I was chatting with a close friend about a week ago. He’s placed to be on top of current events with a depth and nuance that my vomit reflex can’t stand. We had an interesting conversation which was mostly me chirping, “But what about…?” And him giving me a really good update on stuff I’d never be able to stay upright long enough to research.<\/p>\n
My brain was twinkling away on the incoming tide, sorting the info and soaking it into the correct metaphorical tide-pools and littorals.<\/p>\n
I soon realized that, though I was sorting words coming in, I was having a terrible time getting words out. I didn’t realize, until that moment, just how completely<\/em> that parsing a thought may feel verbal, but might not be.<\/p>\n I thought I was wording just fine as I thought, “okay… this goes here with news ownership; this goes there with political gamesmanship from Brand X; this relates both to Brand Y and legal process” and so on.<\/p>\n On the outward flow, all I could get going was along the lines of, “so, uh, how’s the… thingy… you know, from… what’s-his-name…” and I realized I sounded immeasurably more mentally inept than I felt.<\/p>\n I wanted to say, “look, I’m still in here and I’m taking in everything you say. I just can’t operate the outgoing current right now and my word capturing is going great, but my word finding seems to be underwater.” I could not fund the words, of course.<\/p>\n It’s been grimly fascinating to me to find the many ways a brain can go off-line in bits & pieces, and how my mental activity and neurological activity have these unthinkably complex ways of associating and dis-associating within themselves and between each other.<\/p>\n Everyone’s brain is linked up in completely unique ways. Just imagine what it would be like to work with people who could relate exactly what is and isn’t working and when. It’d set off such an explosion in the advancement of knowledge that.. wow.<\/p>\n It’s a real pity I can’t handle any schooling, let alone medical school, because this is exactly<\/em> what neurologists need to know about to make their lives – and, boy howdy, ours! – a lot more useful and interesting.<\/p>\n As it is, patients are considered inherently unreliable in the medical mind, and, although that’s extremely insulting, it’s not crazy within physician context: the precision of thought and accuracy of terminology is rarely there, because so much training goes into commanding the information the way a doctor does.<\/p>\nA pointless note of wistful longing<\/h2>\n