Friday, July 20, 2012

Madness Revisited

Another killing, another mass killing. This time not in Oslo, but in Colorado atmidnight.
In a movie theater….
OK, you know the facts as well as I. How can you not? It’s all over the news, all of the radio, all over the TV. Twelve people are dead. Fifty injured. The gunman is 24, and is supposed to have acted alone.
Questions arise. The first being, of course, why?
Well, we’ll probably know, or think we know. We’ll get the profile, the backstory, the teachers interviewed, the neighbors quizzed. We’ll see the anguished mom as she races to Colorado to be with her son. We’ll do the whole damn thing.
My take?
The kid had never been alone at night in a forest.
There’s something about it, you know. I used to do it at the Acres—leave the comfortable back bedroom and trot up the hill. Open the shack, blow up the air mattress, and climb into the top bunk.
The first thing is darkness—a darkness so absolute that the old cliché is true. You cannot see the hand in front of your face.
Right. That’s why you have the flashlight.
Second is the sound. At first, it’s the sound of wind high up through the trees. It’s a constant whoosh, varying in intensity, but still constant. You shine the flashlight upward, and see trees swaying.
The forest is communicating. Quite literally—through branches, through roots, through fungi in the soil. 
In fact, the forest is the macro extension of the human brain. The dendrites that form our nervous system? The word is derived from the Greek word for tree.
And so our brain is a forest. And the forest is a brain.
Another sound—the telltale sound of a mouse. You shine the flashlight at the counter, and she’s there. She stares at you. You at her. You give her permission. She goes to the wood box, and retrieves her smallest young. Takes it in her mouth and goes outside. Returns, repeats the procedure. Five times.
On her last trip, she looks back.
It’s not thanks, but acknowledgement.
The eyes are adjusted now. In fall and winter you see stars, more than you’ll ever see in the city. You remember an old friend who climbed to her roof after the hurricane had shut plunged the entire island of Puerto Rico into darkness. She spent hours on her back, at last seeing the stars.
You doze, but not for long. Something is moving, and then snorting. Then a crash through the woods.
Deer.
And yes, they do snort.
I tell you all this because I have seen it, felt it. The experience can be unsettling. What’s out there? Is there something moving, something approaching….
…something I can’t see?
You’re alone. Go outside? Flash on the flashlight?
I’ve done that. And the woods appears normal. It’s just your fear.
Something swoops onto the tree. You remember—the flying squirrel.
I used to describe this to my students, in the days when I was working, had a job. I told them about Franny, who turned off the refrigerator before she went to sleep —it was too loud. And my students?
Most of them slept with the TV on. In fact, most of the TVs were on even as we spoke. They were never turned off.
The question is whether they should ever be turned on. Neurologically, the right side of the brain is stimulated by the cathode ray tube, plasma screens, computer screens. It’s why Internet pornography is so addictive. It’s why volunteers, even if paid to do so, cannot give up television. It’s why your eye is drawn to a TV, if one is on in a room.
Easy to bash television. There’s a 32-inch TV fifteen feet from where I sit. My iPad is charging—I will play electronic Sudoku for perhaps an hour throughout the day.
My worry? This 24 year old kid—which he neurologically is—grew up as skewed as he is because the only reality he saw was provided by screens constantly jolting his dendrites into an alpha state.
He’s never seen the mouse, the young pup in her mouth, the tail hanging down. 
His only reality is a movie house at midnight, smoke bombs, and killing.

No comments:

Post a Comment