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We finally got some rain. Not enough to stem the tide, but enough to cause mud puddles for a while, and luckily, it came in the late afternoon and the sun didn't come back out to dry it all up. When I got up this morning the deck outside my room was still wet.
It's probably too late for the agricultural crops, and even my fruit bushes that I've been watering with the spigot. I've described the condition of my figs as a result of the drought previously, but my blueberries are tough and not very juicy. Maybe this rain will give them a last gasp.
Not being able to remember the term "omelet" for a moment this morning was disturbing. I did remember and I got over it, but to not have it come to mind easily in front of the sour, sullied waitress was not comfortable. It's likely to get unpleasant in this way more often in the future.
This incident made me think about what could happen after I get the cataract in my left eye removed in less than two weeks. I've written about this a lot in the past. I'm referencing the way humans use the objects in their environment to remind them of various events. Like going into a bar or a diner and seeing all the placards on the walls with various quaint sayings. Pretty soon after I sit down I find myself using words from those cards and sayings for the bulk of my conversation.
This predicament was most aptly revealed to me when I got into the float tank I built from scratch to see what that was like. Sensory deprivation chambers eliminate stuff that stimulate the senses. Any of them. Ideally, inside the tank lying in temperature-regulated salt water (Epsom salts to make you float like you're in the Dead Sea), all the ambient environmental sounds are muffled by insulation.
All the light is shut out by blocking off all the places it could leak in. The sense of smell is at least modified by the sameness of the smell of the Epsom salts, and you don't wanna taste it... ugh. The sense of touch is ignorable because you're floating fancy free in water that's only a few degrees below 98.6. In other words, in the float tank, any of the senses that can't be eliminated by technology are compromised so that they can be readily ignored, and that's the entire point.
The abstract thoughts one carries into the float tank are soon forgotten, because there is no stimuli to remind one that something exists outside the sensory deprived condition. Frankly, when sensory deprivation is done right it's like lying inside a coffin six foot under the ground. Nada. No sensory stimuli is coming in, no sensory stimuli is going out. A human being can't think abstract thoughts without the input of sensory stimuli. Speech is mind. Mind is speech.
People crawl into sensory deprivation chambers to temporarily lose their minds.
When the surgeon removes my distorted, brown-stained cataract from my left eye and replaces it with a clear, UV-filtered plastic lens to join my bionic right eye, it will be like stripping the walls of all the honky tonk bars and greasy spoon diners I've patronized pretty much all my life.
Gone will be the source of all those quaint sayings and aphorisms upon which I've bestowed the trappings of my memores upon. Nothing I see with my new eyes will remind me of my past life experiences because everything around me will have been transformed.
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