String of Pearls (Dementropy)

Eric Arnold

Maybe the Natalie Wood part should have gone here.

If each moment were an event,
What would be the defining parameters?
When does one event end and the next begin?

I ask because it gets more complicated after that,
Because all of those events then somehow
(and how is that, exactly?)
get strung together into some sort of sequence.

At least most of us think they do.

I often seem to get hung up on sequencing things.  I have to do them in
The Right Order. 

I get anxious if I don’t.

Sort of like this line of thought here…

If I put the part about Natalie Wood right here
Instead of before the other later on
Or maybe I should have started with it first?

You get a little anxious.

Or maybe not, maybe it’s just me.

Any way, it is called Brainstorm
(Her final movie)
and she drowned before they finished filming it.

The movie had to do with recording
The experience of peoples’ thoughts onto a machine,
 including how they felt,
and when you wore the playback device
you experienced the recording as if you were them.

But you got to be you at the same time too.

So there was this visual sequence where
All of those event moments
Were floating in front of you,
And you could pick one to view/experience/playback.

Are you following me here?

Because if you picked this moment of mine to playback

It would smell like desert dust, and off-gassing high-impact copolymer resin.

It would taste like fruit cocktail, but old.

It would feel like a pain in your left foot, inexplicable, and only the ghost of the usual hip pain.

It would sound utterly silent except the clicking of the keyboard.

Shit, I forgot you should be listening to String of Pearls while you are reading this –
Maybe I should have said so earlier

Or did I?

I won’t explain what it would look like, because, of course, you already know.

It would look like this.

That vision of all those event bubbles floating in front of you
Has always stuck with me.

And you know they filmed the scenes of that movie
Out Of Sequence.

They had to go re-shoot the end after Natalie died.

Out of sequence.

I heard an NPR story about Alzheimer and dementia patients last week
(or was it the week before?  No, wait, maybe it was the week before that)
where a Chicago improv group was teaching them games,
so that they could experience
Joy In The Moment.

It wasn’t really intended as therapy,
Inasmuch as an opportunity to just get them happiness
as they went.

So I’ve seen that look though,
You know the one?

Where I just asked and she knows she should know the answer
In fact she does know, or anyway she used to,
But slightly panicked, she doesn’t know now.

That same look that

 
When the string breaks, and all the pearls
Bounce to the ground
Some rolling out of reach
Across the foyer,
Under the fridge
Inside the piano
Crushed into dust underfoot
Blown away…

Washes out of her face
when she looks up at you.

In that moment.

Right then.

Incredible music,
Isn’t it?

The Science

This poem was inspired by the panicked look on my mother-in-law’s face at one of the last moments I saw her with true self-awareness. A well-respected paediatrician who earned her degree in medicine from Johns Hopkins in the 1950s, she is now an Alzheimer’s victim and can no longer speak. It is my view that dementia, in any form, is the most personalised expression of entropy. We are often challenged in our society to find the humanity in science. In its own way, this poem attempts to do that. It challenges the reader to consider order vs. disorder, the perception of reality and how the gradual descent into disorder could be perceived at the personal level. Of course, until that happens to us ourselves, we can have no real idea of how that feels.

The Poet

Eric Arnold is defined by his interests in life, death, music, patterns, chess, navigation, geography, and communication. He has driven taxis in Boston, hitchhiked and hopped freight trains across the United States and navigated submarines beneath the Arctic ice pack. He is, like you, gradually declining into a state of complete disorder. In the meantime, he does what he can to improve the lives of those around him. He is not always so bold as to declare himself a poet.  But really, we are all poets, aren’t we?  

Next poem: The Body Slowly Degenerates by Snéhal Amembal