me free to be simply along for the ride.

My age has a lot to do with that. I no longer have to be the one in charge, the one who takes responsibility for everyone else, the one who deals with the frequent little crises of life. More importantly, it’s because I don’t hear much of the conversations around me. Hearing aids help only in the best of circumstances when the ambient noise level is low and people are near me and speaking clearly. When I have to, I can ask people to speak up or “say that again” or otherwise consider my limitations when they are speaking. But when I’m in a group, I often find that I can’t keep up with the conversation and I’m reluctant to interfere with the flow.

Lately I’m aware that my capacity to integrate experiences is declining. I’m told that at my age I should expect the failure of synapses in my brain—my mind is functioning less, in spite of all my efforts to keep it active. I don’t understand as quickly. Listening to others as they talk, especially young people, I simply can’t as easily follow them. I cannot multi-task; my mind cannot accommodate multiple tasks and events. I’m much more easily distracted by outside noise, for example, especially other conversations in the environment. More and more, I find I’m simply dropping out of participating and understanding what’s going on around me.

Neurologists tell us that the vast proportion of activity of our minds is unconscious. We’ve always known this to some extent: “Why did I say that?” is a common observation. Experiments show that, for example, when we decide to move our hand from here to there, before we’re conscious of the intention, our bodies have already begun the movement. Conscious awareness seems to be merely one effect of processes going on in our minds, rather than the stimulus of behavior. It’s like we’re watching a delayed display on a monitor of what we do.

And that doesn’t even consider the automatic processes at work in our bodies—our digestive system, our very heart beat, the healing of minor skin damage or bone fractures. There’s no director at work handling all those processes, no little man pushing buttons and pulling levers to make our bodies do what they do. We have an erroneous idea that we’re in charge. Our conscious control of what our bodies do is mostly illusion. Perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say we’re only “along for the ride” of our lives, but it’s way less exaggeration than we tend to think.

In the past century (about), our society has become aware of our part in some of the changes in our climate. The increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is contributing to the warming of our planet. We can certainly spoil our environment for ourselves and other living creatures. But it’s the height of hubris to think that we can destroy Earth. It was here millions of years before we appeared, and no doubt it will be here millions of years after we humans are gone. To think that humanity will at some point in the future simply not exist is disconcerting, but it’s likely. We’re along for the ride on this planet.

Just as true is the inevitability that I will at some moment soon no longer exist. Death has always been difficult for people in some cultures to think about. The closer I get to that darkness, the simpler it seems. But it means that I have to learn to let go of desire. I need to get used to being only “along for the ride.” The “ride of a lifetime” is literally true.

In some ways I’m getting used to being with people and hearing their voices without understanding much of what they are saying. I wish sometimes, though, that I could participate more in conversations and decision-making that involve me. I also wish I had the resources to participate more in the world around me. I think of Beethoven, for example, who determinedly kept going in spite of his deafness, and kept giving what he had to the world. Being simply along for the ride, when I have a choice, seems like dropping out. I’m not ready to do that yet.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Science Fiction and Fantasy

According to Wikipedia, science fiction is a genre of fiction “… largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. It is similar to, but differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established  or … postulated laws of nature.”

When I wrote my novel Osmosis a few years ago, I wasn’t thinking of what genre it fit into. I chose to posit a world just like ours, in today’s time frame, an ordinary American story—with one exception: What would it be like if some people could actually “hear”—even imperfectly—what was in other people’s minds?

Osmosis Front Cover for Bowker

In the course of the story, that one anomaly, initially limited in scope to a few main characters, insisted on expanding to potentially change just about everything.

That’s how it is in the “Worlds of If.” A lot of authors have used the technique—change one little thing in reality and see what happens—to explore history and philosophy from slightly different angles. The one I can remember offhand is James Thurber’s hilarious story, “If Grant had been Drinking at Appomatttox,” which was first published in The New Yorker in 1930.

That little bit of fantasy for the sake of a story got me thinking a lot about how we communicate with each other. I found John Searle’s book The Mystery of Consciousness, containing references to “mirror neurons”—a portion of the brain that seems to mirror the behavior of other people near us. According to those researchers who have been studying this phenomenon, we (along with some other species) register the actions of people with the same neural circuits that are activated when we perform the same actions. This, they contend, helps explain the fact that we know how others are apt to behave, and even possibly explain such social attributes as empathy. We communicate more—some times much more—than we’re aware of.

This is not the same as “mind reading,” as it is usually understood and as played with in my novel, but it suggests a lot of possible explanations for how we get along with others.

There’s a very good summary of the study of mirror neurons and their functions by Ben Thomas in “What’s So Special about Mirror Neurons” in a Scientific American Guest Blog of November 6, 2012.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

A Novella

A number of my books have been published on Amazon.com, either as Kindle books or paperbacks, since 2004. The early ones were collections of essays, most of which had appeared on my Web site donskiff.com. More recently, I’ve been writing fiction, which gives me a sense of discovery (where do the stories come from?) and satisfaction in producing something that is uniquely my own.

Front Cover DSC_5913-2 sharp

The latest of these stories is a novella, The Guitar, about a relationship. The following is the back-cover blurb:

In the twilight of his life, a man discovers a mysterious connection to a young musician. Their developing relationship gives both of them a wider view of life and how we touch each other. Matthew, still grieving the recent loss of his wife, attends a local bistro “just to get out of the house” and finds Laura, a young woman, playing a guitar. The depth of feeling he perceives in her music touches him, and they begin a hesitant relationship. She is moved by his attention and by a feeling that he truly hears what she puts into her music. The connection they feel for each other is complicated by the difference in their ages and by the fact that she is in a committed relationship with another woman. They struggle to find ways that they can be with each other realistically yet meaningfully.

An early reader of the manuscript, unknown to me at the time, wrote about the story:

“… a tender, moving tale plumbing  the powerful and indefinable reach of attraction, chemistry and love in a most unexpected combination. Using music as a metaphor is especially powerful to anyone who has lived that era and loved its music. It was like a rope swing dangling there and inviting you to let the music swing through the story. Don is a skillful writer who moved me to tears and proved that his character development comes alive.”

I’d love to hear other comments on the story. Better yet, write a review (be honest, please!) on Amazon.com at the listing for the book.