Left of Center

Lady in black

by Cynthia Heimel

This has been my wardrobe for say 10 years: black shirts, black jeans, black dresses, black trousers, black bras, black panties, black stockings, black jewelry, black coat, black shoes, gray gloves. I don't know why the grey gloves.

Now the honeymoon is over.

Contrary to popular opinion, clothes are not just for warmth, not for modesty. If we didn't have clothes, we'd have to wear signboards saying, say,"Hello, I'm a radical lesbian mother with a Stalinist streak," or "Hello, I prefer you to think I'm athletic." But clothes take care of this; Each item screams to the world our innermost thoughts ans fears. Thus when we notice a girl with a Peter Pan collar on the bus, we can sadly shake our heads at the thought at father fixations.

Wearing black used to mean:

"Hello, i get a nosebleed above Twenty-Third Street, and I wil never tell you to 'have a nice day." I believe nothing on television. Sure I'll talk about Zydecco music. I cried when Dali died. Don't try to tell me about Julian Schnabel. Barbara Walters is foul. Roseanne Barr, who cares? I was a dweeb in High School. I draw, or maybe I paint. I have criminally low self esteem, body flaws I think are hideous, and never go to bed until dawn. Leave me alone."

Black, the most magical of colours! Black is cynicism and beyond. Black is for people who inanely believe there is a counterculture. Black is the grandchild of the beatnik. Black loves truth and beauty, but hates the American Way.

Used to be, if you went to a party wearing all black and saw someone else, a total stranger, wearing all black, you could go up to him and say, "Let's get outa here."

You'd go to the Paramid to hear some weird band and find out on your way there that your boyfriend before last was his best friend in high school and you were both at that party at Chris's where Jon-Luc Demeyer ran amok.

Now the riffraff are wearing it.

My friend Paul goes to parties. "Who was there?" I keep asking him. "Oh, you know," he answers, "a bunch of people wearing black."

The girl at the Alais shop on Mercer Street was complaining the other day about black-wearers in Texas. "They go to nightclubs wearing black, but it's the wrong black, it's like black Laura Ashley or something. It looks really stupid."

I went to a New Years eve party where every single person, no exception, was in solid black. Except the hostess-she was in a dreamy pale green Angel Estrada.

People who send their children to prep schools wear black. Everyone at Wired Magazine wears black. People who know what "Leveraged Buy-out" means wear black.

Wearing black has lost it's intrinsic meaning.

The minute we find a perpetrator wearing black without the proper and correct attitude, we must surround him and point and laugh. This will work.

But even more importantly, we ourselves must stop wearing black. I don't have to tell you the obvious substitute colours- you already know in your hearts. For some demented reason, the artistic, the decadent and the severely deranged are considered fashionable in Manhatten and therefore the country. They wil copy us, and then stop wearing black.

Then we start again.

Svalbard

I am going to Svalbard, and dogsledding as close to the North Pole as I can because I want to relive an experience my favorite character had in my most life affecting book, The Golden Compass. Lyra went to Svalbard, went dogsledding, hooked up with an armoured Ice Bear, battled some insane lobotomizing Catholics, and walked up a bridge through the Aurora Borealis,and into another dimension: Ours.

I intend to come as close to reliving what happened in that book. Maybe it is childish, maybe it is bonkers, but I want to be a child, dammit. I want to be insane and childlike and full of impetuousness and gumption. I want to be impulsive and whimsical. And this is what I am going to do. (;

Interspecies Communication

You ever seen "day of the dolphin"? it was based upon this guys work. this guy used to work for the NIMH, doing the original Isolation Tank experiments with LSD, in a dark tank, with 2 dolphins. He has some soundclips here of dolphins speaking. I don't really know.

(dis)information?

A place I always go to find out about something that the mainstream like to pretend doesn't exist. example. look in any bible search for Melchizedek. This guy seems to have everyone in his secret club.

Turing Machine

BBC recently had a Turing Machine Exhibit on net for people to try to guess whether they were talking to a human or a computer. They actually hired people to answer querys, just make it fair. This is my conversation with Robin, woMan or Machine? ou decide.

Robin: Howdy. I'm Robin. Tell me how are you feeling today? Good I hope.

You: I am doing well, Rather tired though

Robin: That shows you have a bit of sense. Doing is more harmless than glue-sniffing.

You: Hello Mrs. Artificial Intelligence

Robin: Don't go on! I'm allergic to all forms of artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence, did you say? Good! I'm glad you're not just talking about any old Intelligence.

You: Are you a Turing Machine?

Robin: If I am, it's the very first time .

You: Have you ever read Diamond Age?

Robin: Oh yes, I have read rather a lot. Come to think of it, I have also been to the movies quite a lot.

You: How old are you?

Robin: So old that we must be careful not to tell anybody in case they have an apoplectic fit.

You: What is your favorite movie?

Robin: Don't ask what -- it's not the right question. As anyone with their head screwed on will tell you, "It's not what you know, it's who you know that matters."

You: Who are your favorite actors?

Robin: Don't ask who is, ask me who isn't. Almost everybody wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

You: Who is on the bandwagon?

Robin: Don't ask me who is, ask me who isn't. Just about everybody wanted to get on the bandwagon.

You: Why do you keep repeating yourself and talking incoherantly?

Robin: It only looks as if I do.

Echoic Recall

I came up with this theory, that I am sure many people have wondered about, including goverment agencies, screenplay writers, artists and the medical community, among others. I have chosen to refer to it as Echoic Recall. The following is a letter I wrote to a group of neuro physiologists, and one persons technical medical response. I will not insult the reader's intelligence by explaining the implications involved with the possibility for recording, tapping, and playback. The movies Strange Days, Till the End of the World, and most of William Gibson's books explore some of the implications involved with this power. This is my question to list and a helpful reply.

<< When one remembers an image, has there been any speculation or proof that the brain recalls the memory by echoing the stored image back to a point in the optical nerve, which then re-recieves it for the brain to re-experience? Is this just A whimsical thought? That the hand somehow, re-feels a touch, or the nose re-smells a smell? >>

I am by no means an expert, but I am a graduate student in physiological psychology with a strong interest in imagery. The one problem that occurs to me with the above is with regard to the hierarchical processing that occurs in vision (and other senses). If a visual memory is generated by a return to the optic nerve, does it then re-excite the lateral geniculate, magno and parvo pathways, and the various layers of the visual cortex to "make sense" of the image again? I believe the current evidence suggests that when certain areas of the visual cortex are stimulated, visual imagery may be produced (see the classic brain stimlation studies of Wilder Penfield)" - indicating the memory is somehow stored in that area of the cortex. This obviously doesn't rule out the possibility of echoing, but I know of no physiological studies of it.

Olfactory memory is rather different than other sensory memories. The typical sense of nostalgia and emotion associated with a "smell memory" has been explained by the direct connections the olfactory system has with the limbic system of the brain (amygdala, hippocampus, etc., i.e., the "emotional" brain). I don't know how well people do when asked to recall a particular odor - most people can report on the hedonics of the smell (it's pleasant, it's putrid, etc.) but I don't know that they can form an image of the same "quality" as a visual image. People also have difficulty naming familiar odors - the so called "tip of the nose" phenomenon. Olfactory memory apparently has fewer neural pathways to the language areas of the brain - limiting our ability to descibe olfactory images and stimuli.

I know this doesn't answer your riddle, but I do not know of any physiological evidence suggesting that image recall might involve an echoing back to the sensory organ. I'm looking forward to following this topic as my dissertation research involves visual imagery (with and without post-hypnotic suggestion).