Some Thoughts On Gestation

I’ve never really felt secure. Maybe when I was immersed in my mother’s amniotic fluid, doing whatever people do before they’re born, and somebody tells them what to do. When does consciousness start? AI Overview says consciousness is considered unlikely before 24 weeks. The neural pathways linking the sensory organs to the cerebral cortex—specifically the thalamocortical connections—are not yet established. Early brain activity at 6 weeks is primitive and unorganized. Furthermore, low oxygen levels and natural sedating chemicals in the womb (like adenosine and allopregnanolone) keep the fetus in a deep, sleep-like state. I’ve got some news for you: I’m 79 and still very much feeling primitive and unorganized. I have no memory of entering this world. No memory of the doctor whose forceps left shallow little impressions on my skull. No memory of the window. Was there a window? No memory of the nurses, if there were nurses. Did anyone think to offer me a shot of whiskey, or shake my hand in congratulation? Welcome to Planet Earth. No doubt, my mother was the focus of attention. My first memory was watching John Wayne wrestle a huge octopus on a movie screen. I would soon discover that John Wayne was considered the prototypical male. Rock steady, taciturn, stubborn. Unapologetic. Anti-intellectual. Tough as nails. Not for me. I drifted more toward Kerouac, drawn toward things on the other side of the mind, immense arcades of secret joy. Marcel Proust in bed, writing a universe of art. 

Somehow, I managed to grow up rebellious, retiring, and absurdly mutable, traits frolicking in contradiction, sometimes canceling on another out, that’s life. I was never very belligerent. Getting old has changed that a bit. My social life keeps shrinking. Many friends have died. The chronic irritability of old age has accomplished the rest. Alan Watts seemed pretty cheery in his elder years. Was that a put-on? Was it fake? Was it all an act? Listening to him always puts me at ease. He seemed more hedonistic than ascetic. To my eyes, he’s a bit of a fraud, but that makes him all the more appealing. The best thing about Watts is that I never have to take him seriously. He ends every statement with laughter. If Mr. Watts says death is not the opposite of life, it’s the counterpart of birth, the other end of the same wave, I feel more than aquatic, I feel buoyant and green and flooded with growth and being. I feel Funky Tonk and many other heavy syncopated grooves. Miles Davis is another preferred guru. He said things like don’t play what's there, play what's not there. So I’m always looking, trying to see what’s not there, which is difficult, because it’s not there. I’m more apt to bump into it when I’m not looking. Here’s another MD nugget: Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself. Whoever that turns out to be.

The most significant change for the better in my lifetime were the Beatles. When I was in 9th grade, the cool guys wore black leather motorcycle jackets and sported pompadours and ducktails. It was either that, or be a squeaky-clean jock, assuming one was graced with a tall athletic body, or a nerdy misfit, if one were predisposed to books and airplane glue, which was the category I nestled in. Norms prevailed in all the squishy niches and tributaries of the general river taking us all out to sea one day. Life felt tight as a compression sock. Step out of line, the man come and take you away. The Beatles did away with all that. All the norms got tossed out the proverbial window. Everything was funny and wild and exhilarating. Eccentricity was in, conformity was out. Life felt authentic and brilliantly contradictory. Status moldered. People denigrated money. Then they loved money. Egoless antimaterialism was king. People sought refuge in ashrams. Then money got imperative again and it all disappeared in a blush of disguised venality. How did that happen? How did everything go from Me and Bobby McGee to Material Girl? How did living authentically and large in dharma bum glee come to be so easily seduced, so easily appropriated? All that freewheeling joy became a 401(k). Disco revived chicanery. Cheesy mirror balls. Leisure suits. Junk bonds. And ChatGPT.