Brain Solids
A Community Consciousness and Brain Health essay.
Sometimes we have to shift dimensions to see the connections and the tiny tendrils that reach across the walls and canyons. My kitchen table, for example, feels solid, a light blond wood that gives a deep solid tone when my knuckles rap on it. My hands feel solid, too. And I imagine this is what is real, the solid things in my life.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, we talk about solid organs and hollow organs. The water elements, Kidney and Bladder, form a Ying and Yang pairing, the solid kidneys contrasting the hollow bladder but both are water elements associated with the color of deep lakes and cloudless skys and with creativity. While the kidneys and bladder are said to be the seat of the emotion fear, water is the most powerful element. It can move around any obstacle in its path without losing its essential nature. Water can, in time, dissolve the hardest mountain.
Is my hand really as solid as it seems? Is my body or my life as solid as it seems?
My hand as it pounds the table, solidly filled with carbon, oxygen, iron, and hydrogen. Molecules of water flowing through my veins, building walls full of carbon, iron, potassium, calcium, and more.
In that microscopic dimension I am a mass of vibrating particles, it can be hard to say where my hand ends and where the air begins. Does this molecule of carbon or calcium belong to my hand, the air or the table? When I reach my hand out to you, touching your skin, what is you and what is me?
What Is?
It is here where electrons pop in and out of existence, that I am really connected to everything and nothing is real. One molecule is not more important than another, yet each one is vital to the continued existence of this world as we know it to be. It seems solid as we bump up against our reality.
The other day, I cycled past a turtle. I had to stop to look closely since I could only see the shell; the body was all pulled in and tucked away. A dog was farther down the trail and I wondered: where does the turtle’s head begin? Where does the sniffing nose of chocolate Labrador retriever end? And if we don’t even know where it all begins and ends, then why are we so afraid of the solid things in our life? We are all solid and vital and vibrating at such a rate as to make it impossible to distinguish at the edges when I end and you begin.
Aisles in the Brain
Millions of threads / wandering in and out / of time through / different dimensions / venturing forth weaving / unaware of the beauty / embedded in / the fabric of connections.
My life / reaching across / the aisle shaking / hands with someone / not so different / still eyes on the aisle / the wall, the canyon / sometimes missing the bridge.
Just a thread / the barest hint of substance / manifests, yes / manifesting physicality / a root from a seedling / water cracking open / seed matter reorganizing / a tiny tendril ventures forth.
Across the path / a turtle wanders / balling up / pulling it all in / at the sound of a dog barking / immobilized by vibrations / words flowing across the network / learning, interpreting / curious sniffing.
Feeling for / unknown hostility / of heat / the warmth of a cozy fire / a wintery aisle / dividing / life and food and water / the love of a child / nurturing the seed / the turtle and the dog.
Till growing tall / deeply rooted / a thick rope bridge / cradles the aisle / I reach across / enjoying the risks / no safety inside the shell / holding safe / this community of humanity.
Originally published at http://www.innerchildmagazine.com/the-community-of-humanity.php on January 15, 2015.
