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anything—requires ... requires...

    Yes! Yes, it requires the existence of—

    The existence of...

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    LiveJournal: The Calculass Zone

    Title: Being of two minds...

    Date: Saturday 15 September, 8:15 EST

    Mood: Anticipatory

    Location: Where the heart is

    Music: Chantal Kreviazuk, “Leaving on a Jet Plane”

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    Back in the summer, the school gave me a list of all the books we’re doing this year in English class. I got them then either as ebooks or as Talking Books from the CNIB, and have now read them all. Coming attractions include The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood—Canadian, yes, but thankfully wheat-free. In fact, I’ve already had an argument with Mrs. Zed, my English teacher, about that one, because I called it science fiction. She refused to believe it was, finally exclaiming “It can’t be science fiction, young lady—if it were, we wouldn’t be studying it!”

    Anyway, having gotten all those books out of the way, I get to choose something interesting to read on the trip to Japan. Although my comfort book for years was Are You ThereGod? It’s Me, Margaret, I’m too old for that now. Besides, I want to try something challenging, and BG4’s dad suggested The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, which is the coolest-sounding title ever. He said it came out the year he turned sixteen himself, and my sixteenth is coming up next month. He read it then and still remembers it. Says it covers so many different topics—language, ancient history, psychology—it’s like six books in one. There’s no legitimate ebook edition, damn it all, but of course everything is on the Web, if you know where to look for it...

    So, I’ve got my reading lined up, I’m all packed, and fortunately I got a passport earlier this year for the move to Canada. Next time you hear from me, I’ll be in Japan! Until then—sayonara!

    Caitlin could feel the pressure changing in her ears before the female voice came over the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve started our descent toward Tokyo’s Narita International. Please ensure that your seat belts are fastened, and that...”

    Thank God, she thought. What a miserable flight! There’d been lots of turbulence and the plane was packed—she’d never have guessed that so many people flew each day from Toronto to Tokyo. And the smells were making her nauseated: the cumulative body odor of hundreds of people, stale coffee, the lingering tang of ginger beef and wasabi from the meal served a couple of hours ago, the hideous perfume from someone in front of her, and the reek of the toilet four rows back, which needed a thorough cleaning after ten hours of use.

    She’d killed some time by having the screen-reading software on her notebook computer recite some of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind to her. Julian Jaynes’s theory was, quite literally, mind-blowing: that human consciousness really hadn’t existed until historical times. Until just 3,000 years ago, he said, the left and right halves of the brain weren’t really integrated—people had bicameral minds. Caitlin knew from the Amazon.com reviews that many people simply couldn’t grasp the notion of being alive without being conscious. But although Jaynes never made the comparison, it sounded a lot like Helen Keller’s description of her life before her “soul dawn,” when Annie Sullivan broke through to her:

    Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. Never in a start of the body or a heartbeat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life,