Lecture Notes

Years ago, I had a brief afternoon 

operation, slight trouble with the hand 

or throat. I wanted to see inside the trouble  

but was anaesthetized—another word for silent.

While unconscious I saw a ring 

of light composed of innumerable 

still points dimming and illuminating 

sequentially—like the sign from past and 

current computer models indicating 

incomplete and loading information—

messages on the unnavigable 

interface—images just about to 

appear. I rose to an image of clouds 

framed by cherry blossoms printed onto 

a plastic panel filtering blue light 

from the recessed fixture above 

my hospital bed. I used to think God was

a portal and once you passed through life was

the same with minor differences. Sometimes

at night I dream up that dimming circular 

rhythm following its tail like a caged, 

muscular animal. Descartes believed

that images belong to the eye, 

that in the mind there are no images, 

only associations of ideas. 

This has since been disproven. The new 

science claims images exist in the mind 

but they are not naturalistic images. 

They are not the images we see. The new 

science also claims patients under twilight 

anaesthesia cannot produce new 

memories, but, alas, most discourse 

on vision occurs between scientists 

and not poets. This is a simple but 

unfortunate fact of modern life: 

there being more scientists than poets.

In the dream I meet the light 

in a narrow corridor. I can’t speak 

or clench my hands. The system 

pauses, flexing its wide haunches before 

barreling into the steel bars of its enclosure, 

clawing to get out.