I was sitting at an outdoor café yesterday down in Sanur sipping at a caramel pudding cappuccino (or some such frivolity) when suddenly something fell from the sky, or rather from a high limb of the tall tree beneath which my table was situated, and smacked to the pavement near my feet, glancing first off the tabletop umbrella.
Naturally, I was startled, as were two schoolgirls passing nearby, who granted the thing a shriek before continuing on their way--but more startling than the noise the falling thing had made was what I saw, or indeed did not see, when I looked to see what had happened; for what I saw on the pavement near my feet did not immediately register as any particular thing. I expected to see a bit of the tree itself, a stick or a branch or a slab of bark, but my eyes identified none of these possibilities. What they recorded, just at first, was something amorphous, a pallid grey/green, somehow gelatinous seeming shape. I leaned forward to get a closer look, for the thing was just not registering. What was this deep sea sort of entity that had suddenly fallen from the sky?
Well, the longer I looked, the freer the thing became of its must-ness of being a stick until it was able to gradually resolve into being what it was. And what it was was a squirrel.
There, after all, is the head, and the long, bushy tail, the striped brown coloring, the little eyeball and the little ear--there, the squirrel-ness of the thing in its entirety.
But why had it taken me so long to categorize the thing? How had it so long persisted as mere blobbishness?
We tend to think of the eye as an organ which sees and does its own comprehending according to what it sees. Like the lens of a camera. Point and shoot. But of course it's really not that simple. Information is not being processed by the eye but in the brain. The eye, which knows nothing on its own, merely relays what it has recorded. It does not comprehend the information any more than a tape recorder comprehends what is on a tape that is being played.
This said, how has it happened, in the case of the squirrel, that my brain has interrupted the image of the creature in such a jumbled way? It wanted to see stick, the eye was not transmitting stick, and there was nothing on the instant with which to replace stick. My brain's answer was an amorphous nothing, vaguely green or grey. Was it of inanimate matter or was it alive? No interpretation was offered. There did seem to be some movement, but perhaps the movement was that caused by a breeze on a leaf. Was the thing a leaf?
But I know leaves, and I did not see a leaf. I did not see, at first, anything known.
Now, what did I see? Was it the visual representation of the brain's answer of I don't know? Was the grey/green shape an essence rather than particulate matter, an ectoplasm. Had the squirrel been on the verge of death and was this cloudy, nameless thing the rising up of his soul (and, for that matter, was he called back to his body by my eventual ability to identify him)? Or was this merely a failure to communicate, a damaged transmitter, a fried bit of myelin, a whisper of Alzheimer's?
Well, in any case, the happy news is that the squirrel laid there on the pavement for about ten minutes, began at last to blink its eye, then to twitch its tail, and then, coming fully awake, to squawk out what may have been litany of curses before suddenly jumping up, leaping to the chair, and to the table top, and thence to the trunk and high limbs of the tree. I don't expect to ever see him again. In fact, it had been difficult enough to see him just this once.
Naturally, I was startled, as were two schoolgirls passing nearby, who granted the thing a shriek before continuing on their way--but more startling than the noise the falling thing had made was what I saw, or indeed did not see, when I looked to see what had happened; for what I saw on the pavement near my feet did not immediately register as any particular thing. I expected to see a bit of the tree itself, a stick or a branch or a slab of bark, but my eyes identified none of these possibilities. What they recorded, just at first, was something amorphous, a pallid grey/green, somehow gelatinous seeming shape. I leaned forward to get a closer look, for the thing was just not registering. What was this deep sea sort of entity that had suddenly fallen from the sky?
Well, the longer I looked, the freer the thing became of its must-ness of being a stick until it was able to gradually resolve into being what it was. And what it was was a squirrel.
There, after all, is the head, and the long, bushy tail, the striped brown coloring, the little eyeball and the little ear--there, the squirrel-ness of the thing in its entirety.
But why had it taken me so long to categorize the thing? How had it so long persisted as mere blobbishness?
We tend to think of the eye as an organ which sees and does its own comprehending according to what it sees. Like the lens of a camera. Point and shoot. But of course it's really not that simple. Information is not being processed by the eye but in the brain. The eye, which knows nothing on its own, merely relays what it has recorded. It does not comprehend the information any more than a tape recorder comprehends what is on a tape that is being played.
This said, how has it happened, in the case of the squirrel, that my brain has interrupted the image of the creature in such a jumbled way? It wanted to see stick, the eye was not transmitting stick, and there was nothing on the instant with which to replace stick. My brain's answer was an amorphous nothing, vaguely green or grey. Was it of inanimate matter or was it alive? No interpretation was offered. There did seem to be some movement, but perhaps the movement was that caused by a breeze on a leaf. Was the thing a leaf?
But I know leaves, and I did not see a leaf. I did not see, at first, anything known.
Now, what did I see? Was it the visual representation of the brain's answer of I don't know? Was the grey/green shape an essence rather than particulate matter, an ectoplasm. Had the squirrel been on the verge of death and was this cloudy, nameless thing the rising up of his soul (and, for that matter, was he called back to his body by my eventual ability to identify him)? Or was this merely a failure to communicate, a damaged transmitter, a fried bit of myelin, a whisper of Alzheimer's?
Well, in any case, the happy news is that the squirrel laid there on the pavement for about ten minutes, began at last to blink its eye, then to twitch its tail, and then, coming fully awake, to squawk out what may have been litany of curses before suddenly jumping up, leaping to the chair, and to the table top, and thence to the trunk and high limbs of the tree. I don't expect to ever see him again. In fact, it had been difficult enough to see him just this once.
2 comments:
Choices are good. Never forget you have choices.
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mb--Yes, I do have choices. The trouble is that seeking more intense treatment for MS would require my return to the States (these treatment modalities are unknown in Indonesia, and would be too expensive even if they were available). In returning to the States, I would have to figure out how I could live there on Social Security alone. So while this choice has its reasonable side, it also has its unpleasant side. I enjoy my life in Bali, and I appreciate how much farther than dollar goes here. Nor have I forgotten how deathly ill I became when I did take the injected treatments some eight years ago. But yes, the whole scenario is something I often debate with myself about.
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