My Life With The Brain

This is not a picture of The Brain.

This is also not a picture of The Brain; this is a picture of a tunnel.

This is a picture of the sky.


This is an introduction to The Brain:

My Life With The Brain, Part I

The Brain and I have had our rough times, but we’ve stuck together. We have a common history and, after years of trial and error, we have devised a few little strategies so that we might get along in most instances. The Brain and I, in order to live together, have come an understanding: I give it what I can of what it wants, and the rest of the time it has to be knowledgeably content with disappointment.

This is some of what I know about The Brain:

The Brain seems to love a few things: New information and novel solutions to problems. Carbohydrate-rich foods and caffeinated beverages. Cable television. The smell of really old, crumbly paperback books. Arguing and winning arguments.

The Brain seems to like some things to varying degrees: Poetry, for example, and stand-up comedy. Nature and natural processes like evolution. The eventual, inescapable absurdity of a staunch insistence on engaging in logical thinking, and, in fact, absurdity of all kinds. Packing suitcases. Birds in flight. The constraints of etiquette.

The Brain dislikes many things to varying degrees: Low-brow humor. Shopping, even shopping for carbohydrate-rich foods. Going to the gym, especially alone. Lying and small talk. Landscaping. Planning for the future. Re-enactments of historical events and grass-roots politics. Cleaning. Running errands. Talking on the telephone. Most owners of small dogs. Trying on clothing, especially bras. Team sports.

The Brain hates some things: Other adults insisting on being babied or acting like spoiled children, for example, makes The Brain absolutely livid. Emotions that do nothing more than cause The Brain and me to spin our wheels. Senses of entitlement. The perpetuation of what Audre Lorde calls The White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy. Overly disciplined thinking. Bureaucracy. Being told what to do.

The Brain is ambivalent about some things, some of them very big things: Time, for example, especially time when it must be dealt with in increments larger than a single day. Deadlines. The false dichotomy between art and functionality. Sleep. Love. Sex. Religion. Artificial sweeteners.

The Brain is neutral, sometimes surprisingly so, about a great many things. (I don’t want to speak for The Brain, of course, but I would venture to say that The Brain is actually neutral about most things, which I guess surprises me because I hold such strong opinions about most things.) Color, for example, and music. Architecture. Most other people. Fashion. News. Biological imperatives like bearing children. Most new technology. Amassing collections of things. Happiness. Mortality.

All these likes and dislikes are The Brain’s likes and dislikes. I have my own likes and dislikes that are only somewhat tangentially related to The Brain’s.

The me that I talk about when I talk about The Brain and me has its own ideas and desires that too often seem to be based almost entirely on unmet expectations. I think, for example, that The Brain should focus more on furthering our education or learning to think in a more organized and structured way, but those things fall into the neutral zone for The Brain. I also, for example, love existential philosophy and Russian history, though The Brain is confused and frightened by the former and very much less than thrilled by the latter. Sometimes I do things that I know will make The Brain suffer, like bringing nothing to occupy The Brain on fourteen-hour long airplane flights. I find there are lessons to be learned from grappling with boredom, even if The Brain hates to be bored. In turn, I hate it when The Brain feels the need to take us on two-year detours through major depressions. And I hate it when The Brain suggests alternative endings to past events or forces me to tell people just exactly how to fix their lives.

For a long time, one of our biggest arguments was over The Body. The Brain doesn’t want to have to care or think about The Body at all, except as transport or as the means to glucose acquisition. The Body, as a result, for a long time functioned as a kind of mute storage area, where The Brain could dump everything it didn’t want to grapple with in the moment. Dealing with the stuff that The Brain dumped in The Body was more--way more--unpleasant than cleaning out the average cluttered garage. It was more like cleaning out the Collyer brothers' garage. I think it was me, finally standing up to The Brain’s somewhat cavalier treatment of The Body that changed a few things. I don’t mean that The Brain was actively unfair to The Body, it was more that The Brain wasn’t really seeing the larger picture (that included me and The Body) or underestimated the consequences of its acts. The Brain was used to not having to pay much attention, I mean, and The Body was used to not having much attention paid and I was mostly--thankfully--unaware of the proceedings.

But all that has changed.