Oak grove        

A tiny red-bellied snake shoots across my path

fast enough to frighten me

venomous rattle snakes live here as well

the sun breaks through the oak canopy, mottled shade

dried moss softens my rock seat

a lizard reveals its presence under crackling leaves

one full-leaved oak branch sprouts

from a broken dead one.

No clear-cut break with death

where I am. 

In Balinese culture, humans live between the opposing forces of positive mountains and a negative underworld.  Life's purpose is to create harmony between opposites such as good and evil, life and death.  Stray mutts are an integral part of the landscape in Bali and, ironically, they symbolize forces of the underworld.  In my world of Southern California, dogs belong to the mountains instead; witness their names and their food, Canine Caviar the best on the market. I For a decade, I have walked my two yellow Labrador Retrievers, Dewa (Balinese for God) and Mas, (Balinese for gold) in our Santa Monica Mountains. Our usual hiking trail begins right across from my house. One spring when I was abroad, the person who was taking care of the dogs absentmindedly left the door to their quarters open. Dewa was killed by a garbage truck. Mas cried throughout the day and night.  A friend gave him drops of Bach's Rescue Remedy, a “natural stress relief,” as it says on the box and a neighbor loaned one of her dogs, also a yellow Lab.  That consoled Mas.  As soon as I came home, I looked for another puppy for him and me.  Her name is Rajata, Balinese for silver. 

None of my dogs is perfectly obedient.   I am the one to blame as I am responsible for their training.  I took Rajata to an obedience class once, Mas twice.   But, of course, success is predicated on my consistent behavior; that has not been stellar.  During our morning walks, the dogs run free on the trail. I treat them with benign neglect.  “Do your dog thing,” I tell them, “I'll do my people thing.”  I cherish this 45-minute walk up and down the Sage-covered hills.  I listen carefully to the thoughts that nature triggers.   Most of the time, I forget these thoughts, but occasionally they follow me home. 

*****

Several months ago, Rajata, now three years old, bolted across Cold Canyon Road toward a neighbor.  I heard a car come roaring down.  There was nothing I could do but scream her name. I saw her in mid-air.  She yelped and fell on my neighbor's concrete driveway.

Rajata survived the crash.  I rushed her to the hospital where she stayed for two days.  Nothing was broken, but she didn't recognize her left front leg. “Bring her back in a week,” the vet told me.  “Then we will know whether her leg needs to be amputated.  She may begin to mutilate it, or it could get injured if she doesn't feel its presence.”   Trained as a neuroscientist, I couldn't seriously think about amputation yet.   The radial nerve can re-grow.  I wanted nature to do its work first. A professor of veterinary science at UC Davis referred me to a surgeon nearby. When he squeezed hard between her toes with a pair of calipers, Rajata withdrew her paw.  Some fibers in her pain pathway were still intact. “Let's wait and see,” he counseled and sent us home with painkillers. I was to do daily exercises with her: a range of motion for foot, elbow and shoulder muscles to prevent atrophy.  

She has since started to use the leg, mostly to keep her balance when she walks slowly.  When she runs after a ball she hops on her three healthy legs.  Two of the three muscles resist my efforts to bend her leg; the third muscle is flaccid.  I am sure we have passed the station called Amputation .  She limps, but radial nerves can show recovery up to six months time. A hopeful prognosis notwithstanding, my luck with the dogs could be running out.

*****

Trust in the universe stops for me at the sight of rattlesnakes. We have occasionally encountered them on the trail but so far the dogs have never been bitten. Last Sunday, I came upon a workshop to teach dogs how to avoid rattlesnakes.  I was driving home via Mulholland Highway when, on the spot, I enrolled Mas and Rajata. The first part of training consisted of a coiled serpent, its venom-spewing capacity disabled temporarily.  The dogs were encouraged to approach, look at the snake and smell the venom.  They then received a whopping zap from their electrified collar.  Mas jumped, yelped and contorted from pain.  Rajata, more subdued, got the message with fewer trials.  Further up in the training garden, a second snake's rattle, like a bursting water pipe, alerted them to its presence.  Again, upon approach they were zapped until they chose to make a big circle around it.  Mas had trouble. The trainer had to lift the snake to his face before Mas connected the dots.  The third snake was located between the dogs and me.   Would they choose a detour when I called them?   Both dogs passed the test. They appeared confused and discombobulated after this experience.  I drove home fairly confident that I had provided them with protection.  Dogs as well as humans are known to retain a cause and effect relationship in their brain.  It's called behavior modification.

*****

These experiences with my dogs have led me to think about my career as a scientist and the belief in the ability to control our world that science has fostered. As a neuroscientist who wishes to explain and predict the workings of the central nervous system and thereby our behavior, I cannot operate on the assumption that randomness, like that seen in slot machines, prevails.  I would never be able to predict anything.  Many of us hunger for certainty and predictability especially in case of health and disease, life and death. We expect the scientific paradigm to deliver. Predictability and control are always the ultimate aims.  In order to understand phenomena in the universe such as our bodies scientists attempt to break them down into smaller units and study those first; for instance, the functioning of the neuron, the molecule, ion movements and ever-smaller particles.  Implicit is the expectation that our universe can ultimately be understood, predicted and controlled, like a large machine. This paradigm has worked remarkably well in the world of physics: the world revealed to us through our senses or their extensions such as telescopes and microscopes.

Our ability to predict re-entry of a spacecraft, to immunize against infectious diseases, carry out heart bypass surgeries and other achievements have almost prevented us from noticing how, at the frontiers of science, the concepts of change and uncertainty have taken center stage.  Sometime in the early 80s, a number of innovative scientists described the existence of a domain between predictability and randomness.  It is characterized by “chaos and complexity.”  These scientists do not focus on ever-smaller units for their studies, but they look at whole and complex behaviors such weather patterns, stock market behaviors, the genesis of earthquakes and the movements of Jupiter.  Since then, it has become clear that many human biological, social and economic behaviors follow complex and chaotic patterns with rules that can be explained and described. The behaviors are actually more regular than the term chaos as used in every day language would imply, yet they cannot be fully predicted . In other words, uncertainty clings to our existence.

Surrendering prematurely to a fate that in fact can be predicted and controlled is foolhardy, yet trying to control when uncertainty is a given, is futile and a potential source of suffering.  The paradox is that since all behaviors and all phenomena are both discrete and part of a larger whole, certainty and uncertainty are always simultaneously present, albeit in varying proportions. Our personal experience tells us that not everything can be controlled.  Modern-day science supports our experience.  In our negotiations with nature and our world, it is our Sisyphean task to discover when and where the decision for control or for surrender is the more propitious one.  I am intrigued by this question.  For more than two decades I have been examining in my own life when, if ever, certainty can be reasonably expected, certainty's limitations and when, rather than reconciling myself with uncertainty, I recognize its blessings.

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world,”    John Muir

The scientific terms chaos and complexity refer to an underlying inter-connectedness. I remember my baffling realization that I had no other choice than to accept the fact that any and all phenomena are part of a larger whole, in other words, are inter-connected. My index finger is part of my hand; it consists of skin, nerves, muscles and the like.  A nerve consists of separate fibers, nerve cell bodies and synapses. Nerve cell bodies in turn are made up of numerous identifiable structures of which the nucleus, the mitochondria and the vesicles are just a few. The nucleus contains fluids and chemicals that include DNA.  DNA it is made up of strands of molecules.  In each of these molecules are atoms and electrons.  Atoms consist of protons and neutrons, and so forth.  Historically, every time scientists thought they had identified the smallest unit, they discovered that each was a composite and could be broken down further. There is no reason to believe we have now identified the smallest unit that cannot be further reduced. Most, if not all parts are really wholes. Wholes are the essence.  Many wholes display complex rather than simple behaviors; to a significant extent their behavior cannot be predicted or controlled. 

*****

A year before the accident and just before Thanksgiving, I bred Mas and Rajata.  Mas, now almost ten, had his first offspring.  I spent a considerable amount of time at the vet since Rajata, in heat, started to ovulate.  I only knew that ovulation had occurred by virtue of two progesterone tests two days apart. She had ferociously fended Mas off.  He, adoringly innocent, tried to mount her front ways and sideways.  His overall aim toward her vulva, a moving target, was poor at best.  A spontaneous pregnancy could never result from this tango.  Throughout, he was trying to mind my usual commands: “Come, Mas, in your basket, Mas.”   I knew from past seasons that his light would go out suddenly.   He would lose all interest.

After two vaginal inseminations, I felt she had a good chance of being pregnant.  But there was a suspicious lag between the laboratory evidence of her ovulation and Mas's appraisal of the same event.  When I was on the way to her third vaginal insemination, I decided to trust my instincts that she was by now pregnant.  I turned around abruptly and headed home. If she were not pregnant, tough luck, I would try another time.  Sperm lives for days. His had been tested and found to have 90% motility. He produced millions of these fast actors, in fact 5,000,000 in excess of what is recommended by the veterinary profession.  Frankly, I knew more about his sperm than I cared to know.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I found myself proud of his excellent bones, eyes, sperm and enthusiasm.

I counted on nature to take care of the birthing process.  A late pregnancy x-ray revealed that she had nine pups; her birth canal seemed wide enough to let them through.  I was wrong.  The novice mother didn't know how to deliver her pups.  My inexperience did her no good.  We wound up in the emergency room where she had a C-section.  She lost two puppies.

*****

Of the seven remaining puppies I kept the pick of the litter.  Her name is Intan, Balinese for diamond.  She has slipped into the routines of her parents with ease.  Learning of a cause- effect relationships is often based on modeling.  One time Intan, eight weeks old, stood on the bottom of the outside stairs to my front door.  She had never negotiated them.  Mas and Rajata were already upstairs anxious to get to their Canine Caviar .  There was a pause. Noticing her daughter's dilemma, Rajata came slowly down the stairs and walked up again.  There was no movement on the part of Intan so she repeated her lesson.  Sure enough, that emboldened the baby. She followed promptly.  She now confidently climbs stairs, these and more challenging ones. 

*****

Obviously, in the human and animal kingdoms nature has provided magnificently for reproduction and learning.  Yet, rightly or wrongly, I didn't trust the spontaneous process and tried to tweak the odds toward certainty.  Given my training and living in a society that venerates control, I feel an amateur in letting nature do its work—but I am learning. 

Who knows how over time Rajata will respond to the leg she initially didn't recognize. When she came home from the hospital I caught a thought, accompanied by a deep sense of relief: “Now she is close by and I can observe as well as sense what she can and cannot do.  I'll be able to calibrate my own movements so that they suit her and are appropriate to her slow recovery.”   And that's how it was. I watched her in her soft basket lying for hours with her eyes open, very unlike her previous rambunctious three-year-old behavior.  “It's not just fight and flight, it's also freeze,” the cranio-sacral therapist I consulted reminded me. Rajata seemed frozen for a few weeks to optimize recovery.  Spontaneously she didn't go very far on the trail. The distance between her toes widened for a nanosecond when she placed weight on her leg.  Nature was doing its work in uncertain steps it seemed to me, but after all I was just her assistant.                     *****

It is by virtue of the enormous progress in science that we have been able to penetrate not just the scale of our day-to day living where our bodies reside and feel familiar, but also the much larger scales of galaxies and the much smaller ones of sub-atomic physics that we now are trying to harness with nanotechnology, an extreme form of miniaturization. To illustrate the scale in which scientists work, picture 400 000 atoms stacked one on top of the other and you will have the width of a human hair.  Since the last century, we have become aware of the similarities and differences in the laws that reign at these contrasting scales, many revolving around certainty and uncertainty.  In nanotechnology, scientists are trying to move atoms visualized by a scanning tunneling microscope.  One of the future uses of this technology is early diagnosis of cancer cells.  Imagine the possibility of spotting the very first aberrant protein molecule that constitutes the germ for the ultimate tumor.  What used to be immanent death from cancer a century ago can now often be postponed and partially controlled. Some day the element of uncertainty may be largely eliminated.  In other words, the seemingly polar opposites of certainty and uncertainty are a moving target. 

Moreover, we always exist simultaneously at all scales; we are part of the larger universe as well as constituted from the smallest elements. We often fail to appreciate that in everything concrete we encounter--a deer jumping a fence, the native flower Wooley Blue Curls or a cluster of crystals--we are identical in the tiny elements such as atoms, electrons, protons and neutrons.  Science has not yet revealed at a mechanistic level, how the principles of certainty and uncertainty that reign at these various scales affect our behavior.  For now the metaphors will have to suffice. The uncertainty encountered in science and nature is a likely metaphor for human behavior. Our living at these simultaneous scales is tantamount to living in a treasure trove of wisdom about nature's uncertainty, that of our bodies and minds.

In the past three hundred years, we have looked at the world with the eyes of Newton, expecting certainty.  During the last eighty, we have discovered details of physical worlds where uncertainty dominates. Our minds will yield more secrets once we listen to the metaphors that our physical search has unearthed.  We just have to try the connections to see how they fit. Conversely, metaphor is at the heart of scientific discovery—witness Archimedes' insight when he took a bath.  The amount of water his body displaced yielded the key to volume of irregular objects. This mutuality in the significance of metaphor is provocative and worth pursuing further. 

*****

How indeed could a part hear the Whole, or a note the Melody?    Guy Murchy

One has to be an insider to realize what is currently being studied, what has been studied in the past, but also what has not been addressed in the scientific world.  Here hides uncertainty as well, an artifact of human limitations. Sophistication has risen exponentially during the last century and into this one.  Today by virtue of fancy and fast computers we even have scans to reveal where in the brain the neurons light up when we have dreams or nightmares.

To a certain extent, rhythms in nature represent predictability and therefore certainty for free.  When it comes to human biological rhythms, those at the scale of seconds, minutes, hours, even days have been extensively studied.   When we get to the time scale of a month, for instance the menstrual cycle, the number of available studies decreases, and with the yearly seasonal cycle, the number goes down even further. Beyond that, whether there are any additional physiological cycles is anybody's guess. A cycle per definition requires repetition.  We need more than one beat to hear the melody. The reason why some slower rhythms are not studied more often is because they take too much time. Which graduate student would choose a seasonal cycle for his dissertation project?  To get five full cycles would take five years.  It is not just the graduate student who is impatient; the pace of science is brisk these days as is the pace of life.  

*****

“Look, Barry, you were wondering whether when a pregnant mom is in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the fetus is also in REM sleep. That would suggest that some substance in the blood regulates REM sleep.  That's not so; the story is different.”

Barry and I are in the basement of the neurophysiology laboratory in the VA hospital in Sepulveda.  It's the late sixties. Barry, my dissertation chair, is guiding me toward a doctorate in neuroscience at UCLA.  On the floor, I have spread out my colored drawings of the nighttime sleep of a dozen pregnant women, friends of his, including the sleep of his then pregnant wife.  Over the past half-year these women have slept once or twice in the laboratory overnight. We had to roll in a cot, move away the cat cages and try to get rid of the cat smells before we could prepare these women for the study. 

It was Barry's idea to study pregnant women and their fetuses.  Once during the night at the height of his wife's pregnancy, he had put his hands on her belly and felt the baby move while his wife was asleep.  Would short, brisk fetal movements possibly be an expression of fetal REM sleep, just as it is in puppies and babies? The connection of the fetal blood with that of the mother through the umbilical cord provided the perfect set-up to test the hypothesis that a blood-borne substance underlies REM sleep.  It only took the assembly of some crude microphone fastened to the maternal abdomen to pick up fetal movements and twitches and we were off. 

Barry and I typically began the study together in the early evening.  He fitted the women with cortical electrodes to monitor their sleep and taped the bulky microphones to their belly. A movement sensor around the mother's leg helped to differentiate fetal movements from maternal movements. After the preparation, when mothers drifted off to sleep, it was my task to stay awake and obtain a continuous recording of the electroencephalogram, the brain waves measured from the skull, the eye movements, the breathing and heart rate of the mother as well as the episodic twitches and movements of the fetus.   These were recorded by a polygraph and written out as scribbles on large slow moving, continuous sheets of paper in front of me. As a first year graduate student, it didn't come as a surprise that I should be assigned the graveyard shift for this study.  Later in the week, after a few nights of decent sleep, I established from the heavy paper record when the mother was either in REM sleep or Slow Wave sleep. Afterwards, I would review the hundreds of pages once more to count the fetal movements for each 30 seconds of the 8-hour recording. The colored drawings that I now spread on the floor represented the maternal sleep states.  Under these I plotted the fetal movements found during each minute of sleep.   When Mom was in REM sleep, the fetus wasn't in that same state, I had discovered.  “It's different, Barry, look! You see these peaks and valleys in the fetal motility record. They happen every hour or so.  The fetus has its own cycle. See here and here…” and I pointed enthusiastically to the wavy appearance on the drawings. 

As it turns out, I was probably the first one ever to see that the fetus after about 32 weeks of gestation already exhibits a REM or dream sleep-quiet sleep cycle.  Barry didn't need convincing. Periodic movement patterns add a modicum of certainty to the diagnostic arsenal of the obstetrician.  If the fetus doesn't move, sometimes a sign of morbidity--wait at least an hour and the fetus may “revive” spontaneously.  This finding is now generally accepted in obstetrics.        

*****

I have always been deeply involved in the study of rhythmic body activities, the rhythms of sleep and wakefulness every 24 hours, of the REM and quiet sleep cycle every hour in a baby, short up and downs of temperature every seven minutes or thereabouts, the rhythmic activity of the heart and breathing and that of large clusters of neurons in the brain in sync with one another that can be measured from the skull as an electroencephalogram.  After all, these recurring physiological patterns represent a modicum of certainty for free. This is particularly true for our 24 hour cycle of light and darkness; at our latitude we can blissfully count for light to return.  But of course, repeatability and predictability are finite and a degree of uncertainty often enters since it doesn't take much to disturb these rhythms.  Voluntary night shifts and involuntary insomnia easily disturb the 24-hour sleep-wakefulness cycle. Rhythmic physiological activity that accompanies the seasons is predicated on the severity of winter cold and summer heat.       

*****

In the winter of 1985 I was invited to a conference about biological rhythms in Paris.  Dr. Stupfel, the organizer of the Paris meeting, was a charmingly absent-minded man, the quintessential professor.  The meeting was to be held in a miniature dome with ornate, old-fashioned wooden benches strewn with faded burgundy, velour pillows; such as the ones I remember from my childhood church visits.  It was as if we were in an abbey with the brothers, about to confer under the guidance of the abbot.  I looked around me and indeed it was, as usual, a brotherhood. Twenty-five men and three women were seated in two rows each, the last row slightly elevated compared to the front one.  We as neuroscientists were looking for periodicities, perfect cycles in our human physiology.  Our tools were geared to spot them, and the more sine-wave-like they were, the more certain we were that the periodicity or rhythm “really” existed. In other words, in that historical era of research, the emphasis was on finding regularity, predictability and by inference certainty.

Fast forward several decades and the emphasis has shifted: physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists who are most familiar with principles of chaos and complexity are reconciled with the idea that irregularity and unpredictability, that we previously wanted to wish away or ignore, are intrinsic to nature. 

“You can't step in the same river twice,” said Heraclites; for most people, this saying does not need belaboring.  We know it at the most fundamental level.  True, I experience myself as a constant in a stream of changes, even if I know that this constancy is an illusion.  However, a perpetual change of conditions in and around me is basic to my experience, and in that sense the chaos and complexity models reflect my reality faithfully. My own inquiry goes still further.  If in nature, regularity and irregularity, certainty and uncertainty co-exist, why wouldn't these in human nature as well?  Rather than wishing one of the two away, why not discover what the metaphor may mean for our daily life?    

Take for instance, this fascinating message from chaos and complexity.  When the physical heart is beating at a low rate and regularly, in other words, when a fixed heart rate prevails, death is often imminent.  Alive and well, our natural heart rates wander within a fairly wide range, influenced by numerous stimuli from the environment and the brain. This seemingly complex, irregular pattern is apparently healthy and protective. And here is the metaphor: fanaticism and fundamentalism can be likened to the simple fixed heart rate, close to death.  There is brittleness in our own fundamentalism and the fundamentalists among us.  One message is important: embrace life's uncertainties and foster tolerance for ambiguity. Uncertainties can be adaptive and healthy.

*****

The semi-regular ups and downs of human speech and lullabies are soothing to the human infant and to an extent these retain their comforting sound when we grow older.  “What would you rather give up, the in-breath or the out-breath,” I heard somebody ask once.  The answer is obvious.  The up and the down, the in and the out, the now and the then, the high and the low, the fast and the slow are all an integral part of our body physiology and our life experiences.  They are our modern day equivalents of Balinese harmony.  Good and bad, life and death, seemingly polar opposites are linked as the waves of biological rhythms are. Certainty and uncertainty in unknown amounts cling to both.    Failing to exert control in the face of predictability and hence certainty, is a lost opportunity; trying to control in the face of unpredictability and intrinsic uncertainty, is futile.  When certainty and uncertainty are always simultaneously present how do we negotiate this dilemma?  In our society we are often counseled to begin with an effort to control the situation, as if certainty and predictability reign and are the most desirable.  What are the benefits of assuming uncertainty and let nature unfold?   There is more at stake here.  Guy Claxton has written a book Hare Brain Tortoise Mind 1 in which he explains how the fast, intentional thinking of Hare Brain can only bring us so far; it can even stand in the way of the slow and by inference uncertain, semi-conscious process, the Tortoise Mind that operates simultaneously and is closely associated with creativity and even wisdom. 

******

I heard a loud yelp from Rajata and Mas with whom I was hiking in the late afternoon.  Somebody was in pain.  I looked in their direction and found them face-to-face, attached and pulling at each other.  The yelping became a shriek.  I approached them to see what was happening and discovered that Rajata's choke chain got enmeshed with Mas.  It wasn't the first time something like that had happened, so I thought I'd undo it.  When I bent over I saw what caused the sharp pain.  Her chain had twisted into the shape of an eight and had found its way around Mas's lower jaw.  It was now lodged behind his big canine corner teeth.  I got myself next to them and tried to find some wiggle room.  There was none. Mas, of course, reflexively pulled to try to get loose and that tightened the choke chain.  Rajata was in distress, she didn't get enough air; I could hear and see it.  He did the only thing he knew to do without realizing that he was suffocating his best friend. 

The first thing for me was to keep their heads together; mine as well, and think.  I felt a sudden dread.  It was almost dark, and there was no chance that anybody else would come over the trail.  No sense in calling because who of the few people who lived around me would be outside at this time? One by one options occurred to me but none was terribly useful.   Then they broke away from me and the shrieking resumed.  I rushed to them again; they let me up close.  I lowered myself on my knees in the mud and began to talk calmly.  “It's OK Mas, we'll get this off. You're a good boy.  We'll find a way.”  In reality, I didn't have a clue.  I had exactly one finger lodged between Rajata's furry neck and the chain to assure her of some air, but it was bearing into Mas's lower jaw that had begun to bleed.  My rings were in the way so I took them off and put them in the mud next to me.  I pried Mas's jaws open again but found no leeway. 

“ The chain is way too strong, it's not going to break ,” I found myself reasoning.  So there we were three heads together and no useful thought entered mine.  It was obvious from their posture that they depended on me.  Rajata's neck was taut, and she was shivering slightly.  Mas stood still, patiently.   A silence set in, our breathing was in synch; I knew they had surrendered to me.   It was up to me to rescue her and save his teeth.  Dragging the dogs anywhere was definitely not an option.  With my left arm around his neck, pulling him toward Rajata I saw my right hand begin to wiggle the chain up her taut neck muscle.  It moved a millimeter, then another and another. 

Ten minutes had passed by now.  It was completely dark.  The chain was now right under her chin, where I bring it often to get better control.  When I pull, it closes her windpipe, but it is the shortest way around her neck.   Now my other hand found its way to Mas' lower jaw.  Could I get a wiggle there?  With my fingers I pried the chain under his chin.  It moved, little by little and then it suddenly slipped out of his mouth and Mas jumped away. My tortoise mind arrived at the solution mysteriously after my hare brain ran out of futile strategies.  I felt my heart beat in my own neck.  How close to disaster we had been, how sacred felt their surrender.

******

I used to have a college roommate who was extraordinarily bright.  She talked fast, grasped concepts immediately, articulated like a burst of artillery.  I have always wondered whether thought processes in the brain could be sped up in a controlled fashion, just as breathing can go into panting.  The answer seems to be yes .  Even in my lifetime the fast seems to have become faster.  People around me move fast and multitask.  In movies, the camera seems to pan in on different scenes at a frantic pace and the images jump even further with the cutting of the editor.  Soundtracks reinforce the beat that crescendos to a fever pitch.  It is as if all around me we are focusing on the sprint.  What elements do we lose at such a pace?  The hare brain can be sped up, but my tortoise mind almost certainly needs to fall in step with the semi-regular rhythms of nature, where certainty is no guarantee and creative ideas creep into consciousness. In fact, I cherish the comforting slow rhythms at the human scale.  They foster the tortoise mind and writing. 

I do recognize my excitement when I read what feels like a literary sprint, comparable to the high fixed heart rate of the crying baby or the alert adult. For the long haul, that pace is difficult to maintain, although I just completed White Oleander by Janet Fitch, a student of Kate Braverman.  Both she and her mentor maintain a fast image-driven prose in their writing.   More often, however, I prefer the slower pace that allows me to come to a rest in my reading, my writing and my life, before I pick up the pace again.  Then writing, in particular, reveals memories and ideas that I didn't know I possessed. Forms and patterns emerge that by their novelty and mystery encourage me to venture forward into unknown domains with unknown results.  In the last analysis, it is a journey of making sense of the world in which I live, an outright gluttonous surrender to adventure, curiosity and uncertainty, with an unshakable, foolish belief that what I discover will illuminate my path. 

Take the concept of rhythms: based on my research experience, a physiological process suggesting certainty and predictability that existed in my mind, jumped to a metaphoric level.   With the image of ocean and waves the inevitability of dependency and unity burst forward. Certainty and uncertainty met and fertilized each other. We ignore this wisdom, built into our body, at our peril.  I recognize grace and continue with renewed confidence. 

*****

Perfectly still water does not exist

Is that so? The scientist in me asks

“hush” I tell her let yourself be touched

Sometimes when I come through the door, the seven puppies sit straight up, next to one another, looking expectantly, like baby birds awaiting their food.  They have started to fight with one another.  Every once in a while there is a loud shriek, when one has been bitten.  Just now, Papa Mas, Mama Rajata and I jump up and run to the kitchen.  That's how loud the shriek is.  The dogs both stop midway. Apparently they have already assessed the scene with their dog consciousness and are reassured.  I proceed further to see what is happening.  All the ears are still attached, no mini-penises missing either. Every day I pick up each puppy and hold it for a while to my face, then rub its belly.  My pleasure resonates with theirs.  I walk around with a smile on my face and a deep sense of living a charmed life in this wonderful house where spring has already arrived. 

*****

Rocky Mountains National Park:

The source is stillness in which language explains, sometimes shimmers and comes to rest.

The snowcapped mountains are watching over me.   Their flanks are covered with Aspen and Aleppo pines. Some are short and others tall. Some are thick and have deep roots, others only superficial ones.  Do those trees suffer from their appearance? The tall ones catch most of the wind and the short ones under their canopy widen their girth. Some have not shed their dead branches; others have only new growth.  Higher up the mountain, the pines dominate the Aspen, their color a blackish-green.

All this exists by virtue of my eyes. The wind rustling through the trees exists by virtue of my ears.  Smell the cow and horse manure that cover the Dandelion patch. The elk in the distance warms herself in the sun and the Buttercups sway at the pond's edge. My hands type these words, their crevices and the dirt under my nails testify to work in the garden. Sadness and loss accompany me.  Hope is not far away. Nature “is ”, trees and mountains “are”.  I am tall and catch the wind.