Schizoaffective

by Jay Paul [Note: This piece was written back in September, when the weather allowed me to hike in the woods. I was too busy to write this week, so I found an old essay I had yet to publish.] Walking through the woods at William O’Brien State Park north of Stillwater, I asked myself why I was there. Why did I drive an hour from my cozy apartment in Hopkins just to be there, walking with no one but the trees and squirrels and birds? I wondered what motivated me to do such a thing. I knew I liked walking there in the woods. But I didn’t know why. Before I even got to “why,” though, I considered how lucky this schizoaffective man is. I have a car that I can drive to the woods. I have enough money to pay not only for gas, but for the park fee as well. I’m obese, but I can walk fairly long distances with no problem. Yes, I have a serious mental illness. But in many ways, I am quite lucky.   So I knew why I was grateful to be in those woods, yet I still wasn’t sure what brought me there...

by Jay Paul To live, all must eat. Eating entails consuming dead plants and animals. We live through death. Birth and death is the pulse of nature. Well, this isn't entirely true. The flares of stars and their tendency to rhythmically spew elements into space, especially upon demise, is, perhaps, more fundamental. But from the human perspective, as an animal on earth, the pulse of nature that seems most relevant is that of birth and death. Our bodies will all be eaten. Even bodies embalmed with chemicals and sealed in plastic in a concrete grave will be found out by flesh eating bacteria. It is the fate of all humans, together with all animals, to end as food. However, this starts well before we die. While we are still alive, all sorts of mites are in our intestines and the rest of our body, feeding on us and, oftentimes, doing things that happen to aid us biologically. We couldn't live without certain bacteria eating away in and at our bodies. To live, we need to be eaten. Bei...

by Jay Paul   From my youth, I recall a picture of a snow monkey from, I think, Life  magazine. It was barely holding on to the edge of an icy cliff above a creek. The picture showed its front paws scraping into the ice and, more importantly, its terrified face. The eyes were wide and the mouth was tensely open—so human. Even as a boy, I recognized that its fear was similar to mine. This shows that human fear is partly biological. Some profound, probably genetic reflex alerts us to when we are in danger and increases our heartbeat and helps us to look quickly for a way out. This is the familiar fight or flee response. With humans, this fear certainly kicks in when our physical body is endangered. Another type of fear may be a little more particular to humans. I am thinking of losing stature among fellows. I wouldn't be surprised if other social animals have similar fears, but there seems something particularly human about fearing the loss of respect from other people. Then aga...

 Einstein's theory of relativity holds that the faster an object moves, the slower time passes. This means that a spacecraft traveling close to the speed of light for five years, according to those on board, will return to an earth that has aged 36 years. Indeed, a photon traveling from a distant star to earth gets here in billions of years according to us, but according to the photon the elapsed time would be much, much less. This aspect of Einstein's theory has been experimentally confirmed many times, and it has practical applications when it comes to satellites and space travel. It is called "time dilation." I point this out to show that time is not an absolute. It depends on the frame of reference of the perceiver. Not surprisingly, various cultures have conceptualized time in radically different ways. Ancient Jewish and Christian cultures saw time as a falling away from a paradisiacal past—namely, the Garden of Eden. Time has alienated us from a direct experienc...