A Fish Tail

I had been studying Neuroscience and Psychology courses online with Yale and MIT and HarvardX, I spent many days and hours studying Dr David Cox’s Fundamentals of Neuroscience on the EDx platform and almost two months studying Medical Neuroscience on the Coursera platform with Dr Leonard White at Duke University. I even purchased a copy of the accompanying textbook from Amazon.

 

When HarvardX released its third module which was a study of vision I posted an image of the eye as my Twitter heading, with only a suspicion of awareness I was being observed.

 

I had struggled, but passed the examination of the first module which was on the fundamental properties of neurons, I had joined the course late and had around four weeks in which to learn the information before the exam window was opened up. This was at a time when the course was still developing and the second and third modules hadn’t being created yet.

 

I learned about electrostatic effects and diffusion. About how sodium ions jostling in the extracellular fluid cascade into the cell though voltage-gated ion channels that open up in the lipid bilayer after potassium leaks out through pores, triggering action potentials to fire through axons between myelinated sheaves, heading toward terminals. 

 

I learned about how TTX found in Puffer fish blocks the sodium channels as a final line of defence against predators. Even though deadly to humans, unless prepared properly by licensed chefs, Dolphins have apparently adapted to this toxin and seem to use it as a natural way of getting high.  

 

Vesicles and their release of neurotransmitters that travel millimicrons across synaptic clefts toward receptor sites contained in dendritic arbors were a part of the second module. Neurons and networks.

 

My nervous system went into a fight-or-flight response itself when I opened up the exam page, because I so wanted to pass, and yet I was immediately hit with a mathematics question, it was divided into six parts, as I seem to recall in memory, and I became anxious and nervous and started perspiring profusely, I cursed that professors were sadists and went outside and stood on the porch and smoked a cigarette.

 

When I came back into the room to face the beast I worked my way through all the other questions first and I left the mathematics until the end. After finally submitting the answers to HarvardX I thought if I have failed this test it will be because of the first question. When the results came back a month later, I had got many questions wrong that I knew the answers to, there were some that I didn’t know the answers to, but the math question I got 5 out of 6 correct and the one marked wrong was only wrong because I’d placed a minus where a plus should have being. Had I failed the first question, I would have failed the course.

 

The second module I found much easier, and this time I had time to prepare, completing the module with a higher grade than the first effort.

 

 

On October 1^st 2015, marijuana was legalised for recreational purposes in the state of Oregon, I bought my first gram for 8 dollars from Mahalo in Hillsboro on Thursday, 3^rd October. Almost immediately, I encountered a problem. There seemed to be nowhere that I could legally smoke the herb. Outside in the parks was highly illegal and could land oneself in trouble, but also inside the apartment complex where I lived it wasn't permitted and could land oneself in trouble, with landlords and the law. The smoking of any products at all was forbidden inside the apartments. People had looked silly standing on their porches in rainy weather when I first moved there. It appeared that the only way one could smoke the herb was if one owned a private house and we didn't have the money.  

 

After an anxious fortnight of not been able to find any suitable external space available and as I certainly didn’t want to get arrested from the police patrolling the grids in cars outside, I resigned myself to smoking in the computer room, facing the parking lot, at the rear of the apartment.

 

Sometime after HarvardX released its third module, with poetry readings complete with visual animations on the theme of the senses which I appreciated, I began a painting-collage of the eye. I had resignedly given up painting when I was younger; I had painted a single mandala only in my entire decade living in London. I had felt that I would never be the best painter and so I saw little point, I looked elsewhere to try and fulfill my artistic and creative potential.

 

Within weeks David Bowie released the single Blackstar, the painting-collage was propped up against the sofa in the living room and as the song played through the speakers connected to the computer, my wife sat across the room in her armchair and I saw her from the corner of my eye turning her head quick-sharp to stare at the image. “At the centre of it all, at the centre of it all . . . your eye”.

 

I had prematurely thought, welcome to my world, this had been happening to me since I first heard his single Thursday’s Child, and then I had watched the performance of the song the following week on Top of the Pops 2, and I was sat in the red leather Chesterton chair wearing a green-hooded Stussi top with shoulder length blonde hair, and the man singing on the screen was wearing a green hooded top and with shoulder length blonde hair. The lyrics had seemed eerily familiar.

 

I had been stimulated into thinking when the pay structure at my wife’s workplace had shifted from a Friday to a Thursday that I had said 13 years earlier this would happen. Thursday became a great day for me once again. I would purchase two grams instead of one, and sometimes I could afford an eighth.

 

I laboured at the collage-painting through until the summer, and the eye had now become a mosaic-mandala, and also a fish, as a tail had begun to flower from the right-hand-side of the white oval. I’d had the idea for several weeks, but had suppressed the urge to apply the little eye to the fish that was also an eye. I left this until I’d decided enough was enough, half a year spent working on a single piece seemed far too long to me. I had tried to include the knowledge of the visual system I had learnt, Helmholtz trichromatic theory with representations for long, medium, and short wave receptor cones in the fovea, and the decussations of sensory efferents at the optic chiasm. I cut out individual letters from magazines to spell the word, OPTIC NERVE.

 

In the morning I applied the eye onto the eye of the fish, and travelled into Hillsboro to purchase a gram of flower from Mahalo. I was served by a Native girl with long straight dark hair and as I handed her the cash I noticed a tattoo of an arrow etched into her right wrist. I appreciated the idea. I would incorporate this into a future design.

 

The name of this particular strain was called Purple Hindu Kush and I arrived home and nestled into the corner of the sofa in the computer room and I rolled a joint mixed with tobacco, a dirty English habit I never told anybody about in the states, but being poor, it meant that the plant would last longer. I smoked it down to the roach, and then, I rolled another one.

 

I had smoked only three or four drags when there was an almighty loud bang! I was immediately arrested with total shock, what the hell was that?! My action responses may have been delayed, but eventually I stood up and rushed into the bedroom to see if the cat was okay? I knew that she had been sleeping, curled up in a circle the last time I had seen her, but instead she was standing on all fours quizzically looking back at me as though she was asking the same question I was and I rushed to the front door, but there was nobody there, where the hell had that noise even come from? I walked back into the computer room and elevated the blind and I could see that there were ladders in front of my window, but I believed must have crashed down initially on the glass before being raised. As I looked down below into the parking lot, I could see standing at the foot of the ladders was the manager, Brewster. It seemed from observation that he was readying himself, and even daring himself to ascend the individual rungs. On impulse I hid the ashtray, and the plastic cylindrical containers that if witnessed could be used as evidence against me and I became concerned that the pungency of the Hindu Kush could possibly be sensed outside of the window. I was relieved I hadn’t taken the wife’s advice and opened the window, “That smells strong, you had better open the window” she had exclaimed with an agonised look on her face. She hated marijuana, hated the smell, and wouldn’t touch it in all the years I knew her.

 

I wafted the smoke clear of the room and I could hear Brewster ascending the ladders and he was talking to his assistant down below who was holding them steady at the base. I was heavy breathing and I went out of the front door of the apartment, down the wooden stairway panels and stood on the platform inside the stairwell box leaning over onto the third and highest of the wooden rails. I was angry. I didn’t want to have to, but I knew I had to go and approach him. My body was arched over, I was hyperventilating and I had to suck in deep breaths of air.

 

After steadying myself I walked around to the rear of the apartment and confronted Brewster who was standing on top of the ladders and looking in through my window, “why are you at my window?” I asked. He was startled at first, then wanted to crack a smile at what he thought mechanically might be my accent, but then he realised he couldn’t detect an accent, and he responded that he was “clearing the drains”, and I said, “you crashed your ladders down onto the window! You don't have permission".

 

"I don't need permission", he said. 

 

"You need to give me notice if you’re going to be climbing up to my window.”

 

“No, I don’t”, he said without apology.

 

“I need a note on the door telling me of your intentions, or you could just knock and ask”.

“I don’t have to do that” he said, and then the classic cliché came, “. . . when I’m just doing my job.”

 

I was angry with him, but firm and balanced, I had reduced the furore of the ocean's wave into a calm fine line and I walked across it. He couldn’t detect the English in my accent, but nor was there American, my voice was deep and resonant and I said, “. . . but it would have being polite!”

 

And I walked away, and he repeated like a machine that repeats a lot, “I’m just doing my job”. His job seemed to involve spying I determined. I’d already discerned that the rewiring job performed by Comcast had setup bugs in the apartment.  

 

I turned around and said, “But it’s not polite, you have no manners!”

 

And I walked away, and I heard him mumble something from behind me, he had to get the last word in to show his assistant who steadied the ladders that he was fit enough to manage him. His assistant was looking back at him like, maybe you should listen?

 

When I arrived back in the computer room I saw that the painting of the eye was propped up on the seat of the office chair, and I thought if Brewster could see into the room, which was possible through the square gap where the blinds had broken, then he would have seen the painting of the eye staring straight back at him. They thought I was weird enough as it was, the painting was an attempt at protection, containing aspects of images that represented a violent intruder, and the repelling and quelling of this crook and criminal. In the painting I was holding up the man responsible for my dilemma who had begun as a splodge of white paint that I’d squeezed onto the board from a height and the paint had run down the gradient of the board. Legs, and an arm had emerged from the body of the splodge and I simply painted a head onto the shoulders.

 

When Brewster had gone from my window I went onto the internet to Youtube and found a playlist of tracks by Ninja Tunes and I sat down on the sofa, rolled another joint and listened to the music. Ordinarily I would sit in the office chair, but I wanted to examine and inspect my painting. The sofa was low to the ground. I was still hyperventilating.

 

A few songs rolled down the list and then an old and familiar song aired through the speakers. It was “Get a Move On” from the Keep it Unreal album and whilst I was smoking-studying-the-painting-listening-to-the-music and hyperventilating, at first I caught a half glance of an animated white van on the accompanying video to the song, and then I realised I really had seen what I thought I’d seen, the side of the van read, Bob’s Whelks.

 

Oh, my God, Oh, my God! I repeated, and I realised through the convergent forces of shock, hyperventilation, timing, art and marijuana I had worked my way up into an ecstatic state of conscious arousal.

 

I had forgotten everything, almost everything from the past, but I would occasionally replay the scene from when I had last seen Bob in 2003, a lot had happened afterwards, no less the evil of the Reality album and my words emerging in chorus lines like Never Gonna Get Old. 

 

In the painting, Bob was the white splodge, and I was holding him up as responsible. I realised that I had said ten years before to Paddy, for which he had attempted to power-up on me, that "they would have left a clue in an obvious and likely place, like his name in a video to one of the songs". I remembered that I’d said that I wouldn’t look at this until I arrived at an ecstatic state of consciousness, and I was here, and it was now, and it seemed random, although I had not watched or listened to Ninja Tunes since the Keep it Unreal album in 1999 and Coldcuts in the years before.

 

A few songs past and then I heard, “the Just stuff on the floor, the Just stuff on the floor, and take control” and I realised that I’d asked for the second song in 2003. This was a 2009 release and I was hearing it seven years layer in 2016. I played the Keep it Unreal album, we had a copy with the collection of CD's on the bookcase that I’d urged my wife to purchase before we married and I slotted the CD into the computer, and it wasn’t that I misunderstood the album, because by 2003 I had figured it all out, they had wanted to eat the fish, I’d only played the album five times, but I realised that through all my efforts with regards to writing novels, short stories, poetry and songs, that had never worked, never gone anywhere, or had come too anything, that in a sense, I was already out there. I had exteriorised my soul.

 

I was hyperventilating, I hadn’t stopped doing so since shortly after the ladders had banged on the window, and I realised that I’d asked for the Madonna quote in the caption printed underneath the song, how that had come true, and then I remembered asking for the Ha-Bridge and how that had not only come true, but also had become lyrics in the song Reality, and the video-screen-art of the running white horse that was an ancient Phoenician symbol of the sun, I had remembered describing the detail. I remembered that I’d asked for an art gallery by the banks of the Calder that would consist of simple blocks of four, with a hidden complexity, that would reflect into eight in the water, justice, eternity, “We don’t have great buildings in the city that reflect into water, like great cities do,” “an art gallery seems more futique and fitting from a Shaman than a municipal building”. I remembered that I’d asked for the Police Station at Wood Street to be relocated to Normanton, “We can send the Normans to Normanton”, I had said, also using a biblical metaphor involving pigs. All I had said had come to pass, it seemed. I wasn’t certain if this was how, but I remembered asking for the online university courses, and I specifically remembered saying, MIT, Harvard, Yale, I had never been to university, or received formal education and I always wanted to learn an academic discipline.

 

I remembered the graffiti artist Banksy, “I was never known as a Banksy, I was the only Banksy in high school who was never known as Banksy”. I had said, “if they ask, tell them I’m a graffiti artist in America”, and I remembered that I had said that I would live on the West Coast of America, near a University, and there would be a mountain in the background that would be symbolically and metaphorically related to Wakefield in some way, and Shamanism in some way, and I realised that Hood was the answer to the riddle I had set, and that others, without speaking had answered. Robin Hood was said by some to have originated from Wakefield. I remembered I had said marijuana would be legal and that I would smoke, and draw, and paint and create, and I had realised I had asked on Twitter in 2013 for marijuana to be made legal, “someone needs to be doing some work for me”, I had typed.

 

I remembered talking about Anonymous, before Anonymous, and red JC, before red JC, and RD’s GD, and I remembered SH’s capture in 2003, and the shattering of the Temple, and each separate, scattered fragment formulated into a whole, like a mosaic-mandala-fish-eye. I had affected history, it occurred to me that day. The arch had consisted of two sides and the stone was balanced between the arches in the centre, and I realised and remembered in hyperventilation-ecstasy, for seven days and nights without sleep or need for food. The veil had been lifted, my pupils dilated, optimised to receive light-information, I was more awake than I'd ever been, the little, profane and trivial things seemed distant. 

 

On the third night I stood in the centre of the living room and from behind retinal video cameras I watched rivers of fish swimming sinuously across the mottled cream ceiling, there seemed to be thousands of them, and I stood with mouth agape, dripping like melting wax, in bliss, and awe.

 

Before the wife went to bed that evening I was sitting on the living room sofa and she was standing before me asking, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” There was water streaming down my face from my eyes, and I couldn’t condense myself in language enough to explain to her, Universe - Big, Broca’s Area - Small. She sat on my knee for a little while and held onto me, she told me that she “loved me”, but I didn’t speak, I could not speak. I had suppressed everything without words for years.