“Wydzial Chemii Sala 232” by V. S. Rakenduvadhana

V. S. Rakenduvadhana is an Indian writer, poet and visual artist based in Helsinki. Her diurnal energies are mostly devoted to her work as a neuroscientist. While pursuing her scientific quests, she has had a lifelong nocturnal affair with art, philosophy and music in its many forms. Her poetry, fiction and visual art works are now emerging in some literary magazines including The Vital Sparks, The Abstract Elephant Magazine and Camas, while she is working on her first novel.

Artwork: ‘A precarious game of the masters’ by V. S. Rakenduvadhana

---

Wydzial Chemii Sala 232

Generic jazz lounge music wafted from the salon as vicious curlicues grazing his cochlea; and he turned the kettle on. He pretended to be impervious to the auditory cataclysm the morning radio had brought upon him. He decided that caffeine must be a solitary soldier today; and the insipid, non-Astatke-esque, blasphemous jazz must stay on as an unsolicited spectator.

The mêlée between the radio artists and his alters culminated rather prematurely. Yekermo Sew performed a gentle ablution of the tainted kitchen air, as the kettle sang along. It then set off a synaptic symphony that flared within his cranium as he sipped the acidulous coffee. Very sipid. 

The elision brought with it a perfervid deluge of words; and impalpable ideas somersaulted on his gyri. The ephemeral pleasure ended, and the itch commenced. Tch. It’s time.

The dry-mouthed spider revisits his crumbling webs. A cow tied to the pole– I must resume sauntering the exhausted ambits of my mind and the pinhole of my Poesy.

Words are but clangorous shells

“Have you read it yet? Lateral central thalamic stimulation awoke anesthetized macaques. It’s the new Neuron paper.” 

“It’s the central lateral thalamus,” he nodded, “No, prawda, an intriguing result.” 

“The core of consciousness has been revealed!” she mocked. 

The synaptic symphony resumed; like spangles they blossomed and splattered; and like tremulous gems they throbbed with his heart.

Thaka-thakita-thaka-thakita-thaka-thakita 

Metaphor mother granted me Poesy, and Poesy steered me to Language. Language opened the hundred eyes of Reality.

They had initiated their experiment. She plucked the peppercorns from the stems like they were precious hymns, the inadvertent mudras of her fingers praising their spherical exactitude. The inexplicable aromas that effused from their efforts did not agitate her focus till she stopped to examine the temperature. The protocol was working. 

Then they brought in the flowers. A hundred and eight lotuses; and within the mound she spotted three white ones. 

We dissect reality far too much; we splinter it until it is bereft of verity. For the lotus must have every petal to be complete. Thus, science cannot be dissected from philosophy or art; and living cannot be dissected from its agonizing mathematicality. For the vastness that is the ocean cannot be amputated; and the rivulets inevitably seek the sea. Thus, truth cannot be dissected, nor directed—into the comfortable crevices of illusion.

Words are but clangorous shells

 And this hermit (crab) must find another

The pinhole-ness of the psyche was abhorrent. More so was its contumacious focus on the self. He wanted to be permeant to uncomplicated joy that was her munificence. Yet the words disembogued into the mind and occluded the fundamental simplicity of it all—or so he thought. 

“Want some music?” she asked, swaying with her ink-stained lab coat and the dripping ladle in one hand. The stains looked uncannily like miniscule, printed flowers on certain parts of the coat; and he was entranced for a moment, by this accidental ink optical illusion. He’d forgotten the record had played on, and it was the end of the album. 

“Yes, please, let’s go with something different now.”

“Want some Bert Jansch?”

“Tak, certainly.”

It was different with Jansch playing. And then some Pentangle, of course.

 “Kastrup has done some incredible work: it’s arduous to verbalize such ideas, let alone conceive them.”

“Ha! I’ve been definitely meaning to bring this up today! You always read my mind.”

They looked at the cover of the book together as he stirred the pot with half his attention.

“Pyramidal neurons—interesting choice for a book on information realism,” she said.

Their conversation went on, sinuous as the experimental procedure. They discussed the recent works of Bernardo Kastrup, and how some of the work could be interpreted as panpsychism. They argued over the new study about isolation inducing the atrophication of the dentate gyrus. Then it went on to metta bhavana, and whether the Grecian concept of agape encapsulated it perfectly. Of course, there were the mandatory few minutes discussing semantic discrepancies of words.

Words are but clangorous shells

For the hermit (crab) is the shell, and the shell is the sea.

The opaque bard, the medicine man, he labors on. He heals that which needs no cure. The sun bard, the surgeon, he is tenacious. For that which is the atom, is the atma, is the cosmos. 

The cold gloam brought with it the conclusion of the experiments. Ashes speckled her hair like her rightful crown. They served each other copious amounts of the fruits of their efforts. Ambrosial. The pot never emptied, and they went on. This quenched every form of his hunger. They laughed and cried and went on, and the pot remained full. He needed to stop.

  “Wait!” She tugged his hand as he got up from his lotus position.

She swiftly immersed her left hand into the pot, taking out a pair of third eyes.  “Here.”

---