an octopus mind.

Here's what I'm doing in my quiet moments, when I walk home from work, ride the bus, eat dinner.  I am thinking still about truth, among other things.  I am thinking thoughts along the lines of

• What about realism, i.e. the idea that reality exists independently of our observation or existence? So reality is truth?
• How do we measure reality?
• What about individual perception, how is this influenced, how does this influence what is real and what is true?
• What is the value of truth - what is it?  What is the value of knowing and understanding what is true?
• Still further, why are we seeking it?  Why do we have the need to understand truth?

Granted, I'm also thinking thoughts like

• What should I have for dinner?
• Why does that baby in the stroller have giant hands?
• Why doesn't the wispy-combover-man just shave it off?
• Why did that spicy soup make my face sweat?

Anyway, the point is that truth and life are big. So let's scale it down to an octopus.

I read this beautiful piece today on the web-version of Orion Magazine, another favorite literary journal.  In Deep Intellect, Sy Montgomery explores consciousness, intelligence and the octopus mind.  If you don't mind my saying, I love this shit. I love to read things by or about people who go deeply into knowing one thing - such as the intelligence of an octopus.

The piece talks about the incredible ways that an octopus perceives the world.  They can potentially "see" with their skin, allowing them to camouflage themselves to match the colors around them.  Their 8 arms have a high concentration of neurons, suggesting that the arms literally have a mind of their own.  An arm cut off will crawl away.  If it comes across food, it will catch it and bring it to the now non-existent mouth.  I love it when the everyday details and minutiae of our world become thrilling.

But the part I am hung up on is that the octopus operates independently, as do many other creatures.  Suddenly I am thinking about what that means for perception and life.  An octopus has evolved into this form of intelligence that is in isolation.  Two octopuses together will either eat one another or mate and die.  Here we humans are, trying to figure out how we can fall in love and impress strangers with our nice clothes and elect a president.  Meanwhile, the octopus intelligence exists in the complete absence of creature connection.  An entirely different world to fathom.  A different reality.  A different truth?

All day long, I think of the things I want to read and want to write. The day closes in, I have dinner, I settle in and I....

Check my email. Have a snack. Clean my room. Make a phone call. Touch my books and my notebooks and feel indecisive and overwhelmed and frustrated. Then I go to bed.  This isn't my routine every night, but it happens. I mean, it happens. It happens, right? Please tell me it happens.

If you're hitting the wall, whatever it might be, just do it.  I will too.