The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, the 6th Century BC author of the Tao Te Ch’ing, wrote “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Mao at the start of The Long March also used that aphorism for his own purpose. I am watching from the sidelines my own Long March.
I needed some blunt, forthright life advice. Since my stroke I had been sharing my life with a parody of a brain, like bunking with an idiot at boarding school. So I consulted a noted philosopher, who had been an early inspiration – Bugs Bunny was an entirely appropriate adviser for my cartoonish brain.
“Hey Bugs, I need some help,” I pleaded.
Chomp, chomp, chomp. “Go ahead,” says Bugs, in his nonchalant carrot-chewing standing position.
“Bugs, where has my brain gone?”
Chomp, chomp, chomp. “Let me a read you part of a story,” Bugs said, opening a page of the book Bugs Bunny and the Hapless Hunter.
What’s up Bwain?” asked the hunter Elmer Fudd, luckless adversary of Bugs Bunny. Like many people with a brain injury, Elmer has a speech disorder. “I’m hunting a lost bwain, be vewy vewy quiet. Must be hiding, you wascally bwain.”
Bugs Bunny is oddly silent.
“Oh, you dubbuh-cwossing bwain! You tweachewous miscweant,” says Elmer, as he creeps through the pathways of a one hundred billion brain neurons, more or less. In that lost brain, what was once a neural superhighway has been replaced by a one-way lane paved with clackety clack uneven cobblestones. “Shhh, that wythmic wevewbewation. I’m hunting a lost bwain”.
Chomp, chomp, chomp.
Finally Bugs answers with a question, “What’s up Doc?”
A koanlike cryptic answer for my question.
“Yes, what’s up brain?” I asked.
And so I began my thousand miles post-stroke journey. This was a journey full of loss, trials, many mistakes, and yes, surprising self-discoveries and soul-searching. However, that first step was a real doozy.
At the start of my journey I found…well, nothing. What I now think of as The Void. Have you been to The Void? Trust me, you are not missing much because there is nothing there. I certainly would not recommend that journey on TripAdvisor.
Since my brain was out-to-lunch, how did I know I was in The Void? It was the silence. Before my injury, there was a chatterbox in my brain that prattled about mostly meaningless things (see wanker). My brain was a tattler, windbag, gossipmonger, really a bore. I call it latte and chattering. Buddhists call it Monkey Mind.
Buddha defined Monkey Mind:
Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grabs one branch and lets it go only to seize another, so too, that which is called thought, mind or consciousness arises and disappears continually both day and night.
Neil Young wrote, “I’m singing this borrowed tune, I took from the Rolling Stones.” Unlike Neil Young’s self-deprecating lyric, nearly everything about my chattering brain was unoriginal, which is why I was a wanker. An endless loop chatter in my brain, a whole lot of thinking about nothing. Monkey Mind. Wanker.
Then suddenly the chatter stopped, apparently in mid-sentence. My brain was out of a job, pensioned off after fifty-nine years of dedicated service, laid off without a benefits package.
Stroke was the new boss, a ruthless and pitiless thug. About his stroke, a friend wrote this:
A stroke is a brain blow. It is black, like a crow with a raucous voice. A crow is a carnivore, and a stroke is much the same. My experience of the stroke is how the carnivorous character gives the incapacitated little or no chance. Ted Hopkins
That silence was eerie. Like emptying my mind, my stroke had in fact pulled the plug – whooosh!
Oh, how I missed that chattering brain. Chatter away. But it could not.