Category Archives: Spring Reveries

To provide a prompt for the development of poetry that recycles neurons, that jolts, that cleaves our heads, that mediates our passions, that evokes the sensation of reading in the brain, a weekly reverie based on that week’s reading assignment from Neuro is required. You may choose your own favorite passage from the assigned chapter of Neuro and then create a reverie in response to it modeled on the form of reverie Bachelard demonstrates in The Poetics of Reverie. (Students new to the program spring quarter will want to purchase this book, which is available in the TESC Bookstore and browse peers’ winter quarter versions of Bachelardian reveries.) Post your weekly 100 word reverie on the assigned chapters of Neuro here no later than midnight Wednesday during weeks 6-9 of spring quarter. Your poetic reverie (or riff) should begin with what you experienced as a particularly evocative passage from that week’s reading, including page number. Your quote does NOT count in terms of your 100 words of writing. Rather, quote this passage of 1-3 lines from Neuro and then create your own reverie.. The work here is to feel, trace or map the network of meanings associated in your brain/mind with a given word or phrase. While these weekly reveries are brief, they might develop into poems for inclusion in your field study term paper.

Hh – Week 7 Reverie

“Antisocial and violent conduct is a major social problem, which also generates significant economic costs, and is hence an important target for government intervention. Such conduct runs in families, and a small proportion of families in any community account for a large proportion of its violent crime. Hence risk for antisocial aggression is transmitted intergenerationally. While twin studies have shown significant heritability, they have been unable to identify the specific genetic bases of risk.” (Neuro, 188)

 

Passive aggressive actions

We’re just alike

Acting out aggression afterward

Violence might be silent

But it is never silenced

We two are the same, why?

Genetic likeness

Like the fuel was lit inside us

Sometimes it seems futile to fight it

Once ignition goes decisions go

From good to bad and they’re out the window

And we’re put into limbo

But why us two here now?

Why we so alike

Where it’s hard to hear now

It’s cause our type is the same

Which is why we both end caught up

In passive aggression that bothers

Because it’s me and him

And he, is my father.

Week 7 Neuro Reverie

Renée Ingersoll

As Poetry Recycles Neurons

5/14/13

Neuro Reverie

 

Neuro Reverie

“..The criminal as, anatomically and physiologically, an organic anomaly.”
(Rose and Abi-Rached, Neuro; 169)

“During the last fifteen years there is no specific work in criminal anthropology to be recorded…”
(Rose and Abi-Rached, Neuro; 169)

Call me a criminal anthropologist,
working with those anatomic
physiologic
anomalies
you call delinquents
I’ve ridden the ride
without the jail time
just the person on the other end of that payphone
hoping it will only be months, not years

Call me a criminal anthropologist
whose fallen in love with her subjects
once she saw the other side of their dark moons
why they’re even pushing to begin with
which moms and dads were
abusive
alcoholics
crack addicts
or just too young for parenting
hoping they won’t turn out like them

Call me a criminal anthropologist
torn between my real world
and trying to pull them out of the game
if everyone knew them like I do
they wouldn’t be looked down upon
in that way that stops them from trying to get jobs
one felony doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to eat
without food stamps
or flipping molly for gas station food

Call me a criminal anthropologist
but i’d rather be called their friend

Nuro Reverie #2

The anatomists and pathologists wage an interdisciplinary battle,
Their argument: Nuropsycology.
Integrated studies,
a brain surgery into Vogts, Lenin, Forel, and Ferdinand.
The analysis; positive eugenics.

The Vogts!
The Vogts themselves turned,
successor of the institute:
sterilization,
incarceration,
and murder
of habitual “criminal”
the feeble minded,
and the mentally ill.

——–

I wish to be free
unconfined by the limitations set before me,
Imposed upon me.

I am no romantic, but my heart
bleeds all the same, and the multitude
of grievous thoughts that circle
round this head of mine
would make hades blush.

I’m only a “product of my time”
like I’m some “limited edition”
peice of mass produced bull-shit
rather then that of a human being.

The flavor of such notation,
the countless labels:
Feeble minded,
Crazy,
ADD,
Depression,
the list,
the list goes on!
and still “mad”
am I, the one who
takes on the labels
the one who deals with
the stigmata,
I am the crazy one?

S – Week 7 Bachelardian Reverie

“In each generation, unsurprisingly, these arguments are made on the basis of whatever happens to be the current mode of objectivity about the development of children—habits, the will, instinct theory, psychoanalysis, and today the brain. Social justice, it seems, lies not in tackling the causes of structural inequality, poverty, poor housing, unemployment, and the like, but in managing parents in the name of the formation of good citizens.” (Rose & Abi-Rached, 196)

 

What’s the essence of morality?

Is it an alloy of metals, cheap and bendable like a steel-aluminum compound,

Or is there a crystalline rigidity to its composition,

Built by a singular, signature element?

 

The gavel is a leveling technology:

It fattens out specificities of who’s and when’s and where’s—

I’m mostly scared of losing the why’s—

The insistence of comparability that assumes all murders are congruous.

 

Dogs bite the hand that feeds them for a reason.

You put too much trust in your fellow man,

Assuming that he’s not carrying poison.

 

People have always been reactionary:

We do things for reasons.

 

Retell my body repeatedly.

Use different languages, tenses.

Interpretation or translation?

Let my arteries reveal a map of intent

And my breath a cipher of childhood.

Explain my brain, my heart, my core

Toil away, spiraling closer

Towards anything that can be claimed

The most precious.

 

If you asked me to read my form,

I could explain every inch of weight.

I would tell you how freckles were once sun

Flesh once fruit

And scar once entry.

Every pock an imprint from another surface:

My boundaries are only explainable when read as nexus.

I don’t claim interiority:

I have never seen my insides;

If I had to guess how my body manages to stay together,

I’d explain that I’m a product of pressure.

Layers of sediment squeezed into shape.

Social concentrate.

A – Neuro Reverie Week 7

“Further, as we have seen in chapter 2, evidence from brain scans or other neurobiological tests does not ‘speak for itself’ – it must be spoken for. Images do not convince by means of their own intrinsic plausibility: interlocutors are required, and expert witnesses such as the clinicians who have requested and interpreted the brain scans of the accused must make the claim that the scan shows relevant anomalies”. (Abi-Rachad, Rose pp.178)

 

Neurolaw. Neuroethics. Neurocriminology. My mind projects a possible permutation a la Philip K. Dick. Imagine a future, where psychic mutations have led to a new kind of science – a new model – complete with its own questions of human ethics. Imagine, a clinician (government employed totalitarian style) analyzing the dreams of three coma-induced precognates – three oracle-gods whose powers must be harnessed for the ‘good’ of humankind. Imagine a world, where a crime can be seen before its inception (seemingly at least). Imagine this poor clinician, so set in the model of the current times, whose world is shaken to the core when he sees his own reflection, scryed in the mirror of the sleeping demiurges. Questions arise: Is he responsible for a crime he has not yet conceived. Does the medium and the image preemptively diagnosis criminal behavior and abnormality or does it call it in to being. Is this evidence inculpatory? Exculpatory? Psy-law. Psy-criminology. Psy-ethics? Are we playing God? Haven’t we always?

V – Neuro “Reverie” Week 7

“The Mechanism is the growth and pruning of synapses in response to experience – synapses that become “Hard-wired” by repeated use”. (194)

Molding molds of children in infancy/in fencing of gardening parents

who hold no monetary constraints, no constraints of giving and time, completely releasing to the tending of the children. How can this really happen when we all struggle to see ourselves through to the next line of numbers signed by a man who doesn’t have any children. Placing value, removing time, removing love.

what a wonder what whorl wind, what a world wind of renewal to commemorate the criminals, the children, the parents.

we mend we meld and then we pry apart. Asking of our citizens the work of pruning.  A dynamic which might allow violence to end.  Is it as simple as that? Cut off the violent branches of your tree my sweet little child, they will cost us and cost us if we do not prune your truth in moments of shaping.  Shape your vessel to look like this, remove this part, the part deemed “damaged” by society and then continue on.

this takes time, and not just time, but the right time.  I do not know how or when or why

but we must tend to the gardens of our hearts

not to focus on removal, but on the building of beauty.

Rhys week 7 Neurorev

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A new voice speaks today.

Civilized.

You’ve been.

A different kind of character

Must play by different rules

Here there are no differences

The risks are high, no time for fools.

Too many machines to build and keep

Too many words to count our sheep

Too many buildings left to sweep—

This is the goal of the Collective

And if you are defective,

We’ll at least try to be receptive

But never self-reflective

The glorious ‘WE’ is holier than thou

So take your time to take a bow

Even if you cannot stand

The Great Collective needs you

You must donate your hands.

After all,

You long ago were Harnessed.

Tactile-Letters-blog-pic-231x300

Ab – Spring Reverie Week 7

Marisa Malone

Neuro Reverie #2

Wk. 7

Word Count: 85

 

“The mechanism is the growth and pruning of synapses in response to experience—synapses that become “hard-wired” by repeated use.” (Abi-Rached, Rose, 194)

 

Humans are conditioned/conditional creatures, we live through patterns, repetition, ritual, routine and consistency. The repetition creates a thought path in our neurons that brings us comfort and familiarity and habituate our actions and reactions accordingly. These synapses get fired and welded together from rewards and consequences regarding behavior, appearance, class, and gender based on the expectations that fill such labels from the powers that be. The “mechanism” in place imposes the foundation of what will or wont make us “feel good” hard-wiring a consumer mentality.

T W7 Neuro reverie

Taking on Traffic

“This is an element in a wider shift in strategies and policies in many societies toward preemption of unwanted incidents, including criminal offences.” (166, Rose, Abi-Rached)

 

Impatience grows, tolerance runs thin,

It is 8:30 in the morning and the mutterings begin.

Should I merge with the flow or just cut off the next guy?

This person in the driver’s seat has PTSD and is in the position of control his agitation continues making his passengers more aware of the dangers that could occur.

A groan comes from the back seat and a sigh from the passenger front,

The driver’s speech has more clarity while the demeaning language aimed at other drivers through his mouth continues to flow at us four passengers too.

Two women; I and his wife, two dogs; one is a female and the other is an unneutered male.

The animals grow restless with the female’s high pitched barking comes from atop the wheelchair parked rear.

This barking is nearly aimed in the driver’s ear.

The other dog; male said to supposedly be calming the barking dog down, begins barking, thrashing, and growling while cornering the female in passenger left side rear.

Passenger front interjects, proclaiming the female dog’s fear yet the driver claims the female is at fault for first barking near his ear.

Animalistic argument between husband and wife,

The male and female dogs as animals depict this same strife.

“Don’t question my driving!” “Are you the one at the wheel!?”

This stands as a reminder of who is currently in charge.

Communication proved useless in other situations with them.

Although considered family, other voices in competition with his continuous power hungry state of mind have never been able to break the bind.

 

E – Week 6 Reverie

Images do not speak for themselves.

But what happens when they do?

It is easy to see criminal acts, we do

Through computers. But what makes

The brain so amazingly different?

Why is the brain immune to this idea

That pictures have meaning?

So much that we can’t see, inside.

Is there social on the inside?

Lives and cultures, language all

Mashed up inside a skull. People, words

Jammed together in three pounds of tissue.

Such a heavy burden to house criminality.

But what if our culture is criminal? What if

We tear it apart and realize that there is nothing

But violence against humanity?