Eva Jackson: 0002

We sat there stunned by the sun on the beach, black jacket covered in sand, the surface of the sand with a little salt crust. He spoke about Dianetics, and about how the cells of your body remember what trauma you have been through, so that when you are going about your business they activate, and churn yourself into an action you didn’t plan, or consciously direct. Then you can go through the whole day doing things and not knowing why. I prided myself on the selectivity with which I greeted this, and enjoyed the honesty of dismissing Dianetics too. It’s nothing new, I revelled in saying, most of the reasons we come up with for why we do things are crap. Some people have the hemispheres of their brains separated, unlike the rest of us, and when a message is flashed to one hemisphere by flashing it to the connecting eye, instructing the subject to knock over a glass on the table, the other hemisphere is asked the question “why”. It answers with alacrity that there was a spider on the glass. I gave him this slightly mangled account of an experiment. He looked at me and with all his conviction in his own reasons for doing things, narrowed his eyes and listened.