Desensitization of Circadian Responses to Light

A lot of people have asked me about the sleep study; perhaps because they wanted to know whether it was an experience comparable to Turkish imprisonment or a genuinely good way to make some money. That I emerged from the study coherently sane seemed to reassure them.

I spent fourteen days sequestered within Suite 5 of the 9B Circadian Rhythm Research Lab as part of a series of ongoing research studies through Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The room was larger than I expected—maybe twenty feet by twenty feet—and included a dresser, an electric hospital bed, a large desk, a scale, two video cameras, two testing computers, a closet, a bathroom with the usual furnishings, and a massive tangle of cords and outlets that sprang from the wall behind the bed. To secure the sense of timelessness, the suite had no windows, and clocks were prohibited. The ceiling was composed entirely of florescent lights that maintained the necessary brightness or dimness levels for the study, and the exit door opened out to a foyer that led back into the research lab.

Aside from the amount of light in the room—which alternated between several days of bright and several of dim—every wake period (to use 9B terminology) was exactly the same. My wake period began when the lights went on and I took a test asking me to rate my alertness level and then add as many two-digit numbers as I could within a certain time (not a fun way to start the day). This test was repeated at slightly longer intervals until I was finally allowed out of bed, my IV and head electrodes unplugged from the wall, and given breakfast. All of my meals were large, repetitious, and came labeled with bright-green stickers labeled MUST FINISH, which I would tear off. After breakfast, a Tech used acetone to remove the electrodes glued to my scalp and wrapped my IV bandage in rubber so I could shower and enjoy some blissful privacy. The real testing—a monotonous series of computer programs that scaled my cognitive abilities, mood, and reaction time—began after lunch, and consumed much of my wake period. For a challenge, I attempted to achieve my own best time for the Visual Alertness Test (normal human reaction time is between 250-350 milliseconds):

Visual Alertness Test High Scores

                             1.              139              IAN
                             2.              142              IAN
                             3.              145              IMR
                             4.              155              IAN
                             5.              157              IMR
                             6.              160              IAN
                             7.              162              IAN
                             8.              163              IAN
                             9.              163              SEX
                             10.            165               IAN

The testing alarm rang out at frustratingly frequent intervals, dividing the time between lunch and dinner into smaller periods that I used to write letters, keep up with my journal, read, watch movies on the bright days (9B offered an above-average selection of DVDs and videos, many of which had been stolen. Thankfully, Take the Money and Run and Casablanca had not), solve Sodokus, or listen to music. Every wake period, my project leader Melanie would also pay me a visit to deliver e-mails from friends, make sure that I was still in good spirits, and talk about Blade Runner or Degrassi (Melanie grew up watching the original series with German subtitles, which made for a good bonding experience). Then came dinner, and time for a Tech to attach electrodes to my scalp and face so they could record my eye movements and brain activity while I slept. More testing and a snack preceded bedtime, when another Tech would shut off the computers and plug my electrodes into the wall before the lights went out.

The only change came my two Constant Routines when I had to remain awake in bed hooked up to electrodes for a period not to exceed forty hours. Computer testing continued, and my meals were replaced by frequent snacks consisting of one quarter of a sandwich, some apple juice, and water. A Tech stayed in the room with me, and time passed quickly as long as we could keep a conversation going. (I got to know many of the Techs during Constant Routines, and shared deep, meaningful insights with people I will probably never see again.) The experience turned hellish during Light Exposure, when the lights shone at full brightness and I was forced to stare at a sinister looking eyeball taped to the wall for an egregiously long period of time. More conversation and a copy of Angela’s Ashes on tape (abridged, but read by the author) helped keep me awake when drowsiness set in, though by the end I was nodding off during tests, barely able to keep my eyes open. Just when I couldn’t take it anymore, the room plunged into a cool dimness as refreshing as an air-conditioned basement on a hot day. The remaining time was easier, and I read or played Othello with the Techs until the moment finally came for sleep.

Aside from the Light Exposure, the entire study was pleasantly mellow, and not the isolated confinement colored with introverted activities that I had anticipated. The Techs drifted in and out of the room constantly and provided good company every wake period, for they seemed to appreciate my friendliness as relief from their own monotonous routines. All of them were in my age group; some were Northeastern undergrads working co-ops (like an FWT, but for a whole semester), some were former co-ops working part-time, some were in graduate school, some were studying abroad from Britain, and others just needed money. They were interested in lab research; nursing; becoming MDs; never becoming MDs; working with animals; going to law school; producing music; and in one case, completing a Ph.D. in Circadian Rhythm Research. 9B seemed a place where young people came to work at the crossroads of their lives.

Would I go back for another study, perhaps to try thirty-eight days, or sixty? Possibly. There were low points, sure (Light Exposure, the first two wake periods adjusting to a new routine, the occasional pang of awful loneliness, and of course the, er, temperature sensor), but these did not bother me most days. Instead, I wallowed in a state of scientifically controlled timelessness where the outside world had no meaning; far away from barking dogs, student loans, Facebook updates, car repairs, snowy driveways, and ex-girlfriends—dreaming of all the money I was making. It was valuable time away; to relax, think, and try something new, but seeing the daylight again was as refreshing as waking up after a good night’s sleep.

Murphy

Recently I reread Murphy, Samuel Beckett’s first published novel and probably his most approachable one. Though I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a funny and poignant read, Beckett’s prose—overflowing with tangents, classical references, geographical locations, and oblique descriptions of everyday occurrences—is not for the faint of heart. This is why I love it.

The novel tells the story of Murphy, whose favorite pastime is tying himself to his rocking chair naked so as to avoid the outside world and retreat into the comforts of his own mind. Contrary to this life’s ambition is his love for Celia, a former prostitute who seeks a life of traditional domestic happiness for them both, which means that Murphy must go out into the big world and get a job or she will have to go back to hers. Murphy is morbidly opposed to steady employment, but guided by the astrological predictions of the swami Suk (“Famous throughout Civilised World and Irish Free State” [32]), agrees to look for work rather than have Celia leave him. A happenstance meeting with Ticklepenny the drunken bard lands him a position as a male nurse at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat hospital for the deranged, where Murphy admires the isolation of the more severe patients. Separated from Celia, he alienates Ticklepenny and retreats to his room to once again seek solace within his own mind. The novel’s climax comes when Murphy plays one of the patients in chess (Beckett lists their game in descriptive notation with commentary) and is unable to reach an endgame, realizing that he has become disconnected from his loved ones through his own isolation.

Murphy’s withdrawal becomes more understandable when one considers Beckett’s portrait of the world outside; what Murphy’s former teacher Neary (his name an anagram) calls the “big blooming buzzing confusion” (4) where the characters have no one to depend on and personal desires for money and sex drive humanity beyond compassion. Such greed makes Beckett’s world so cut-throat that it borders on the ridiculous. When one of her tenants slits his throat, Murphy’s landlady Miss Carriage (say it quickly!) concerns herself solely with how to obtain assistance without paying a doctor’s fee. Celia cannot disguise the swagger in her hips and is pursued by amorously-disposed lechers on every street corner. As for our eponymous protagonist; simpleminded chandlers ruthlessly mock him when he finally applies for his first job, Miss Carriage refuses to help him obtain extra funds from his generous uncle, and he even hears a cuckoo clock relentlessly crying Quid pro quo! as it strikes the hour. Murphy’s rocking chair, on the other hand, is his dependable haven from the outside, for it is “guaranteed not to crack, warp, shrink, corrode, or creak at night,” as Beckett notes on the first page.

Likewise, the novel’s subplot concerns Neary and another former pupil named Wylie, both of whom desire the carnal affections of the corpulent Miss Counihan, whom Murphy has abandoned in Dublin. To fulfill his sexual obsessions, Neary vows to find proof of Murphy’s infidelity, but Wylie double-crosses him and steals Miss Counihan, threatening to reveal Neary’s whereabouts to his bigamous second wife in London. This is before Miss Counihan double-crosses Wylie and the three turn against one another in their search for the missing Murphy. (If it all sounds confusing, that’s because it is.) Employed to that end is Cooper, Neary’s loyal manservant, whom Beckett introduces in one of my favorite passages:

Cooper’s only visible humane characteristic was a morbid craving for alcoholic depressant. So long as he could be kept off the bottle he was an invaluable servant. He was a low-sized, clean-shaven, grey-faced, one-eyed man, triorchous and a non-smoker. He had a curious hunted walk, like that of a destitute diabetic in a strange city. He never sat down and never took off his hat. (54)

Vocabulary Word for the Day: triorchous (trī-'ör-kis), adj, having three testicles.

(When we were reading Murphy for The Irish Novel, someone asked why Cooper can finally sit down and remove his hat when Murphy is found at the end of the book. “As near as I can tell,” Annabel said, “Cooper parodies the character on a quest in the King Arthur sense. As when a knight cannot marry until he has accomplished his brave deed, Cooper cannot sit down until his query is found.”)

The other characters constantly bully and browbeat Cooper into carrying out their wishes to further demonstrate the cruelties of the big world where other human beings are used only as means to an end. Miss Counihan even treats him as an animal by carrying on amorous displays and changing clothes in front of him, as if he were a being without sexual desire. It is no wonder then, that in such a world without compassion Murphy and Celia’s love stands alone as something special, until her push for him to join the big world forces the two apart.

All told, I find Murphy a complicated but absolutely enjoyable novel whose cartoonish portrayal of the world is not without parallel in our own. If anyone is looking to read something different, I suggest picking this one up.

Missile Command

Two days before Christmas, Andy brought over the old Missile Command arcade machine that used to sit in his basement before he moved out and his mother rented the room to a tenant. We moved it downstairs with some difficulty, where we discovered that the screen displayed only gray lines vaguely resembling gameplay. Andy, Mike and Jon all examined it but couldn’t find any obvious problems, so it’s likely that storing the game out in the cold must have caused some real damage to the circuitry. The machine’s innards (circa 1980) are surprisingly scarce, and even if I could understand the circuit board patterns, processors of any kind still baffle me. Schematics for a Missile Command machine look like this:







The wiring charts and instruction manual came in a bag with the following warning; the Atari Corporation no doubt aware that invoking arcade owners’ wallets would be more effective than invoking their patrons well-being:

IMPORTANT

Read the manual before location set-up. Not doing so may cause reduced profit.

Who knows if we can ever get the thing to work. Buying a new gameboard is expensive and probably impractical. Installing a computer and monitor with an emulator inside the cabinet remains a possibility, but is a huge project in itself. Until then, the game makes a good conversation piece.

A Visit to the Doctor, in Preparation for the Sleep Study

“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“Once, about four years ago. I was at work first thing in the morning, and I’d been standing up for some time. When I finally sat down, my mind started wandering and the next thing I remember was a sensation like waking up from a dream. Someone was shaking me and thought that I’d had a seizure, but when I went to the emergency room they said that I had just lost consciousness from a lack of blood flow to the brain, brought on by weariness. It never happened again.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“Maybe two or three per week, on average.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“Uh, not for a little while, no.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“…all right.”

Wall Street Kid

Mike and I make it a point to hang out two or three times a week doing a variety of no-cost activities that usually include movies and/or video games. Recently, Mike discovered an old Nintendo ROM ridiculously titled Wall Street Kid that we made fun of for a solid half hour before we sat down and seriously attempted to beat it.

The premise of Wall Street Kid is simple. Our title character is the only surviving heir of the recently deceased Mr. Bendict, whose estate is valued at over 600 billion dollars (or so the opening cartoon informs us in its Archie Comics animation style). You start with the paltry sum of half a million to invest in the stock market, build your fortune, pamper your sweetheart Prisilla, and carry on the Benedict standard of living. That means buying endless presents for your girlfriend, a nice million-dollar house, a yacht (we haven’t made it this far yet) and eventually the family castle back in Europe that our hero will no doubt use as a quaint vacation getaway.

The gameplay consists of you sitting in your office, reading the Wall Street Times (sic) and trading stocks like Reebucks Sneakers, Boing Airlines, ATNT Telephone, or Centipede Construction through your circa-1990 compact computer system (presumably a Yapple). The Times gives you information on hot stocks, which types of stocks are likely to rise, and humorous news articles such as muggers becoming patrons at the local shopping mall. You can also pass the day by exercising or spending quality time with your sweetheart (Going shopping with her takes up four hours. Please, kill me now). Smaller icons at the bottom of the screen let you obtain game help from Stanley (“Would you like me to explain the stock market to you for $500?”) or go over to Connie’s office where she’ll give you a hot investment tip and a blow job (not shown). Ridiculously, your initial goal is to double your money by the end of the first month so that you can afford that million-dollar home. It would be far too easy for our hero to simply rent a classy apartment in the city or buy some moderately-priced Long Island real estate—for that would go against the “Benedict standard of living” the lawyer alludes to in the opening scene; and this was the reason Mike and I lost the game.

Our spirits were further dampened after reading a walkthrough and numerous online reviews that emphasized how easy the game is. The secret to Wall Street Kid, it would seem, lies not in accumulating a diverse investment portfolio with losses spread out over a number of years, but in finding which stock will make you the most money in a given week and dumping every cent of your capital into it. Sadly, the game doesn’t allow you to engage in heavy drinking sessions with your office buddies or carry on steamy affairs reminiscent of Bob Slocum’s; but you will start to feel sick if you go too long without exercising, and Prisilla will leave you if she thinks that you’re neglecting her by devoting too much time to your work. (Much like the real office world, I imagine.) You can make Prisilla happy by buying her a nice dog or a Fairrari convertible, implying what really keeps the relationship alive.

Still, if Wall Street Kid is any indicator, the business world is a rough place where only the cleverest succeed—leaving the rest of us to drive off in our broken-down old Chryer automobiles and play Dr. Mario instead.

Ian and Tiff Go For Pizza

A Play in One Act

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY:

IAN
22, tall, with glasses and dashing good looks.

TIFF
23, short and soft-spoken.

A CLERK
17, female, blonde.

Various PARENTS, CHILDREN, and TEENAGERS, all non-speaking roles.

The scene is Sal’s Pizzeria, a small wood-paneled eatery in an outdated shopping plaza off of Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire. Several families sit eating at tables. Framed newspaper articles and photographs of past customers adorn one wall. A female CLERK, bored, stands behind the counter beneath a menu listing pizza and calzone toppings. It is nearing the end of the night. IAN and TIFF enter and approach the counter, IAN in mid-sentence.

IAN. If I’d known you had never been here we would have come sooner. The pizza’s almost as good as Ramunto’s, and the selection’s still superb.
Tiff stands silent. They study the menu.
IAN. (Cont) There’s only two of us, and I know you won’t eat much. Would you rather get slices, or order a full pizza and have lots of leftovers?
TIFF. (Shrugging) It doesn’t matter.
IAN. Let’s get a full pizza then. I could use lunch for tomorrow.
TIFF. All right.
IAN. What would you like for toppings?
TIFF. (As before) It doesn’t matter.
IAN. All right. (To CLERK) What’s the Sal’s Special?
CLERK. It’s got olives, onions, mushrooms, and green peppers.
IAN. That sounds great. What do you think? (Tiff makes a face in reply.) Or not. Do you see anything that you like?
TIFF. I don’t like a lot.
IAN. (Not giving up) But what do you like?
TIFF. Whatever you want is fine. I really don’t care.
IAN. (Scanning menu) How about garlic? The garlic pizza’s wicked strong; it’s great.
TIFF. (Disgusted) No thanks.
IAN. How about pineapple then? Do you like Hawaiian pizza?
TIFF. I like pineapple, just not on pizza.
IAN. (In disbelief) Have you ever tried it?
TIFF. Yes.
IAN. Do you have any other suggestions?
TIFF. I don’t really care.
IAN. Mushrooms?
TIFF. Yuck.
IAN. (Slightly frustrated) Why don’t you suggest something then?
TIFF. I don’t really have a preference.
IAN. (Searching for something simple) How about pepperoni? Tell me you like pepperoni?
TIFF. (Finally, deadpan) Pepperoni’s fine.
IAN. Success! Now, what about something else? Pepperoni and bacon go well together.
TIFF. That’s too much meat.
IAN. (Astounded) Too much meat? What’s wrong with too much meat? How can you have too much meat on a pizza?
TIFF. I’m sorry!
IAN. How about peppers? Do peppers and pepperoni go well together?
TIFF. When I said that I don’t like a lot, I mean that I don’t like a lot of toppings on one pizza.
IAN. I thought you meant that there weren’t many toppings that you liked at all. (The CLERK snickers)
TIFF. Well, that too.
IAN. You should have said so! (Starting all over again) Is there anything that you like with pepperoni?
TIFF. (As before) It doesn’t matter.
IAN. (Resisting the urge to be sarcastic) What about pepperoni and extra cheese? That’s simple. Would you like that?
TIFF. That’s fine.
IAN. (To CLERK, who is already writing) We’ll have that then, for here. And I’ll take that bottle of Moxie in the cooler. (To TIFF) What would you like?
TIFF: I’ll have a water.

They pay and IAN chooses a table in the center row. They sit in silence until IAN can no longer contain his frustration.

IAN. (Almost at a shout) There are so many good kinds of pizza here, and we just ordered the plainest kind imaginable! What was that all about!?
TIFF. (Ignoring his tone) It’s because I’m Irish. I like simple things.
IAN. Then you should have asked for potatoes! Why do you have to be so indecisive all the time? Is it that hard for you to say what kind of pizza you like? You could have just told me outright and saved us all that trouble! What do you do when you go somewhere alone and order a pizza?
TIFF. I usually just get cheese.

CURTAIN

An Axe for the Frozen Sea

Last night I finished a collection of Franz Kafka's shorter works (I highly reccomend "The Metamorphosis;" it's a story for any young person who's ever woken up and realized that they might not be able to face the challenges ahead of them), and while his more complex work eludes me, I find other pieces of his writing chillingly perceptive. Most of his stories and aphorisms are about the havoc of bureaucracy or man's inferiority, while his personal writing reveals his understanding that he can only live fully through his writing. I've decided to quote a portion of Kafka's letter to Oskar Pollak dated January 27th, 1904, which struck a particular chord:

...I read Hebbel's diaries (some 1800 pages) all at once, whereas previously I had always just bitten out small pieces that struck me as insipid....I simply could not take a pen in hand during these days. Because when you're surveying a life like that, which towers higher and higher without a gap, so high you can scarcely reach it with your field glasses, your conscience cannot settle down. But it's good when your conscience receives big wounds, because that makes it more sensitive to every twinge. I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.

Ironically, I did not feel this way about a few of of Kafka's stories, but kept reading anyway. I won't attempt to mimic Kafka's description, but I agree that certain books do stir us like a disaster, and to feel that twinge within should be the goal of everyone who ever picks up a book and begins to read.