Dominik Pucek

My limited definition on consciousness was brought to a bit of an awakening and/or broadening of perspective. During the stream of consciousness exercise, it was difficult to formulate into words not only the myriad of thoughts passing through my mind, whether staccato or more allegro, but also the process of thoughts and what that meant as a definition of my consciousness.

In his book On Writing (yes, that is the title) Stephen King (and yes, I'm talking about Stephen King) discusses the process between reader and writer as being the only legitimate form of magic we know; the elements behind this brand of magic being both the power of imagination and the telekinetic property of writing--having a direct line of communication between minds through the matter of print. He elaborates on this point by having us imagine with him as our guide an average sized white bunny-rabbit sitting inside an average sized cage on top of any table we can imagine with any style of table cloth adorning it. While our bunny-rabbit sits there mildly batting its eyes and twitching its nose we discover, that is, You and King, for he is our guide, that our quaint bunny-rabbit has, stamped on his back in blue ink, a generous number 8.

Has anyone seen one of those Mass Mutual commercials? You know, the one with the protagonist meeting his other selves, i.e., I'm hungry, I'm cold and What's on TV? Then there's one thought who finally gets to be in use - and of course it's the one thinking of his retirement. You should probably watch more TV, or less, depending.

Mary opened her eyes. She was awake again. She closed her eyes and almost allowed herself to fall back to sleep. But it was today, and her heart tightened.

Mary opened her eyes again. She flipped the charcoal covers from her and slid her legs over the edge of the bed. The linens were soft and gray. Light grew. She stretched and yawned, but the yawn was not full. It was today, and her heart tightened as it had before, but more.

Carter has that unique ability to contextualize the "far out" concepts that explain what cognitive scientists have been discovering over the past decade or so. Although I'm not opposed to reading a paper on the research, she creates an accessibility in order for us to become explorers along with her. After all, the material concerns us. What she has done is feed our k by giving us pieces of her K, processed from the K these cog-sci guys have cultivated.

What follows is my reaction to some of the concepts that come up when reading Carter's primer.

What about our reactive, automatic self? The self that seems to perform when we are not "thinking." Carter asks us, "why do we dance more naturally when we stop being self-conscious?" Performance, then, seems to be tied into the body and mind. I see Tennis as living evidence that the mind and body are not separated, but rather, inextricably intertwined.

The Turn of the Screw is an interesting story, but more interesting is Henry James's investment in descriptive and convoluted language. It is exactly this investment with language that, oddly enough, imitates elements of consciousness, riding perpetually the waves (or lightning) of our minds.