Brainless wonder

Today my brain creeped away for a vacation, leaving me on my pat with the rest of my body. “You brainless wonder,” the little Inner Voice said to me. I was grateful that I could still be a wonder, without my brain in my head, with my vacuous thoughts and empty musings. Despite that, I could continue working through the caffeine-controlled day. The first real order of the day was a large cup of flat white coffee and a lotus seed bun, which reassured me that I was still alive, for only a live human would want and enjoy breakfast like that. “I am not a zombie,” I thought to myself. Straight after, I entertained serious personal doubts about it. Large cup of flat white: is there enough caffeine there? To wake me up from the dead, and make me rejoin the rest of humanity waiting at the impatient platforms for the city-bound train for another day of urban slavery. One would certainly hope so. The lotus seed bun was a 30-second decision: there were other choices like hotdog, taro buns and pork buns. I decided it was too early for those anyway. Still my creepy brain wasn’t with me. So somebody else must have made the decision for nobody could really make decisions (significant or commonplace) without a brain could they? Or maybe they could. There are many politicians in the government, given the mandate and privilege of formulating laws and regulations, seriously deciding what’s good for you and me and whole Oz community, making myriad decisions in their daily political life: yet they have no brains. So even without my brain, I could doubtless still decide. I decided to hop on to the Hornsby train. I impatiently wiggled my way through the aisle hunting for an elusive seat. On the left side were two men, one in a dark blue suit. He was by the window nonchalantly reading his paperback, the other an oldish grey-haired man near the aisle reading nothing but possibly thinking: “I hope nobody sits beside me.” But I clearly wanted the seat: this was an execution of privileged decision, even without the hapless brain. There I was with my 20-kilo backpack, maneouvering my thick butt and my backpack into the squeezy middle seat, this grey-haired man indifferently ignoring my obvious struggle. Finally I made it there anyway. Given the same circumstance, I would just slide my considerate bum into the middle seat and let the other person have easy access to aisle seat. I almost invariably do it that way. But this old man felt in his proud heart that it was his inalienable right to choose the seat he wanted, praying that nobody would try to wring past him, hoping that intending seat takers would change their minds and sit somewhere else. Anyway, even without my brain, I did it, tasting sweet success, the first and only for today. It was so cramped there, with me seated between two uncaring men. I fished out my book but my stiff elbows were constricted left and right, locked in this dance where I was the compressed cheese slice in the sandwich. I had nowhere to go, trapped in this merciless detention centre, awkwardly manacled. It was good my hostile brain wasn’t there or it might have dictated me to say something stupid or do something aggressive like pushing my defiant elbows out and claim 5 extra centimetres for myself, for me to enjoy my book-reading better. But having no brain made me more patient and tolerant. Without the brain, I couldn’t even think of malevolent curses to be uttered in the cloak of whisper.

Without my brain I got out of the city train at the jetties. I rested for a meditative minute and looked at the jetties, the people whisking by, veering their way to work, tourists walking about, cheerful cameras in hand, snapping up sweet pictures, with the frothy traffic of ferries in the harbour background. There was unmistakably less litter in the water at Jetty 6 than yesterday. Did the floating waste just fleet away or did they just sink down into the bottom after being saturated with heavy water? A long, pondering minute was enough, to capture the blue sight of the water and the ambience of civilised structures. Here there could never be a threat of terrorism; here there could only be faces in cheerful spirits, with the buskers brazenly singing, sword swallowers flaunting their wide-throat skills, the body-painted Aboriginal playing the haunting didgeridoo, the wandering vagrants ingesting their caffeine shots. Much unlike the Town Hall Station with its claustrophobic box caverns and stairways, with the cruel absence of rubbish bins for security measure: better to have eyesore litter strewn about than surreptitious bombs being concealed. It was distressing at first, and inconvenient, when they started the No Rubbish Bins policy. Then I understood: I had my brain with me at the time and the impression stayed on as a kind of long-awaited enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.

Without my brain I hacked my way through the maze of two meetings, thinking wild profanities but mouthing off sensible remarks, plausible solutions, intelligible answers to questions laced with panic and apprehension. I came out of those meetings still missing my brain, wondering where it had gone, asking myself how long before it would return and reoccupy the electric chamber in my empty skull. Lunch was bland Chinese from the Gateway: I wished it was yumcha with a legion of choices of happy little surprises in starchy, shiny wrappings of varying shapes, patterns and colours; you never know what really was in them, this blissful ignorance a disguised blessing for the enjoyment of consuming unrecognisable morsels which excite the senses from anticipation . I almost went to McDonalds but the formidably long queue discouraged me straight away.

The working day ended with my brain sliding slyly back, clumsily adjusting its space, the head fully throbbing, begging for Panadol, the mind quizzically asking: “Where did all the hours and minutes go?” While my brain slipped away, time methodically hacked away the minutes, its labours dissipating unnoticed. I caught the first available train and changed at Central for the west-bound country train. There I slumped wearily on the olive seat, my backpack honoured with its own. My ponderous eyes half-shut, receiving strobed impressions of the train rolling towards the hazy sunset. The proverbial beat goes on.

15 December 2005