Tuesday, August 05, 2014
Unhandled
Just an observation that someone else might find worth exploring.
When I need to relax my brain, a form of acupressure helps. Every muscle has a pressure point. If you can find the right point, push a knuckle into that point until it hurts, and hold for a minute, you'll release a spasmed muscle. My skull muscles are constantly tense, probably part of the positive-feedback cycle of tinnitus, so this release helps to break the cycle.
After I hit the release button, there is usually a simultaneous release of something in the brain itself. I have no idea what this something is; might be a squirt of hormone, might be an artery opening up. Whatever it is, it causes a fresh idea or solution to emerge, or pops out a sharp-edged memory from long ago, a memory that I had never recalled in the intervening years.
Last night one of those unhandled memories popped out. It was from a family 'vacation' in 1964, a visit to mother's father who was dying of alcohol-induced throat cancer. To make it seem more like a 'vacation', parents did some 'vacationy' things. One of those things was riding in a horse-drawn carriage in a park near Detroit. Over the years I'd repeatedly handled a few other memories from this 'vacation', but this horse-drawn carriage had been completely absent from my consciousness between 1964 and 2014. A perfect memory, just sitting there in some mysterious form, maintaining itself for 50 years while all the protoplasm and proteins supporting it were regenerated millions of times. Waiting until it was called for.
Amazing things, these nervous systems.
¶ 6:11 AM 
