4 Comments
User's avatar
Austin Morrissey's avatar

Brilliant. Your writing here reminds me of of William James. What resonates with me the most is your analogy of the helping hand - intuiting and directing your attention towards what is becoming.

I relate to your friend Sandeep with some variation — in my case, it is more like one hundred clowns packed into a clowncar, all of whom are convinced they are driving.

What is the brightfield image of? I see the connective tissue wrapping the complements, and maybe some fat interspersed , but otherwise cannot recognize it.

Expand full comment
Alison Hochen's avatar

Yes I agree that was the most surprising/profound part of it, the observation that you don't get to decide when a different part of you is taking over, so you might as well help it along...

I suspect my friend Sandeep would enjoy (and viscerally understand) your clown car analogy! In addition to being terrifying brilliant he is also my model of measured, deliberate thinking and action. TBH, not to speak for him, but I can picture him reminding you (us! as my brain is also Clown Town) of the importance of practising some kind of exercise in mental control, meditation or other, in order not to think so fast you end up outrunning yourself...

Sorry to disappoint you: it's just an AI-generated image, not from a real microscope. An AI interpretation of mitochondria? In what kind of tissue, though, I couldn't guess.

Expand full comment
Jacob Sweet's avatar

Love this. And loved Pereira Maintains.

Expand full comment
Alison Hochen's avatar

The brilliant friend who recommended Pereira Maintains to me called it 'cloudy and quiet and unnerving', which--isn't she right?

Expand full comment