While I don't think I'm still 'in' the writing that cohered around themes and that collected itself into a 'parcel,' my writing's changed. Who can stay the same?
My first husband accused me of changing every year. Ah, mid-70s?
Do we transform into different versions of ourselves as we age through the years?
It's the brain cells that are most magnificent, the way they are born, live, die and somehow pass on their information, their memories, to the new crop, and they do this continually throughout our lives.
All the cells in the body maintain the structure of the whole of us by keeping their processes going.
But transmitting memory,
and who knows how, is a feat, a miracle.
Is this why the brain is perhaps structured like a grammar? With syntax and a lexography? So that it can write itself into the future?
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
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The brain cells remind me of something I read in Lynn Margulis' and Dorion Sagan's book Microcosmos, that: (a) living bacteria can sample DNA from dead bacteria to increase their adaptibility; and (b) one theory postulates that the brain, with all its interconnections, evolved from spirochete bacteria. (I've got a novel draft inspired by those bits of info. It needs a major rewrite that I'll likely get to once I'm done with the current series.)
ReplyDeleteI don't know about how memories travel. That book e_journeys talked about sounds really interesting. I do know that people change a bit all the time, some more drastically than others. I hope my husband and I will change in compatible ways, and somehow I think we will. Also, your talk about "grammar" led me to think a bit about conversations with my brother about the Korean he's learning. It's one of the hardest languages in the world, and he says that since starting to learn it, he's been jokingly suicidal (like all of his classmates), but he feels so confident that he's convinced he could do anything. "Tell me to build a rocket and I could probably do it because of the strength this school has forced me to muster," he pretty much said. The syntax so far seems like that of Latin - object, subject, verb. Then you can put a number indicator at the end, or with some of the nouns earlier. Language fascinates me, and the way it speaks to us about our brains is exciting. Peace, Brenda!
ReplyDeleteFrom the research I've done it looks like we're born with billions of brain cells and they die off as we age. We do not grow
ReplyDelete'new' brain cells. These are the only cells in the body that remain the same throughout life - though there is some suggestion of stem cells in the hippocampus (ha, whatever!). So, memory isn't tranmitted from generation to generation. It's the same cells burnt with vivid scenes when you were a child. Or is it? Who can study a live brain to find out?
Thanks e_journey, your book sounds fascinating.
And BoureeMusique, I've been teaching ESL to Korean students and it is most fascinating. I know nothing about Korean, but have fallen in love with the culture. If I was younger and without children I'd definitely make my way over to teach there, I think. They're great kids, motivated in ways I barely understand.
Well, this was the most wonderfully vertiginous post I've seen today! I wish I had more brain cells to bring to bear on this shimmering thread, but alas, I'm tuckered out. Found you because you "favorited" MB's blog, and I had to see what you were doing...
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Speaking of hard languages: I think one reason the Greeks became so great is that ancient Greek is so difficult. After you've learned that, anything else is a snap. Something like eight verb tenses and a similar number of noun cases, and all kinds of seemingly superfluous articles that get dropped here and there into sentences of capricious word order, and a vocabulary built by combining prefixes, roots, and suffixes in ways that only hint at the new words' meaning... I tried to teach it to myself but turned to other pursuits instead. Actually it would be a great brain exercise for those planning on achieving old age.
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