In 1966, the greatest Poe scholar to have ever lived, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, retired from his teaching post at Hunter College, elated to finally possess the leisure to pursue in earnest his long-held dream of compiling a definitive edition of Poe’s complete works. Two years later, at age 69, he had all but finished the…
Depending on the duration and intensity of what one had involved oneself in, emergence from an Immersive Experience will be accompanied by a Cognitive Transformation Period, lasting hours, days, perhaps weeks. To be clear, the associated neural reconfiguration should be thought of as occurring in addition to rather than instead of the ever-present ebbs and…
I’m reading Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by neurologist Oliver Sacks. I found it at the library on a shelf of new releases. The new release designation means little more to the library’s information system circuitry than that the time between check out and due date is shorter. It needs to be returned…
If you go very long without speaking to anyone, only observing people speaking to each other, you’re likely to begin experiencing a bizarre sensation of isolation. It’s bizarre for its contradiction: feeling alone and invisible despite all the people around you. It’s like something out of The Martian Chronicles. The other day I was reassured…
I’m staying with Pat, Suzette, Avtar, Savage, and Dimn, the latter two being cats. It is a good life. Today I finished The Poor Mouth, subtitled A Bad Story About The Hard Life. It’s by the author of At Swim-Two-Birds and was checked out by Pat at my recommendation when we were at the library,…
I have a subscription to The Guardian Weekly, a very fine publication from the U.K. I read each issue cover to cover but am terribly behind schedule. I’m currently reading week Aug 26 – Sept 1 2005. Furthermore, in a matter of days, I remember far less than half of what I’ve read. Still, I…