The Physiology of the Soul

[Image: “ThreeWay,” by Daniel Friedman. (Found on Flickr, naturally, and used here under a Creative Commons License: thank you!) Among the quotations which appear as the image’s description: “A metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion.” (Hermann von Helmholtz, from On Thought in Medicine (1877))]

From whiskey river:

The Bodies
(excerpt)

We move, we love, we cry out,
we hold or cannot hold to what we are
and finally wake to find ourselves
changed beyond all imagining.
Was it enough to have lived?
In that moment of still approach,
will it be given to us to know?

(Elizabeth Spires [source])

…and:

Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.

(Don DeLillo [source])

…and:

No matter what the universe has in store, it cannot take away from the fact that you were born. You’ll have some joy and some pain, and all the other experiences that make up what it’s like to be a tiny part of a grand cosmos. No matter what happens next, you were here. And even when any record of our individual lives is lost to the ages, that won’t detract from the fact that we were. We lived. We were part of the enormity. All the great and terrible parts of being alive, the shocking sublime beauty and heartbreak, the monotony, the interior thoughts, the shared pain and pleasure. It really happened. All of it. On this little world that orbits a yellow star out in the great vastness. And that alone is cause for celebration.

(Sasha Sagan [source])

…and:

One Heart

It is late afternoon and I have just returned from
the longer version of my walk nobody knows
about. For the first time in nearly a month, and
everything changed. It is the end of March, once
more I have lived. This morning a young woman
described what it’s like shooting coke with a baby
in your arms. The astonishing windy and altering light
and clouds and water were, at certain moment,
You.

There is only one heart in my body, have mercy
on me.

The brown leaves buried all winter creatureless feet
running over dead grass beginning to green, the first scent-
less violet here and there, returned, the first star noticed all
at once as one stands staring into the black water.

Thank You for letting me live for a little as one of the
sane; thank You for letting me know what this is
like. Thank You for letting me look at your frightening
blue sky without fear, and your terrible world without
terror, and your loveless psychotic and hopelessly
lost
with this love.

(Franz Wright [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Waving Goodbye

The world bends us to its purpose.
In the public gardens, we found
a “gazing globe” balanced
on a waist-high pedestal,
a silver ball a foot in circumference,
reflecting sky and ground,
ourselves as we stood above it.
We stared into its depths,
as in a crystal ball,
our faces large and wild,
arms and legs unnaturally small,
as if a spell were on the world,
or, finally, we clearly saw the world
for what it was: too brightly
shining, circular, unadorned.

Trees bent toward us, mere shadows
of themselves, their shadows
more substantial than the trees themselves.
The sky at one o’clock
a milky white, light-filled,
yet without sun or cloud. And beds
of tulips rising from the groundswell,
each one a little mouth.
I knelt beside you on one knee,
caught up in walls of air
I couldn’t touch or see, the outer world
around me wavering, as on a hot summer day.

We looked out to the future. Our future
selves. You stood dead center
in the globe and raised your hand to stop
the scene, your palm enlarging
until it dwarfed the tallest trees.
Then waving goodbye, we walked,
as a joke, backward and away,
farther and farther away—
the globe still gazing on us—
leaving ourselves behind
to live forever in that silver room,
to watch and spy on lovers like ourselves.

(Elizabeth Spires [source])

…and:

We may have run all our life, but now we don’t have to run anymore. This is the time to stop running. To be grounded in the earth is to feel its solidity with each step and know that we are right where we are supposed to be.

Each mindful breath, each mindful step, reminds us that we are alive on this beautiful planet. We don’t need anything else. It is wonderful enough just to be alive, to breathe in, and to make one step. We have arrived at where real life is available—the present moment. If we breathe and walk in this way, we become as solid as a mountain.

There are those of us who have a comfortable house, but we don’t feel that we are home. We don’t want for anything, and yet we don’t feel home. All of us are looking for our solid ground, our true home. The earth is our true home and it is always there, beneath us and around us. Breathe, take a mindful step, and arrive. We are already at home.

(Thich Nhat Hanh [source])

…and:

CALVIN: Isn’t it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor?

When you think about it, it’s weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it’s funny.

Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?

HOBBES: I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at the things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.

CALVIN (after a long pause): I can’t tell if that’s funny or really scary.

(Bill Watterson [source])