Tangled Whispers (#97)

This month's poetry offering, plus my actual brain, and stunning brain communication art.

Part of Campfire Notebook’s new format is a monthly poetry feature. As I continue to work on new poetry submissions offline, I still want to share examples of my work with you. These are poems created purposefully each month to share around the Campfire.

I visited my mom at work one day when visiting in Ontario, and one of the grad students needed to calibrate the MRI for an upcoming experiment. So I said, “What the hell. I’ve never been in one of these!” I was anxious but eventually was quite soothed by the constant chirping of the machine. (Photo: John Roberts, 2009)

Not my best angle, but hey, I was limited in poses. Sagittal (sideview) section of my brain, circa 2009. (Also: not my birthday. Photo: John Roberts, 2009)

I remember PSYC 3723: Human Neuropsychology for two reasons:

1. The first lecture had the distinction of starting on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Most of us left the student union building stunned, and with our information processing capacity at a minimum. I remember leafing through the textbook afterwards in the parking lot, trying to scope out the work ahead, but thinking more of my airline coworkers at the reservations centre down the road. One thing did stick out in the syllabus, though:

2. We were going to dissect a human brain.

The dissection was a short-lived arrangement; the professor (a neuropsychologist) had a good relationship with a neurosurgeon at the adjacent hospital, but then they each left for other opportunities after a couple of years¹. It was through their relationship that our class was granted access to an experience that is usually reserved to medical students.

All these years later, to have seen the entirety of what makes us “us” in such an unassuming and small arrangement of tissue - the best I can describe it is humbling.

I’ve never forgotten that day, and I’m forever grateful to the person who decided to live on in our education.

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Tangled Whispers
On the table, messy tangle
of threads that cannot be read -  
you took the decoder book,
left us with three pounds of mush
the colour of canned mushrooms
on gleaming stainless steel.
I feel I should kneel
at this altar of altered state;
this afternoon, your final oratory.
What stories will you share here?
I strain to hear yarns whispered:
You loved the first steps in a fresh snow.
Your eyes creased like ginger crinkles
when you saw your grandchildren. 
You once changed a tire in rain
and it changed your life - your wife,
your partner in kitchen waltzes 
when that song came on the radio. 
The one who gave us this gift
of your final conversation today. 
I pause and listen, before 
I sever threads of your sweater.

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Thanks for reading this month’s creation, friends. You can check out other poems I’ve created for the Campfire here:

Invasive Species | The Tangent Function | A Spark That Spreads | Mango

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This Week in SciArt

This is well worth the five minutes. Well, it’s worth the even deeper dive into the intricate and precise creation that is Greg Dunn’s gold leaf etching of a human brain - 500,000 neurons etched such that they shimmers like they are communicating information in real-time.

What’s a state of beyond awe? Because I am speechless.

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1. Insanely, my prof - who already had a PhD, mind you - left to attend medical school and become a neurologist. That’s beyond impressive to me. I did ONE of those things and the very brief times that the idea crossed my mind to do the other since were promptly squashed by my prefrontal cortex. There’s not enough coffee.