Two Readings on Perception: Part II

Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel has been on my reading list for years and I finally found it tucked away at an independent bookstore this summer. Similar to Oliver Sacks' book from Part I, this was the first book of Botton's I've read, after hearing recommendations and accolades for ages. It's an easy read and a little gem; not so much travel essays as musings on travel and the philosophy behind it, with many YES! moments that pretty much guarantee I'll be reading more of his work.

"I had inadvertently brought myself to the island." (p.19) I find this becoming more true in the adult world, where I need to worry about what I've booked for when and what's going to happen at work while I'm gone and also check my text messages and email and Facebook and the news. There's a joy in vacation planning and anticipating escape from the daily grind, but, as Botton points out, the daily grind follows you in habits. It takes a conscious effort to not think about work and not constantly check the smartphone. This was significantly easier on my most recent vacation due to lack of an international roaming plan and overpriced pay-by-the-hour wifi. I had also spent a chunk of change to get where I was going and god damn it, I was going to pay attention to the present moment.

And about that "being present in the moment" thing: I liked Botton's suggestion that we try to adopt a travel mind-set to more local places. Our own neighborhoods seem boring because we see them every day on autopilot and just tune out. When I first moved into the city, sitting at a street-corner cafe and reading was almost thrillingly new. Living the life! While still enjoyable today, it's less of a novelty and I catch myself focused more on where I need to go next and what time is it and wow it's hot outside ...

I LOVED Botton's take on the beauty of nature. LOVED. IT. There was so much YES! and spot-on prose, like this quote: "We may see in nature certain scenes that will stay with us throughout our lives and offer us, every time they enter our consciousness, both a contrast to and relief from present difficulties." (p.151)  He also discusses nature as a way to connect with a "greater power" in a society increasing disillusioned with religious institutions, summarized perfectly here:

"If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus ... [they] gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger ... it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us." (p.176)

cited by Botton: The Rocky Mountains, Landers Peak (Albert Bierstadt, 1863)

Other odds & ends: 
- Flaubert cameo
- relation to art
- why we take souvenirs

Botton line: Come for the relatable themes, stay for the profundity of the prose.

Two Readings on Perception: Part I

Fresh off The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, I picked up a collection of clinical stories that had been recommended by a friend, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. This is the first book of Sacks' I've read, but I had high expectations as he consistently gets excellent reviews and had a moving NYTimes op-ed piece about his cancer diagnosis a while back: My Own Life

This book blew my mind. I never realized how little I knew about neurological disorders, and how bizarrely interesting they could be. Every chapter had a "WHAAAAT?" moment, to the point where I was getting distracted by Wikipedia tangents related to right hemisphere brain damage. And this book was published back in 1985! I would love to: 1) read an updated equivalent, 2) find out what happened to the patients, 3) what (if any) progress we've made with the disorders, and 4) see what else Sacks has written. So fascinating!

Agnosia in the man who mistook his wife for a hat.

Of particular interest:
- "idiot savants" (now called "savant syndrome" for obvious reasons) and prime numbers; generally the idea that you would perceive the world only through numbers as a compensation for lacking the capacity for "normal" emotional connections. The closest I could come to imagining this was the scene in The Matrix where Neo sees the world in code. Yes, this is the second consecutive blog post dropping a Matrix reference.
- The soothing appeal of music and nature for many of the patients, to where some were only able to function with a degree of "normalcy" while humming a tune.
- This quote, in reference to a woman who vividly recalled a childhood memory she had previously never been aware of, which "suggested to Penfield that the brain retained an almost perfect record of every lifetime's experience" (p. 137). See also: Hyperthymesia. Pause to consider that a moment. Is this how your life flashes before your eyes in a near-death experience? Why can't we access all these memories anytime? (Because it would be too overwhelming and swamp the present?) Is this still the current theory? Actually mind-boggling. I also enjoy realizing the limits of current science when studying the brain; it's the deep-sea of the body. Unexplored science is always inspiring and humbling.

Also of particular interest, with regard to having a scientific/biological explanation for a condition: "This does not detract in the least from their psychological or spiritual significance. If God, or the eternal order, was revealed to Dostoyevsky in seizures, why should not other organic conditions serve as "portals" to the beyond or the unknown?" (p. 130). A potentially dangerous point, yet interesting in the context of ayahuasca, or DMT, which traditionally has been used for religious spirit journeys and has some epic hallucination stories (DMT: You Cannot Imagine a Stranger Drug or a Stranger Experience).

Bottom line: The brain is powerfully weird, people.