Good Friday

I had a brain MRI today! Just a precaution after I fell on my face a few weeks ago, while I was out running. The results were completely normal, as expected -- insofar as my brain could ever be considered "normal" -- but the process itself was interesting.

After lying immobile for about a half hour, enclosed in a long tube and surrounded on all sides by machinery making god-awful noises, I visited the neurologist who showed me the results on his computer monitor.

There, on the screen, was my brain. Big as life. The doctor and I viewed it from the top, from the sides. We viewed slices of my brain from top to bottom, from side to side. My brain was revealed to me as though I were a pathologist doing an autopsy after my own death.

It's small, you know. Your skull itself, the part not devoted to your mouth, nose and ears, is small, and the brain within the skull is even smaller. It looks pretty simple when imaged, although of course you can't view the complex electrical currents running through it. To tell you the truth, the sight is humbling.

Somehow, that small lump of body tissue encompasses all my memories, all my emotions, my curiosity, my sense of humor, my compassion, my irritability, my likes and dislikes. Buried somewhere within it are my fearful first day of kindergarten, my pride at being my class's best reader in elementary school, my first shy crush, the highs and lows of my high school experiences, my departure for college. The awe I experience in a Gothic cathedral, the excitement of climbing a mountain, the joy at hearing a Bach fugue. The sense of God's presence. My wonder at the infinite expanse of space. Of eternity.

My brain reeled at seeing visions of itself. A brain attempting to understand its own construction and function -- like a computer trying to figure out how it's been hard-wired and programmed. A brain that's accustomed to thinking of itself as "me," a "me" with all the lofty thoughts and emotions noted above, now finding itself confronted with the harsh reality that "me" is nothing more than two or three pounds of meat -- meat that can be studied on a computer screen.

My brain watched itself being digitally sliced and diced for a few more minutes, and then the neurologist saw me -- "me" -- out the door. My body escorted my now seriously-humbled brain out of the building, out onto the Seattle streets.

The trees in Seattle this week are flowering pink and white, and their perfume is intoxicating. The air felt fresh and recently washed. Schools are out for Easter break, and clusters of liberated kids were laughing and joking on the sidewalks. Skies were mostly cloudy, but bursts of sun broke through at times, warming my bare arms.

The realities I'd observed in the doctor's office began to fade from memory. Or rather, I remembered them only as interesting games for my intellect. Reality exists on many levels. To a neurologist, we may be nothing more than clumps of gray matter, a brain ordering our body to transport it about. But a boy and girl, walking hand in hand, self-absorbed and laughing in the spring sunlight, represent a different plane of reality altogether. A reality not inconsistent with that experienced by the neurologist, but, as we sense intuitively, a reality far transcending anything that can be seen on a monitor.

My brain relaxed. It was no longer just "my brain," something akin to what you might buy at your supermarket's meat counter. It was "me." "Me" strolled down the street. I watched with pleasure the people around me. I listened to the birds. I was alive to the world. I transcended my biological self.

I might even have done a little jig while I walked. (But of course I didn't.)