Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "brain"

Here's the deal: I have some really odd dreams. Not every night, but fairly often. And some of those dreams are weird enough that they make me think.

Or.

They make me laugh.

Last night, I dreamed that this fellow had a robot woman to - Uh.

Well. She was there to provide him with pleasure. I will (thankfully, perhaps) leave it at that. Almost.

She was a sex robot. There. I will leave it at that.

I don't honestly remember what she looked like. Anyhow. The guy was a jerk and I took the sex robot away from him.

What did I do with the sex robot? I gave it to seven dwarves.

I know, that sounds silly.

If it makes it any less silly, they weren't dwarves exactly. They were more like gnomes. Specifically, those lawn gnomes you see in yards.

There weren't seven of them. I only saw four or five. So.

I guess the title of the dream would be "Sex Robot and the Four or Five Gnomes."

I woke up from this ridiculous dream feeling amused. Sometimes I think my brain takes these bizarre strolls just for that purpose.

I am pretty sure that Stephen King gave me the idea of calling Kurt Vonnegut "Uncle Kurt." Vonnegut was a philosopher king for many of us, his writing opening our minds to ideas and concepts beyond the worlds we came from.

Vonnegut introduced me to the idea of "chemical imbalance in the brain" in his book Breakfast of Champions. It was phrased and described in such a simple way that even I could understand it. Over the years, I have seen it to be a hidden motivation behind almost everything: the trickster god in scientific form.

When I taught ninth grade, I would see chemical imbalances in the brain alter the behavior of my students. It would make some overly aggressive and others overly emotional.

Working with at-risk children, I came to see how those chemical imbalances hurt the poor much, much more than they hurt the affluent. A rich man can get away with being an asshole towards others; a poor man will go to jail.

I tried to get a mental health project going when I worked with the Hope Health Clinic, but we didn't have the money to pull it off. Progress in mental health takes time. It takes commitment. Rich men do not seem to understand this. Rich men make the rules.

I worked a couple of years with a mental health non-profit, but that was futile.

I am entirely out of the field these days, but chamical imbalances continue to impact me personally and you, too, whether you know it or not.

My efforts to write a sequel to Evil is Always Human has been impacted by my mood, which is driven by these brain chemicals. I write this on a Sunday morning, sitting on the sofa, being sad for no good reason and being thankful that I am rich enough to be sad here and not in a jail cell.