Lucy Schmeidler

One problem with trying to transcribe one's random thoughts is that there is no such thing as simply *thinking*. All thinking is thinking *about* something. If you try to clear your mind of your current problems and obsessions and just think, the obvious thoughts are about your current physical sensations, and then, about the circumstances that led to this activity: Why are you writing this, and are these the proper thoughts to be writing about, is this what the teacher meant, how you normally think, etc. Perhaps this is why meditation exercises often supply a subject to focus on, as a substitute for your usual preoccupations. Don't think about your rotten day, your spouse, children, job, or whatever else has been driving you crazy, but visualize, for example, a gate; watch it open and let in a flood of whatever you've been trying to avoid....

David Lodge's Thinks... is a novel about cognitive science, fiction writing, and adultery, the last of which is probably what most interests most readers. I was particularly intrigued by the protagonists' discussions of consciousness, which remind me in retrospect of the philosophical discussions in Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno, which I loved as a child, though I'm sure that both Lewis Carroll and myself-as-child would be outraged at the suggestion that those conversations had a flirtatious element. Flirtation between a middle-aged Victorian professor and a young lady engaged and in love?--though, unfortunately, not to/with the same man. The flirtation in Lodge's novel is more obvious, as it leads into the third element of the plot, but the structure is similar: a man shows off his erudition and the woman shows her quick grasp of hitherto unfamiliar ideas. The second plot element appeals to me as a writer, even as it shows why I don't read or write much mainstream fiction, preferring science fiction and fantasy. If sex is the most interesting thing in most ordinary lives, why not use the life of the imagination to explore other possibilities of accomplishment and adventure? To live for several hours at a stretch in a world where the stakes are higher and heroic attitudes more acceptable?

Coming of age in the sixties I knew people who used drugs to explore altered states of consciousness, but this never appealed to me, more because I didn't trust the chemicals than because it was illegal. However, some years ago, when I was working as a software developer for a firm that had just moved its headquarters to the financial district in Lower Manhattan, I had a brief and unplanned experience of an altered state. It came about during one Friday lunch hour, when I was approached by a man who asked me for a very specific and moderately large (more than $10) sum of money, which he claimed was the exact amount he needed to get to somewhere in Connecticut, where he supposedly was to start an acting job. I gave him the amount he asked for, in a voluntary suspension of disbelief, and found myself looking at my surroundings, both physical and human differently, feeling the presence and footsteps of everyone else who was outside in the area, and becoming impatient with such arbitrary "labels" as street names, so I navigated mostly by a sense of relative locations--three blocks this way, and then a left turn, continuing until I come to a particularly wide street, etc. And when I got back to my office I found I wasn't sure of the names of most of my colleagues--only those I knew well enough that their names represented their essences to me--though if asked to guess I probably would have gotten them all right. I also found it hard to remember the directory structure on my computer, because of all the "arbitrary" directory and file labels. I described this to the friend with whom I usually took the subway home and she was horrified, but I was fascinated by the idea of being able to switch my mind to a different functionality and was eager to try it again, if I could only figure out how.

Ping! Ping, ping! Plog! A target, apparently.
Ping, plog! A moth, a little to the left and dropping fast, the image so clear it was almost visual.
He tried to turn his head to face the sound, but his visual field didn't change, and there was no feedback from his neck muscles to tell him whether his head had moved at all. He was aware of his arms though, held away from his sides, and his long thin fingers spread out stiffly, to let the membranes between them catch the air. His body dipped in pursuit of the insect, and he felt himself gaining on it. Ping, plung! Not the moth, that, but the ground, hard and flat, inches from his face. His wing membranes stretched further, pressing against the air, lifting him away from the near-crash, and towards an eye-searing light in the center of a cloud of moths.
There were moths all around him now. The next one didn't dive; he caught it in the membranes surrounding his tail and scooped it into his mouth, crunching and swallowing it. The thought made him want to gag, but he didn't. He overtook the next moth and caught it directly in his open mouth. He missed two after that and then caught three in a row, after which he stopped keeping score.
A long time later he found a tree branch, which he caught with his feet, swinging his body to hang head down below a comfortably distended belly. His eyes closed and his senses dulled with sleep.
He woke some time later, lying on his back in a comfortable bed. The light was dim and diffused. His arms, which lay close against his sides, terminated in normal hands, curled in loose fists, the unwebbed fingers independently maneuverable. There seemed to be no wires attached anywhere to his head or body, to block his bodily sensations or feed him bat impulses.
"Alan, are you awake?" He knew the voice but didn't want to put forth the effort to identify it.
"Yes."
"There is a microphone placed to pick up your voice. No, don't bother looking for it. Just say everything you can remember about being a bat. Don't worry about planning your words or organizing your thoughts. All we want are your immediate impressions. If we decide to publish it, you can edit it later."
No "if," he thought. They would publish it, and it would be the paper of the century.

Rita Carter writes about "what it is like to get lost in a daydream while driving, and to travel miles without any memory of doing so." She continues, "Only when something happens to alert us to our situation...do we snap back into full awareness of the present moment."

As a non-driver I can't judge this situation, but I can comment on one that looks rather similar on the face of it, which is commuting while reading. For many of you this is an ability you take for granted; in fact, so did I until I temporarily lost the ability--as the aftermath of a cerebral hemorrhage--and had to give my location my full attention while traveling or risk missing my stop. It seems obvious to me that during most of my ride my attention and consciousness are all on my book, but each time I reach a train station, or enter a new leg of my bus ride, something brings my surroundings into my conscious awareness just long enough for me to recognize that I still have some distance to go, or that my stop is coming up, and then the surroundings fade back into the fog of what I might notice but don't.

My third attempt of the morning. Using my brother-in-law's laptop now, resting comfortably on the dining table, but I'm still very much aware of physical sensations: a mildly achy back and sore throat. There's the drone of a rather babyish TV program in the background, but to quote an old joke, if my grandson can't be immature at 3, when can he? I'm also feeling a bit--hungry? No, snackish. It's a constant problem, feeling a need to nosh without being actually hungry. Yet I can handle fasting, or more commonly, at least in the past, being surrounded by nonkosher food, and not feeling tempted. So if I can just set my mind to recognize snack food as forbidden, I should have no problem. It's much pleasanter up here than in the basement, where I wrote and lost two previous entries logging on from my Linux system via my Unix ISP, but I'm surrounded by distractions, mostly in the form of people: how can I see my close family and not react, verbally or at least mentally? So I will have to try from now on from the basement, probably from my husband's computer, which has Firefox as well as Internet Explorer.

What I want most to do right now is stretch out flat on my back, but there's no time. It's 5:47 am and it takes me 13 minutes to get dressed. I lie down anyway. I hear Rochel coughing in the bathroom. Ran into her right before, think she said something about getting up slightly later next week. Ran into Avi before that in the kitchen, seemed to expect reaction/request. I asked him to clear the table. I also spoke to their cat, Patches. People act "Like Cats in the Night." How are they like cats? More wary, more open.

Later, after breakfast: "Not morning yet, nor still the night before" -- That sets the time and also sets it as iambic pentameter, one of my favorites. For when I wrote "cats in the night," I meant true night, the time of normal sleeping, rather than the late evening of "nighttime television," for example. "Nor *yet* the night before." -- I know that repeats "yet"--though in a different sense--which is why I didn't write it originally, but it's what goes.
"It's cats' time, owls' time, not a time for men." -- further specifics, and connecting to title. "Men" for people should work, monosyllabic like "cats" and "owls"; if seen as sexist, that impression should be corrected by the following lines. "We wake on private business, each alone." -- Another image, specific and physical, building toward the main image but not there yet. Also shows lack of rhyme, if no major revision to change that.

Why this format: a line at a time, followed by comments, as if I were trying to analyze someone else's completed poem? Because it comes to me one line at a time, the rhythm intrinsic, as if I can no more have a line of poetry arrive without rhythm as have a sentence appear without specific English words. It's habit of course, not instinct, but this very habit is one of the things that makes a poet.

Now to go from general nighttime activity to the individual: "We have our thoughts, but private ones, not shared" -- Well I thought I was about to go individual, but the image wasn't ready for that yet. Maybe a more catlike image? "Our mental territories" -- Yes, that suits and scans, but it's only a line fragment. "Our mental territories less patrolled" -- less defined? "Our mental territories less defined/Within these hours of darkness" -- Still ending on an incomplete line. And I like "less patrolled" better. "Our mental territories less patrolled/Within these hours of darkness. I'm alert,/have been for hours, alone downstairs with email/and with writing: reading, writing, planning." -- Maybe that last doesn't work, "writing" as an aspect of "writing."

Too quiet now. I interrupt to find my grandson. -- It's OK, he's with Aunt Emilie.

I'll have to review/revise the above line breaks since it's clear that, while the poem's distinctly iambic, after the first few lines it doesn't want to be confined to 5 beats per line.
"A mind engrossed in monologues, half-dialogs,/but not a spoken word." "A mind" or "My mind?" Also, not too happy with "engrossed"; change to "engaged." And make it "My mind."
"We pass, each on business of our own." -- Doesn't quite scan. -- "each *one* on business of our own." "Perhaps we need these hours of privacy/to coexist...." -- Again the final line break may differ. "To coexist like cats that share a yard." -- Fixes the line problem, and approaches closure. Or is this the end?

Like Cats in the Night
-- by Lucy Cohen Schmeidler
Not morning yet, nor yet the night before,
It's cats' time, owls' time, not a time for men.
We wake on private business, each alone.
We have our thoughts, but private ones, not shared,
Our mental territories less patrolled
Within these hours of darkness. I'm alert,
Have been for hours
Alone downstairs, with email and with writing,
My mind engaged in monologues, half-dialogs,
But not a spoken word.
We pass, each one on business of our own.
Perhaps we need these hours of privacy
To coexist like cats that share a yard.

Tsirel strode down the road to Radvale, swirling the rainbow cloak that marked her calling. She carried a letter to Lord Rad, putting her at his service while requiring him to maintain her in reasonable comfort; but until she arrived there she was entirely on her own, for the first time in ten years. For the first time as an adult. For the first time in her life, actually.

Her eyes took in the rolling countryside. She felt the texture of the road underfoot through the soles of her too-thin shoes, and the breeze against her cheek. She heard a bird's call she didn't recognize, and, a moment later, another bird's call in response. She felt the pattern, both like and unlike the calls of more familiar birds. Again the call; again the response. The third time she answered the call with one of her own.

The second bird answered also, half a beat behind. Tsirel stood still, waiting, as the first bird took time to sort out the new situation before calling again. This time, she and the second bird called out simultaneously, note for note; but Tsirel's call was slightly stronger, more confident.

She kept it up for a few more exchanges, hoping that her singing partner would show itself; but its call came always from the same distance and direction, as if expecting her to seek it out. Finally she gave it up and began walking again, leaving the birds to resume their courtship without interference.
#
It was late afternoon when she reached the castle. Lord Rad received her immediately. Like his gatekeeper, he was a man in late middle age, and seemed disappointed by her youth and likely her sex as well, though he said nothing. He might have been more dismayed by her lack of experience, but her credentials said nothing on that point; it was none of his business.

He quickly outlined her duties, and only afterwards asked whether she was tired or hungry from the road.

"I bought lunch along the way," she answered, "but I would like to clean up before supper."

Nothing as obvious as a smile or frown crossed the Lord's face, but she could see from the slight twitches of his mouth that he was pleased not to have to send for food, and annoyed at her request for a bath. From the ease with which she read him, she was fairly sure that he was either unused to having his expressions read, or thought her opinions beneath his notice.