Tracings 12/21/11

The world limned by light

Objects without 

Laid down in brain images

The light passed through crystalline lens and focused upside down on my retinas

As my eyes’ focus jumps in saccades

Cone and rod receptors activate neurons exuding tiny packets of neurochemicals

And the brain puts together a picture

Inside 

Of what is out there,

Filling in the blanks of the space between the saccades and the blind spots of the confluence

Of nerves flowing from the eye to the brain

And I believe this is truly the reality outside me.

Yet how malleable my memory.

Though when brain is bared by surgeon’s bone saw, knife, and cautery

A small stimulation recreates the exact sight/sound/smell/feel/taste of the moment, as if it were there 

In front of me once again never mind that I had forgotten,

My recall is distorted by so many things, and is

At best an interpretation and subject to gross errors of commission and omission.

I see what I expect to see, and miss what I am not looking for;

“Eye witness” is mind witness, and I may be overwhelmed, confused, inattentive,

Subject to interjections by others, or to strong emotions and beliefs of my own

That I add to my tracings, and then I remember that, rather than the ? original.

And out of all this I learn the best representation I can make of reality, as it peeks in

Through my senses, as I reach out with all my being

To know it. 

This is my world.

Tracings