With it likely I will have the aneurysm operation soon, and with my writing about events leading to the operation without the 90 day delay, the time scales of my writing and then posting have gone awry. Life of late has become so peculiar that a time shift almost fits right in.

The book came out on April 1st. I emailed friends yesterday, on Easter. Many came by the site and many have sent me touching comments. The juxtaposition of the book release and the aneurysm reemergence has created an environment difficult to describe. I wake most mornings with an upset stomach. Fear feels familiar.

I’m still muddling through the neurologist evaluation of my asymmetrical temporal lobe brain structure that explains the occasional passing outs, and now the spontaneous emergence of unconscious content into a normal waking day. If, indeed, the content of my evolutionary theory is a partial result of a unique brain structure that encourages the emergence of hallucinatory content in the everyday, and the unique content emerging from my unconscious is not particularly hallucinatory but actually represents reasonable structural evaluations of how humans evolved (particularly brain structures), then I am in the midst of a deeply peculiar experience.

It’s just hard to say whether the story here makes my theory particularly remarkable because my theory’s origin is connected to anomalous brain structure or whether the story is that this has just been a truly strange life, unrelated to the usefulness of the theory because the theory actually isn’t useful. And then there is the aneurysm. The neurologist says the aneurysm is unrelated to my unique asymmetrical brain, but may be exaggerating experiences that my brain structure encourages. Will the operation diminish my frequent conversations with my unconscious? Or, because the intervention itself will exaggerate the asymmetries as doctors cut tissues on the side where the aneurysm sits, will I emerge from the operation with increased communications from my unconscious. And, if so, will those communications continue to be the kind that feel intimate and satisfying or the kind that brought me to the neurologist that involved either passing out or having dreamlike states superimposed upon waking actions?

The aneurysm operation feels terrifying. With these issues regarding my anomalous brain structure, and my having developed a theory of evolution revolving around an exploration of brain structure, the aneurysm operation feels like its happening in an almost cinematically mysterious context. This feels particularly so with the book having come out on the same day as I was told the aneurysm likely required immediate medical intervention. My brain is about to be operated on. It’s not clear who exactly I will be when I awake.

The doctor behaved excited and delighted to have a patient that fit into this unique category. He was clearly grateful for the opportunity to work with me further. He gave me his email address expressed a desire to maintain an email connection.

The neurologist said I exhibit an unusual highly asymmetric brain structure in sections of my temporal lobe, a particular structure featured by other people that exhibit unusually close connections to their unconscious, with unconscious content emerging in waking states, sometimes leading to a grand mall seizure or passing out. The doctor said that sometimes people with this condition value so highly the interactions with the hallucinations (many are fully functional people) that they choose to go on no condition inhibiting drugs.

He is suggesting that the aneurysm is exaggerating the asymmetry, possibly encouraging the experiencing of unconscious content while awake, possibly leading to grand mall seizures. I have been prescribed a low dosage of Keppra XR (levetiracetam), decreasing likelihoods of seizures.

When I write mornings, often about evolutionary theory and autism, I wait for ideas to emerge from my unconscious, and then I record them. There now seems the possibility that my peculiar brain structure in combination with my cerebral aneurysm, meditation, and an artistic temperament have combined to encourage the emergence of my alternative evolutionary theory.

It is my experience that I work in cooperation with my unconscious to produce the words that explain human evolution and autism. I integrate direct communications from my unconscious to decide how and what to theorize. From what the neurologist is saying, there is the possibility this is a result of a unique brain structure that tends to plant unconscious content into daily life. A question, of course, is what I am experiencing only metaphoric or even totally unrelated to shared reality, or is there enough in common between my unconscious guidance and conventional perceptions to make my theory useful to people living in conventional shared reality.

Next, I meet with the neurosurgeon to evaluate an aneurysm surgical intervention.

Successful surgery may diminish my conscious access to unconscious creative states.

I see the neurologist this afternoon to get details. From there, I connect again with the surgeon that explored my brain from inside my veins last summer. After those explorations he suggested I have direct surgery from the side of my head, as opposed to the planting of channeling devices through my blood vessels.

It looks like the question will be when will the operation happen.

Today is April 2. My book, Evolution, Autism and Social Change, posted for download and purchase yesterday. I’m a little confused about the timing of the online marketing schemes I’ve been designing. It is deeply odd that the book released yesterday, the same day I discovered the aneurysm was growing requiring intervention.

This week of book release and aneurysm Marcia has been in St. Louis taking care of grandson Nils while the usually day care person, his other grandmother, is gone this week. Marcia is leaving St. Louis early, coming back up to Evanston today (Friday) to accompany me to the neurologist appointment. This is good. This has been a deeply weird week. Accompanied by Marcia I’ll feel better. Though I’ve been running my meditation mantra much of the time, and am particularly awed by the very early spring with leaves coming out on trees weeks early, the anxiety I was feeling before the aneurysm diagnosis, related to the book becoming available, has now been joined by the medical issues. Both things are contributing to a roller coaster of emotions that include anxiety, reverence, fear, appreciation, and more fear.

I wonder what other odd or unexpected things will emerge from this brain operation.

After the two first times this happened where I was feeling some anxiety, the other times I just let myself relax. The tingling then was powerfully experienced as my feeling accompanied by my unconscious or my greater self. I felt loved. This also reminds me of the character’s experience in the Dostoyevsky novel. Dostoyevsky was an epileptic. That characters experience was supposed to have reflected Dostoyevsky’s personal experiences as an epileptic.

Last night passing out of Jewel food store, between the two automatic doors, I experienced a wave of sweet fragrance. I suspected it was emerging from my imagination. I felt some anxiety about what would happen next. Then, as I walked I was accompanied by a powerful experience of remembering something from about two years ago. Except, I couldn’t quite grasp the details. It felt like a dream. That lasted about 6-8 seconds. Then, looking around, noting the stunning beauty of early spring, I felt positively influenced by the beauty. No tingles.

I’ll call the doctor today as Jane, my group therapist, recommended. This may be related to the stress of the book posting on the website. This might be related to the cerebral aneurysm. This might be epilepsy. It could be part of my creative process. The tingles, the vibrations that course through my body are closely associated with experiences of joy, of my feeling accompanied by that which is larger than my self. I have that experience fairly often. The emergence of unconscious experiences is quite common. Meditating since 1972, I find it very easy to move to just listening to my unconscious, often taking less than 10 seconds after sitting in meditation. Dreamlike chattering and unconscious imagery just begin. The strong smell? That is weird. The three things together, smell/unconscious/tingles, it’s difficult to say what exactly is happening.

We’ll see what the doctor says.

Nevertheless, on those occasions when I tried to glean some feelings from the past, I was struck by how few metaphors I used to explain a thought or feeling. Mostly, I just described my experience by writing down my feelings. Not only did this make it very difficult to read, but it seemed to provide the raw emotions that were expressed in a way that made them more difficult to absorb. Without metaphor, access seemed difficult.

Through the years, I’ve encouraged myself to use metaphor and graspable images to enhance my ability to communicate what I want to say. At first, it felt very forced, so deliberate were the efforts to make what I had to say understandable. Over the last ten years, it has become easier. Starting this blog two years ago pushed me further in the direction of writing to be understood at the same time that I wrote to express what I had to say.

This last summer, listening to the computer-generated music compositions of my son, Elia, I suddenly saw in my mind’s eye my work regarding evolution in video format with Elia’s music deepening the communication of those written compositions. In August, when he and I drove down roadways that flanked the Mississippi, I began to interpret what I was seeing in ways that would impact what I was writing. Music, images and words were starting to interact.

That process deepens. Using the teleprompter, I lay down the narrative. I collect photos and videos off of Flickr’s Creative Commons section and occasionally Wikipedia Commons and other sources. I shoot some video myself. I consult Elia regarding music. I don’t tax the capabilities of Final Cut Express, utilizing just the basics for now, discovering what feels like a whole other hidden, creative capability inside me.

For several years, I produced comic strips and panels. Words and pictures told a narrative story. Producing video, I find a part of me prepared to produce work in a similar format. When creating comics, I wait for an image to appear as I talk to myself, encouraging creations, but when creating video, I search the work of other artists and amateurs. As a professional artist and amateur theorist I find myself deeply appreciating the Creative Commons. Both professional and amateur are treated with respect.

I am slipping down into a whole new world. I have disappeared down rabbit holes in the past. Marcia has shared with me her fear that I am about to disappear. I am enthralled. I foresee spending many hours searching for content on the Internet and shooting my own video in search of evocative examples of what my words are seeking to say. It’s only a matter of time before the words start to take their cues from the outside, not the inside, taking into consideration the images, sounds and music that I feel influenced by.

My words have always emerged from somewhere deep within me. What I’m sensing now is that my environment is about to start making words.

Three usually separate aspects of my life nevertheless take up portions of almost every day.  I run a small web development firm with six staff members that designs, maintains and markets websites.  We have over 400 clients, mostly small businesses.  Portions of every day are devoted to what’s involved in co-directing a 1,500-member organization, concerned with peace, justice and environment national communications and an action-initiation network.  Early mornings and weekends, I theorize and seek to explain my theory of evolution.

Though my design and technical staff assist me with building the national network and theory sites, there is relatively little traffic among these three areas as regards the people I’m in contact with, my colleagues and allies.  Most folks I am in contact with about my theorizing have no contact with my design or activist connections.  The people in each of the three areas tend to stay in that area.

Not so when it comes to my family.  My son, Elia, has joined me at demonstrations and conducted research for the national network sites.  We often discuss evolutionary theory.  He’s also the photographer for my design firm, shooting cuisine for our restaurant clients.

I don’t much discuss theory with other members of the family.  Marcia was integrally involved with my theory thought process ten years ago.  I overwhelmed her.  These days I only tell her about new ideas.  Marcia handles credit card processing for the business.  We also work together on many of the peace and justice projects we get involved in, though Marcia works these projects in greater depth, and she is involved in more local organizations than I am.

So, my wife and son are mostly pretty often involved in the three areas I spend a lot of time in.  I don’t usually eat breakfast or lunch (instead I drink smoothies or eat balance bars) or watch TV.  I work out of my home and have no commute.  The elimination of meals, entertainment and commutes adds hours to each day, which I spend on these three activities, business, activism and theorizing.  My reflexive tendency to blur the boundaries among these three things might be partly a desire to get more out of the time I devote to them, partly a way to find more dance partners that move to all three kinds of music and partly my neurotic difficulty with tolerating separations.  As an introvert with a natural tendency to work alone, blending separations in my life is perhaps an indirect, often neurotic way of addressing personality divisions within myself.

I’m not clear on the connection between obsession and integration, but there seems to be a relationship between the two.  In my theorizing, my work, my life, and my relationships, obsession and integration emerge in ways that impact how I think and what I do.  Play is integral to the mix, as is neurosis.  At the same time that I often toy with my life to see what new and interesting things I can engage in, I muddle my life, seeking solace by shutting out the world or withdrawing from intimacy.

My obsession with integration can create difficulties expressing and experiencing affection.

A larger work would also describe a short history, most influential theorists and currently accepted theories in the disciplines being explored.  Most of my writing falls within anthropology, neuropsychology and evolutionary biology.  Still, I discuss primatology, psychology, consciousness, medicine and endocrinology.  It is impossible in a short work to offer a several-discipline context.  It’s even unwieldy in a longer work, particularly one that seeks to communicate with a lay audience.  There is also the fact that though I am somewhat familiar with what I am talking about in anthropology, neuropsychology and evolutionary biology, I am woefully unqualified to provide much depth in the other disciplines I touch upon.  Intimidated by what I am doing, I prefer to avoid behaving like I know what I am talking about in a discipline outside where that discipline touches upon my basic thesis.  So, in Evolution, Autism and Social Change, I offer about ten pages where I review classic heterochronic theory, or the subdiscipline of evolutionary biology most integral to understanding what I am doing.  I’m worried those ten pages may lose three-quarters of my readers.

There are many philosophical implications to Evolution, Autism and Social Change.  That also gets saved for a larger work.  I estimated 17 sections of implications.  That was way too much for what is essentially an introduction.

The future implications of the theory also seemed too much information for a short work.  Those ten threads were left for the larger work.

One principle or concept has emerged since Evolution, Autism and Social Change went to the editor.  The central thesis of my theorizing condensed to the following sentence about nine months ago:  The Orchestral Theory of Evolution is the study of the rates and timing of maturation, with testosterone levels impacting rate and estrogen levels controlling timing, with those environmental or social structure adjustments that influence levels of testosterone and estrogen determining the speed, timing, features and direction of evolution. It feels lately like it has condensed even further.  The word maturity now summarizes the central thesis.  Whereas Darwin focused on conception and death with his theory of natural selection, which merged survival of the fittest with heritable traits, I find that the word “maturity” suggests all that which occurs between conception and demise that influences evolution.  I’m not sure how to integrate this understanding with the work now with the editor.

When I first wrote this stuff up in 1998 in the website serpentfd.org, estrogen’s connection with the dynamic was not at all clear or understood.  It was all about testosterone.  The model was expressed as a four-layered process unfolding in the push-and-pull way a serpent crawls.  Though I understood that the timing of maturation was integral, I had no idea what informed timing.  So I concentrated only on changes in rates of maturation.

With what I’m finishing now, I feel a whole is communicated, even though much has been left out.  Nevertheless, as someone who is not an academic–I am an artist by training–I am now left with the choice of how exactly the book is to be framed.  I am concluding that it is more genuine and reasonable to make this a book with an artistic rather than an academic slant.  Joining sections with illustrations seems right.  It makes it more accessible.  To pitch the work to fit academic conventions would probably be a waste of time.  Academics don’t offer attention to the work of nonacademics in their field.  It’s just off their radar.  Academics don’t even often offer attention to multidisciplinary theories that include their discipline.  They are used to regarding the work of those that have put in the time to get a degree in their particular discipline, those that have something to lose if they don’t perform.

Maybe 30 years ago a book came out with many diagram-like illustrations describing the spiritual transformation that was going to occur as a result of several planets aligning in a certain way.  The book was called Harmonic Convergence and was written by Jose Arguelles.  Even though I’m writing a book on evolution grounded in conventional science, there is really no format precursor to this book I’m finishing.  The closest thing that comes to mind is that weird astrology book.  Bummer.

Trying to find a publisher for what I’ve done seems a prescription to feel rejected.  Though some well-known authors, scientists and theorists have said kind and/or respectful things to me in emails, or just asked questions (Simon Baron-Cohen, William Irwin Thompson, Elaine Morgan, Riane Eisler, Tom Robbins), none has gone so far as to offer firm support for what is clearly an unproven theory, though they have usually had encouraging things to say.  I don’t think a publisher interprets encouragement as support.  I will self-publish.

I have several friends that have written books and found publishers.  Just because a publishing company puts a work into print does not mean it promotes the work.

So, I’ll publish this myself, if I bring it to print.  I’ll begin by posting this as a free pdf download. April 1st is my target date.  It will be difficult to categorize.  I’ll mull over ways to promote it.  How many books are out there purporting to explain autism from an evolutionary perspective using a new feminine theory of evolution, with illustrations?

Some of the image/word combinations, what this culture calls comics, align themselves well with the themes and content of sections of Evolution, Autism and Social Change.  These comics were all from the early to mid-1990s, from before I disappeared in the late 1990s in studies of serpent mythology, ancient matrifocal societies and then evolutionary theory.  Some of the metaphors carry over.  I often use music, children and water images to evoke concepts, but many of the subtleties of the theory are not suggested by the comics.

I have no idea where accessible original digital files are, and they are now 11 years old.  Locked inside of jazz discs are most of the images, but jazz discs are just about inaccessible these days.  My discs are corrupted by a common defect that makes retrieval almost impossible.  I may have to recolor and redraw many of these pieces if I go in this direction.

I sold many of these images to an early Internet greeting card firm.  I think it went out of business in the year 2000.  The firm had rights to the images for five years.  Almost all the images were originally comics I’d published in various magazines, newsprint monthlies and quarterlies through the 90s.  Whereas in 1990 my work was mostly funny, or trying to be funny, by 1995 it was mostly social commentary or provocative art.  Early in the 1990s, a piece might have appeared in 25 publications.  By 1995, two or three publishers might have picked a comic up.  In 1996, I stopped doing the comics and started an illustrated book on dragons that evolved into the theorizing that I’m now considering appropriate for these comics to accompany.

So, this is going to take some mental wrestling, combining media, deciding what to use and considering propelling myself back into the visual arts.  I need to ponder the need to create some new comic work to accompany the chapters or sections in Evolution, Autism and Social Change that don’t have work from 15 years ago that complement what is being said.

It’s not clear to me at this point where this is going.

Becoming aware that this essay would not be published until March (after sending it to an editor), I considered what the view of these events would be from a season in the future.  Then, I became aware of myself conducting a dissociation to achieve an alternative perspective.  This was followed by my being aware of my being aware of my conducting a dissociation.

There is a difference between debilitating dissociation that leads to an experience of feeling removed or separated from an integration with the environment and the kind of dissociation that offers an ability to achieve both an experience of integration accompanied by a grasping of the relationship of the constituent parts at several levels.  Dissociation can be characterized by division or integration.

The line between these two kinds of dissociation can be pretty thin.  I spend time in both places.  The people I am close to in my life note that I’m engaged in debilitating dissociation usually before I am aware that that is what is happening.  They then call my attention to it, providing me a reminder to associate and engage.

The United States also features both debilitating and integrative dissociations.  This country has offered an astonishing ability to engender alternative perspectives propelling the world into new creative directions.  This does not always occur in an awareness vacuum where competing parts jostle for achievement with no oversight, but in a larger context where it is understood that the community is renewed by an independence of its parts, while those parts that contribute to the community are most revered.  Dissociation featuring integration does occur.

At the same time, the United States exhibits a shocking disregard for understanding the implications of violently intervening in the affairs of other countries.  Instead of defining U.S. national security in the context of a larger global whole, U.S. foreign policy often revolves around what works best for corporations and the access of those corporations to resources that benefit American investors.

Protesting the Obama escalation in Afghanistan, citizens call attention to government behavior that is resulting in a less integrated, less socially aware, less communally involved population.  Intervention is required.  So we protest.

Dissociation can be characterized by division or integration.  The choice to escalate in Afghanistan has compelled, in me, an association.  A deep sadness often establishes itself in my body.  When a choice by some invests sadness or anger in others, it’s often a sign that integration will only happen after grief is faced.

The escalation in Afghanistan is founded on dissociation, leading inevitably to grief.

Tom’s response, “Your fascinating letter of 16 December caught up with me yesterday in this distant outpost, and I have to say it (your epistle) was more interesting and compelling than any novel I’ve read in the past few years.  Banks of thanks for “blabbing” about your life (and quite a life it’s been) in such a richly rewarding manner….”  He went on to ask about one of the studies I cited regarding a percentage of the population exhibiting left-handedness with features a lot like the characters in his books.

As I have noted perhaps far too often in these entries, I’m more than a little insecure about my ability to successfully communicate my evolution ideas and experiences in my life.  With time, I feel more facile with words and confident that what I experience I can share.  With the diminution of the feeling of isolation, the accompanying self-aggrandizement also fades, which is good.  Wrestling with putting into words five major lifelong dream themes and the hidden events those themes often represented is part of what I wrote Robbins about.  I recently put the whole thing into words, about 30 pages, but I neglected to accompany the writing with the lighter touch I used in writing the Robbins letter.  Getting the whole thing out of me felt more like excavating a mouthful of molar roots, a wrenching epiphanic release, not an attempt at providing a way for another person to share the experience.

Writing is not just getting the words out, but getting the words out in a way that allows another person to get in.  When writing about evolutionary theory, this means coming back again and again to the same material from different directions, seeking metaphors and narrative trails that allow easy ways to access the ideas.  This blog often comes back to the same themes as I seek effective ways to communicate the central issues.  Understanding maturation as integral to evolution involves understanding how different disciplines are actually studying maturation by a number of different names.

When it comes to describing what’s happened in my life, the challenge is yanking down those elevated experiences to make the wordless into words, while at the same time detraumatizing the horrendous to a degree that a visitor would be able to embrace it.  That involves my being able to embrace it.  That involves my writing from a position of compassion.  Compassion for self and the others that were involved.

I suspect these two different goals, making theory understandable and making my life accessible, are more than a little bit related.  The theory emerged in 1997, almost exactly five years after the dreams had begun to emerge that resulted in personal revelations about a year later.  Both were integrally tied to the relationships I was having with women at the time.  Love and loss of love, for me, has everything to do with whether the world makes sense or not.  The evolution theory emerged from a context where love, at last, felt integrated and understood.  I would not be exploring the origins of what it is to be human, a metaphor for an exploration of my self, without Marcia in my life.

The Tom Robbins letter that I just rediscovered gives me confidence that I can make my life into words that can move a person.  I’ll try again to turn the dental distress into something like a black, white and grey wedding dress.  There are ways to marry horror and love so that understanding and compassion result.