running away

I recall a vibrant moment in my life back in the summer of 2002.

I was planning to move to a new state, meet new friends, start a new program. And I had the naive idea that I'd start a new life.

Namely, I wanted to drop my porn viewing habits and perhaps commit to less TV and more books, more coffee but less of the pot. I quickly found that one can only run away from what they leave behind, but they can never leave behind themselves.

I recall a very depressing and lonely moment in the Fall of 1995.

I was attending a university, on the premed track in my freshman year. The first week was stressful, mostly because I dragged every book that I had to purchase to and from my Monday classes. They were back-to-back lectures in college algebra, biology, and chemistry. I through I'd test out of the math. I ruefully accepted chemistry. I embraced biology. During some evenings I went to my job at the grocery store. There, in my solitary profession of refacing shelves, I'd fantasize about walking away from it all. In this little solitary fantasy I planned to begin walking somewhere, I'm not sure, north perhaps. I just wanted to walk into a town where I had no money or obligations other than to live. There, I would start over.

Why I so quickly turn to a fantasy of leaving behind one's stressful life I don't know. This stress management option was quite stressful in and of itself. Why would I consider running away from a life, from friends, from loved ones, from a warm home and inviting bed? The choice is extreme to turn one's back on a life, a job, friends, loved ones, and to arrive 'new' with tattered shoes and dirty clothes in a strange town. It's not a practical stress avoidance option, but it's the one that returns like a siren's call every so often.

Where has it been lately? I am unsure what happened to this desire to leave. It has matured perhaps. Yes, that's what has happened. Instead of me wanting to run away I acquire some skills and parlay them with previous skills into a new profession. I am finding what I could be in a world that seemingly doesn't want me. I intentionally avoid preparing for a big sell, yet at the same time I could envision myself as a decent salesperson if the need were to arise.

So now my current dream is to return to school. Why? I like to learn. Most of all, I like to dream, and what better place to do it in an academic setting built around your future? Colleges are dream factories, places where I can dream, places that will eagerly slurp up what funding I can acquire to return to school.

I guess I am unsure what will come of these choices other than more deferment of a life trajectory worthy of a retirement portfolio and of a socially traded datum of class, occupation, and consumer profile. I aspire, as we speak, of being a non-entity. Or rather I want to disappear from here and reappear there, and never ever settle into one profession for life. I suppose I could grow weed all of my life, if I could get away with it. As of late, I have been unable to do even that.

Now the final question is what does this tell me of my neurology? I know that is a somewhat passe question, given how brains are one of many readily tweaked and state-adjusted concepts-entities that consumer society caters to with its speed drinks, vitamin cocktails, and "brain growing" puzzle sites. Two questions emerged. First, why does talk of the brain with any definitiveness raise my hackles? Secondly, what could one say about my neurology given my desire to constantly shift out of routine?

I'll tackle the second. This should be easy. This notion that the world out there reveals something about the world in here is nothing new. It would suggestively support a dual recognition of the importance of both the world in shaping people and people in shaping the world that shapes people. Somewhere in that dual process entity you will find an answer to the question I posed. In such a world lacking worn routine I would suppose that changes are a way for me to 'reformat' some area of my brain, to force me to rethink and relearn my world, reestablish an umwelt, and the such. I have nothing against routine. In fact, I am a slave to my routines, but I am also slavishly aware of my routine's effect upon me. So in that sense, the breeding ground and proving ground for my neurology is in forced changes to my routine. So now that I have both engaged in one of my pet peeves and explained one aspect of my own self I will conclude and move on.

The conclusion I'd draw about my neurobiology is that I want to shape it through ruptures in routine. I don't want to allow neuronal networks to establish around a paucity of data. Rather, I'd like to put them networks to making sense of new environs. Now, what does this tell me about my peeve?

My peeve is connected indirectly to the way I posed and answered my first question. I'd rather change my brain behavior through forcing change upon myself than through some 'brain teaser' puzzle housed at a website that touts its credentials about how your brain works. And that's it. I think the way to interface and making changes to one's brain, qua one's self, is a personal and fully challenging endeavor. There are no Matrix-style pills and quick training tapes to put one up to speed. No, the change takes effort, sweat, stress. Secondly, we live in a world where brains are the medical synecdoche for human behavior and the self. Owing at least partly to the means available introduced by medial terminology, people are swayed by these expert discourses and their ability to alienate a person from his own soul. And to add insult, the expert sells back to the alienated a brain training program as well as a set of drugs for enhancing some aspect of the brain the expert tells you you never knew existed.

And that's the subtle play upon subjectivity qua enunciative modality that I see occurring. But I'm running away from that as well.

As a wise man once read from his character's dialogue and said: "No matter where you go, there you are."