Thu, 19 May 2005

Cognition
(dedicated to Daniel Foss)

Stephen Kosslyn’s cognitive model of mental imagery only gained a certain amount of respectability (at least, here one the quad) after Martha Farah demonstrated that isolated damage to the brain could cause direct loss of the image-generation component of Kosslyn’s model. We have thus decided to follow suit, using isolated brain damage and the corresponding loss of mental abilities to prove everything from the true identity of The Wicklow Man to spackle (which, in hindsight, was a perfectly daft waste of taxpayer funds, but it’s not like any of us are going hungry so), but it wasn’t until we began the aforementioned studies as to the obscession-development of bra strap snipping by scissors planted in the aforementioned freezer. It was a shock to discover the bra-wearing subject in our study was none other than a Miss L. [name changed to protect my academic standing], a third-year student in my Gestalt Post-Kohler class, who I had often taken notice of specifically because of her braless and ample and quite well presented cleavage — would this thusly mean she was to be bound by silk and lace packaging and presented for strap-severing so some delinquent Drano-snorting undergrad? Never! I said and immediately made calls in order to assure myself the position of First Severer, brain damage be damned.

My attempts to sleep at night were severed by waking dreams of various undergarment scenarios: sequins, fishnet, baby-doll — would she be choosing the design, or would someone on-staff have a selection of strategically-designed bra experiments for her to use? Would there be wiring to measure heart rate, skin temperature, sweat production? The undergarments notwithstanding, what positions would her body take? I felt myself re-imagining the scene, as though I was designing some Ballardian crash-site, as though she was some Bellmer doll. I grew terrified, a terror which followed me the next day, right into the testing room.

“You remember why you are here, correct?” “Scissors in icebox. Cut the bra-straps.” “Good job! Now don’t move, ‘cause that’ll make this hurt more.” At which point my associate, Dr. J (no humor intended), delivered a blow with a ball peen hammer to my non-limbic temporal lobe.

[The author, at this point, gives a lengthy explanation as to a week of displaced obscession-development wandering around the hospital ward snipping the bandages off the other patients with a pair of children’s safety scissors. For the sake of brevity, this portion has been omitted.]

So it was that I was deemed fit to continue the experiment and brought back to the lab, where I was led to the mock-apartment wherein my sweet Miss L. was sitting in the kitchen, watching Penitentiary Week Jeopardy. She faced away from me, and I could not tell from where I was what the makeup of Miss L.’s bra-design was. I entered the kitchen just as late-80’s rap sensation Slick Rick asked “Who is Alfred North Whitehead?”. Miss L. stands, turns toward me, and in that motion her simple green sundress pulls back from the shoulder, revealing a strap. I knew there was something I was supposed to do. Alex Trebek asks Corey Feldman if his recent cocaine arrest was staged simply to get him on Jeopardy; everyone but the two armed guards flanking Feldman laugh. I think to reach into the freezer, opening the door with my left hand so as to use my right hand to hold the scissors, which proves to be an incredibly complicated series of moves to pull off in quick succession so as not to lose current emotional momentum, more important for me than for the experiment in progress. Miss L. smiles and offers to assist me in procuring whatever it is from the freezer I am currently in the midst of procuring, which she believes (in a comment made to me in route from the far side of the kitchen to heart-poundingly close to me before the refrigerator) to be grape, cherry, or “blue” popsicles. I grope behind sacs of frozen peas, empty ice-cube trays (demonstrating a certain endearing slovenliness which only adds to the now-dizzying atmosphere of the situation), and (unsurprisingly, but uprising to me at the time) popsicles, finally coming across something metal, and handled, which I take hold of and remove from the freezer. Miss L. is stunned, and takes a half-step backward, her shoulders in retreat, the onle partially-exposed white and shimmering strap resting atop its clavicled support. My flesh sticks to the metal, which I discover upon looking down, is not the imagined scissors but dress shears, which although more aptly suited for the job at hand, are made entirely of unfinished steel and stuck to my fingers and inner palm. Jim Baker asks “What is chronic migrainous neuralgia?”; Alex Trebek replies “No”; Slick Rick asks “What is episodic migrainous neuralgia?”. The blades are frozen together and I find it impossible to wedge the blades apart. Miss L. holds her pose for a moment, then returns to my side, offering to run warm water over the hand so as to safely remove the shears from it. Something in the room flickers and is gone. From her proximity, I can see down the front of her dress, see where strap meets cup, and judge the give factor of those straps. A voice in my head begins to repeat “now what’s wrong with a withered hand?” and I find myself suddenly hungry for popsicles.

The grad students now study and make notes on my behavior from behind a pane of one-way glass, watch the elements of my speech break up like a radio signal at the mention of scissors, iceboxes, or bra straps. But elsewhere in the ward, just across the arboretum from the Psych. Building, I know Miss L. is waiting in her kitchen, in bra, with popsicles. Angela Carter one said there are certain articles of clothing which make a person more and not less naked, but she never held dress shears while standing on kool-aid stained linoleum, plotting the resistance force of this article.
(12:06.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #