If the brain is to stay healthy, it must remain active, wondering, playing, exploring, and experimenting right to the end.

© Bill Hayes / Oliver Sacks Foundation

Everything In Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales
By Oliver Sacks

Admired Oliver Sacks' compassion towards his patients and his devotion to science, especially neurology. He also had such vast curiosity and enthusiasm about life. From his love of swimming, reading, and nature, to his descriptions of awe-filled, strange, lovely experiences including attending an annual herring festival in NYC, meeting an orangutan for the first time, and more—I loved reading about his adventures and perspectives. He lived life openly, intelligently, fully.

"Mr. Q was another patient, less demented than Dr. M., who resided in a nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor where I often worked. He had been employed for many years as the janitor at a boarding school and now found himself in a somewhat similar place: an institutional building with institutional furniture and a great many people coming and going, especially in the daytime, some in authority, and dressed accordingly, others under their guidance; there was also a strict curriculum, with fixed mealtimes and fixed times for getting up and going to bed. So perhaps it was not entirely unexpected that Mr. Q should imagine that he was still a janitor, still at a school (albeit a school that had undergone some puzzling changes). But if the pupils were sometimes bedridden or elderly, and the staff wore the white habits of a religious order, these were mere details—he never bothered with administrative matters.
He had his job: checking the windows and doors to make sure they were securely locked at night, inspecting the laundry and boiler room to make sure all was functioning smoothly. The sisters who ran the home, though perceiving his confusion and delusion, respected and even reinforced the identity of this somewhat demented resident, who, they felt, might fall apart if it were taken away. So they encouraged him in his janitorial role, giving him keys to certain closets and encouraging him to lock up at night before he retired. He wore a bunch of keys jangling at his waist—the insignia of his office, his official identity. He would check the kitchen to make sure all of the gas rings and stoves were turned off and no perishable food had been left unrefrigerated. And though he slowly became more and more demented over the years, he seemed to be organized and held together in a remarkable way by his role, the varied tasks of checking, cleaning, and maintenance that he performed throughout the day. When Mr. Q died of a sudden heart attack, he did so without perhaps ever realizing that he had been anything but a janitor with a lifetime of loyal work behind him.
Should we have told Mr. Q that he was no longer a janitor but a declining and demented patient in a nursing home? Should we have taken away his accustomed and well-rehearsed identity and replaced it with a "reality" that, though real to us, would have been meaningless to him? It seemed not only pointless but cruel to do so—and might well have hastened his decline."
("Telling," pp. 142-3)

"If the brain is to stay healthy, it must remain active, wondering, playing, exploring, and experimenting right to the end. Such activities or dispositions may not show up on a functional brain imaging or, for that matter, on neuropsychological tests, but they are of the essence in defining the health of the brain and in allowing its development throughout life."
("The Aging Brain," pp. 153)

"The two preeminent evolutionary changes in the early history of life on Earth—from prokaryote to eukaryote, from anaerobe to aerobe—took the better part of two billion years. And then another thousand million years had to pass before life rose above the microscopic and the first multicellular organisms appeared. So if the Earth's history is anything to go by, one should not expect to find any higher life on a planet that is still young. Even if life has appeared and all goes well, it could take billions of years for evolutionary processes to move it along to the multicellular stage."
("Anybody Out There?," pp. 206-7)

"For myself, since I cannot wait, I turn to science fiction on occasion—and, not least, back to my favorite Wells. Although it was written a hundred years ago, "A Lunar Morning"* has the freshness of a new dawn, and it remains for me, as when I first read it, the most poetic evocation of how it may be when, finally, we encounter alien life."
("Anybody Out There?," p. 210)

"Reading is a hugely complex task, one that calls upon many parts of the brain, but it is not a skill humans have acquired through evolution (unlike speech, which is largely hardwired). Reading is a relatively recent development, arising perhaps five thousand years ago, and it depends on a tiny area of the brain's visual cortex. What we now call the visual word form area is part of a cortical region near the back of the left side of the brain that evolved to recognize basic shapes in nature but can be redeployed for the recognition of letters or words. This elementary shape or letter recognition is only the first step.
From this visual word form area, two-way connections must be made to many other parts of the brain, including those responsible for grammar, memories, association, and feelings, so that letters and words acquire their particular meanings for us. We each form unique neural pathways associated with reading, and we each bring to the act of reading a unique combination not only of memory and experience, but of sensory modalities, too. Some people may "hear" the sounds of the words as they read (I do, but only if I am reading for pleasure, not when I am reading for information); others may visualize them, consciously or not. Some may be acutely aware of the acoustic rhythms or emphases of a sentence; others are more aware of its look or its shape."
("Reading the Fine Print," pp. 230-1)


*"Imagine it; Imagine that dawn!"
-From H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon, chapter 8, A Lunar Morning

At the library I felt free—free to look at the thousands, tens of thousands, of books; free to roam and to enjoy the special atmosphere and the quiet companionship of other readers, all like myself, on quests of their own.

© Bill Hayes / Oliver Sacks Foundation

Everything In Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales
By Oliver Sacks

"Swimming became a dominant passion at Oxford, and after this there was no going back. When I came to New York, in the mid-1960s, I started to swim at Orchard Beach in the Bronx, and would sometimes make the circuit of City Island—a swim that took me several hours. This, indeed, is how I found the house I lived in for twenty years: I had stopped about halfway around to look at a charming gazebo by the water's edge, got out and strolled up the street, saw a little red house for sale, was shown round it (still dripping) by the puzzled owners, walked along to the real estate agent and convinced her of my interest (she was not used to customers in swim trunks), reentered the water on the other side of the island, and swam back to Orchard Beach, having acquired a house in midswim."
("Water Babies," p. 5)

"I do not think my experience is unique. Many scientists, no less than poets or artists, have a living relation to the past, not just an abstract sense of history and tradition but a feeling of companions and predecessors, ancestors with whom they enjoy a sort of implicit dialogue. Science sometimes sees itself as impersonal, as "pure thought," independent of its historical and human origins. It is often taught as if this were the case. But science is a human enterprise through and through, an organic, evolving, human growth, with sudden spurts and arrests, and strange deviations, too. It grows out of its past but never outgrows it, any more than we outgrow our childhoods."
("Humphry Davy: Poet of Chemistry," p. 39)

"The oak-paneled library was the quietest and most beautiful room in the house, to my eyes, and it vied with my little chemistry lab as my favorite place to be. I would curl up in a chair and become so absorbed in what I was reading that all sense of time would be lost. Whenever I was late for lunch or dinner I could be found, completely enthralled by a book, in the library. I learned to read early, at three our four, and books, and our library, are among my first memories.
But the ur-library, for me, was our local public library, the Willesden library. There I spent many of the happiest hours of my growing-up years—our house was a five-minute walk from the library—and it was there I received my education.
On the whole, I disliked school, sitting in class, receiving instruction; information seemed to go in one ear and out the other. I could not be passive—I had to be active, learn for myself, learn what I wanted, and in the way that suited me best. I was not a good pupil, but I was a good learner, and in the Willesden library—and all the libraries that came later—I roamed the shelves and stacks, had the freedom to select whatever I wanted, to follow paths that fascinated me, to become myself. At the library I felt free—free to look at the thousands, tens of thousands, of books; free to roam and to enjoy the special atmosphere and the quiet companionship of other readers, all like myself, on quests of their own."
("Libraries," p. 41)

I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as the door—a thousand opening doors!—past myself.

© Penguin Press

Upstream
By Mary Oliver

"I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as the door—a thousand opening doors!—past myself. I thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power.
In books: truth, and daring, passion of all sorts. Clear and sweet and savory emotion did not run in a rippling stream in my personal world—more pity to it! But in stories and poems I found passion unfettered, and healthy. Not that such feelings were always or even commonly found in their clearest, most delectable states in all the books I read. Not at all! I saw what skill was needed, and persistence—how one must bend one's spine, like a hoop, over the page—the long labor. I saw the difference between doing nothing, or doing a little, and the redemptive act of true effort. Reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstances—a passion for work."
(pp. 18-19)

But it reintroduced me to the power of words as a way to figure out who you are and what you think, and what you believe, and what’s important, and to sort through and interpret this swirl of events that is happening around you every minute.

Transcript: President Obama on What Books Mean to Him
By Michiko Kakutani

I thought I could not love him any more.

"I was hermetic — it really is true. I had one plate, one towel, and I’d buy clothes from thrift shops. And I was very intense, and sort of humorless. But it reintroduced me to the power of words as a way to figure out who you are and what you think, and what you believe, and what’s important, and to sort through and interpret this swirl of events that is happening around you every minute.

And so even though by the time I graduated I knew I wanted to be involved in public policy, or I had these vague notions of organizing, the idea of continuing to write and tell stories as part of that was valuable to me. And so I would come home from work, and I would write in my journal or write a story or two.

The great thing was that it was useful in my organizing work. Because when I got there, the guy who had hired me said that the thing that brings people together to have the courage to take action on behalf of their lives is not just that they care about the same issue, it’s that they have shared stories. And he told me that if you learn how to listen to people’s stories and can find what’s sacred in other people’s stories, then you’ll be able to forge a relationship that lasts.

But my interest in public service and politics then merged with the idea of storytelling."

He taught me how to read.

One week until my mom relocates to Houston and so I'm experiencing some serious nostalgia traveling down Memory Lane while I clean & unearth some gems we've kept for the past many years. Thought these were appropriate for this blog. (I've been achieving reading goals since 96!)

My (2013) Year In Books

No excerpt this time, I just want to say I DID IT. Not only did I read more this year than I've read in a long, long time, but I accomplished my goal of reading 30 books, finishing off the year by reading 36.

All titles can be viewed on my Goodreads page. I've also beat my previous record of 47 posts per year (in 2010) with 49. 50 if you count this one. :)

I will say honestly that I'm not sure I can beat that next year, but I will focus less on reading more than 36 books and more on continuing to read at the same pace. The first book of the new year is one I've technically, but barely, started --If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. If I like it and if appropriate there shall be excerpts posted from it soon.

Cheers!

"I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading."

The Things They Carried

By Tim O'Brien

I finally finished this book. I started in January 2011, blogged two excerpts ('The endless march' and 'If the answer matters'), got about halfway through over the course of 11 months and then stopped. I know why. Simply, it made me too sad. And for whatever reason, I didn't want to feel the emotions that this book will inevitably make you feel. And also, for the past couple of years I've been a terrible reader.

At the beginning of the year, I decided I was going to read more. Just a quick skim through this blog and one can tell I'm taking action on that resolution. All I want to do is read, I want to read more than I've wanted to read in a long time, all of the time, catch up on all of the books I haven't read, that I've meant to read. I don't want to write, don't even want to think about writing right now, I just want to read. It also helps that Goodreads makes it incredibly easy (and kind of fun--checking the "read" button once you're done and choosing a rating... my idea of fun). I set a goal of 30 books for the year, The Things They Carried was the 8th. I was waiting for two more books on my loan request list to arrive at the library and I had already finished Kitchen Confidential, so I thought it was time to finally pick it up again. I finished the second half in two days.

Blogging this because, I used to do this. The time-telling thing. I was really good at it and it excited me every time and I'm pretty sure all of my friends thought I was weird. Anyway, this is a pretty insignificant part of a significant chapter. 

"The road curved west, where the sun had now dipped low. He figured it was close to five o'clock -- twenty after, he guessed. The war had taught him to tell time without clocks, and even at night, waking from sleep, he could usually place it within ten minutes either way. What he should do, he thought, is stop at Sally's house and impress her with this new time-telling trick of his. They'd talk for a while, catching up on things, and then he'd say, "Well, better hit the road, it's five thirty-four," and she'd glance at her wristwatch and say, "Hey! How'd you do that?" and he'd give a casual shrug and tell her it was just one of those things you pick up. He'd keep it light. He wouldn't say anything about anything. "How's it being married? he might ask, and he'd nod at whatever she answered with, and he would not say a word about how he'd almost won the Silver Star for valor." 

(p. 134)

"The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness. In Vietnam, for instance, Ted Lavender had a habit of popping four or five tranquilizers every morning. It was his way of coping, just dealing with the realities, and the drugs helped to ease him through the days. I remember how peaceful his eyes were. Even in bad situations he had a soft, dreamy expression on his face, which was what he wanted, a kind of escape. "How's the war today? somebody would ask, and Ted Lavender would give a little smile to the sky and say, "Mellow -- a nice smooth war today." And then in April he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe. Kiowa and I and a couple of others were ordered to prepare his body for the dustoff. I remember squatting down, not wanting to look but then looking. Lavender's left cheekbone was gone. There was a swollen blackness around his eye. Quickly, trying not to feel anything, we went through the kid's pockets. I remember wishing I had gloves. It wasn't the blood I hated, it was the deadness. We put his personal effects in a plastic bag and tied the bag to his arm. We stripped off the canteens and ammo, all the heavy stuff, and wrapped him up in his own poncho and carried him out to a dry paddy and laid him down. For a while nobody said much. Then Mitchell Sanders laughed and looked over at the green plastic poncho.

"Hey Lavender," he said, "how's the war today?"

There was a short quiet.

"Mellow," somebody said.

"Well, that's good," Sanders murmured, "that's real, real good. Stay cool now." 

"Hey, no sweat. I'm mellow."

"Just ease on back, then. Don't need no pills. We got this incredible chopper on call, this once in a lifetime mind-trip."

"Oh, yeah--mellow!"

Mitchell Sanders smiled. "There it is, my man, this chopper gonna take you up high and cool. Gonna relax you. Gonna alter your whole perspective on this sorry, sorry shit."

We could almost see Ted Lavender's dreamy blue eyes. We could almost hear him.

"Roger that," somebody said. "I'm ready to fly."

There was the sound of the wind, the sound of birds and the quiet afternoon, which was the world we were in.

That's what a story does. The bodies are animated. You make the dead talk. They sometimes say things like, "Roger that." Or they say, "Timmy, stop crying," which is what Linda said to me after she was dead."

(pp. 218-9)

I won't blog the main Linda excerpt, but I'm sure everyone who's read this book remembers her character. I read the bit about her -- near the end of the book -- on the subway ride home and next thing you know I'm crying, and I have snot dripping out of my nose and onto my lips and not a tissue in sight. It was actually really gross and exactly what I didn't want to happen. But her character, and the role she plays in the narrator (the author's?) life is incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad. 

For a few seconds she was quiet. 

"Well, right now," she said, "I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like ... I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading."

"A book?" I said.

"An old one, it's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading."

Linda smiled at me.

(p. 232)