Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The Brain rests placidly. The Thumb, which has only recently appeared on the scene, gives us an opposite feeling. It appears agitated.

“Why so glum, chum?” asks the Brain.

“I thought you'd never ask,” snaps the Thumb. “I'm just sick and tired of it, that's all.”

“Sick and tired of what?”

“Taking the blame. Being called 'the cornerstone of civilization.' Being treated by one kooky author as if I were a goddamned metaphor for civilization. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Well, now, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The civilizing process occurred as a result of advances in technology. Until man had tools, tools to save him labor as well as to give him the predatory edge over other animals, he hadn't the leisure to develop language or to refine his psychic and physical capabilities. You, Thumb, gave man the ability to use tools. If nothing else, you started him down the path to civilization. And were you not with him, helping him, every step of the way?”

“Yeah, I was, but I was innocent. I had no control. I wanted to help him lift shiny pebbles, to pick fruit, to hold flowers, to build bowls and baskets, to make music, to weave; I wanted to help him remove slivers and to caress the flesh of loved ones. I didn't want any part of that other stuff: that hardware, that killing and maiming, that overdevelopment, that subjugation of Nature and attempts to build monuments against death. I didn't want any of it, but I contributed to it because you made me do it, you prick!”

The Brain issues a short scornful laugh that undulates its folds. “The Prick had a lot to do with civilization, all right, but you'll have to take that up with the Prick. I'm the Brain. Remember?”

“How could anyone forget?”

“Nasty, nasty.” The Brain wags its stem. “You're behaving rather irrationally, aren't you? Are you really blaming me for civilization?”

“Precisely. That ugly crumpled upper surface of yours, that cerebral cortex, is almost nonexistent in lower animals, but once you got the hang of evolutionary growth and a taste of the inflated abstract thoughts you could make with that cortex, you enlarged it and enlarged it until it became eighty percent of your volume. Then you started cranking out rarefied ideas as fast as you could crank them, and issuing commands to helpless appendages like me, forcing us to act on those ideas, to give them form. Out of that came civilization. You willed it into being because, with your cortex so oversized and all, you lost your common ground with other animals, and especially with plants; lost contact, became alienated and ordered civilization built in compensation. And there was nothing the rest of us could do about it. You were holed up in there in your solid bone fortress, a cerebrospinal moat around you, using up twenty percent of the body's oxygen supply and hogging a disproportionate share of nutriments, you greedy bastard; you had hold of the muscle motor switches and there was no way any of us could get at you and stop you from spoiling the delight of the world.” The Thumb's nail was crimson with anger.

Slowly shaking its configuration of deep crevices and wide protrusions, the Brain sighed. “Yes, yes, there is some truth in what you say. I am the body's favored organ, but that's because my work load is so heavy and so vital. And I contributed enormously to civilization, as did you. It couldn't have happened without me, as it couldn't have happened without you. But I was just as innocent as you. .”

“How could you be? You expressed the desires, you formulated the models, you issued the orders, you were in command.”

Once again, the Brain sighed. It was the sort of sigh one might expect from a fat and rather affected grub: gray and wet and yukky. “You don't understand me, do you? You think you know me — all that semieducated blather about cerebral cortex evolution — but you don't really know me. Oh, I'm sure you're aware that I've an electrochemical network of thirteen billion nerve cells, and maybe you realize that in some of my nooks and crannies — you're fortunate to be smooth and holistic — these cell bodies are so densely packed that a hundred million fit into a cubic inch, every cottonpicking one of them humming, pulsing and flashing, and none of them exactly alike; yes, you may know that but you can never really know how hard it is to be electrochemical, to be, and I'm not boasting, the most intricate and effective thing in Nature. .”

The Thumb gestures as if it were bowing a violin. “That's the saddest story I've ever heard,” it says sarcastically.

“I'm not seeking your sympathy; just your understanding. Bear with me, and if I digress, remember, I'm not as tightly focused as you. Now, listen. There is a constant shower of incoming electrical pulses hammering at me like rain on a tropical roof. I'm subjected to a never-ending barrage of signals that cause my nerve cells — neurons, if you will — to fire in succession, like Chinatown firecrackers. During each of these pulsations, electrical charges are altered, chemicals are expelled, clefts are opened and closed, ions desert one neuron and invade another; it's unbelievably complicated, and the whole cycle takes place in about a thousandth of a second. A thousandth of a second — and man thinks he has a conception of time. Ha!”

“If I was the Mouth, I'd yawn,” says the Thumb. “Get to the point before you bore me stiff.”

“And nobody likes a stiff thumb, does he,” teases the Brain. “Well, the point partially is this: the information that activates me, that sets my neurons to firing in chain reaction, is sensory and is sent to me by other parts of the body, including you . How I react to the external world is partly a result of the kind of data you send me as you go around touching our environment.”

“This is getting specious,” objects the Thumb. “In the first place, the data I give you are completely objective. I can tell you if a blade is sharp, but I can't advise you to have it stuck into another body (I never would) — and in the second place, you get such an infinitely greater supply of info from the Eyes, for example, that there's no comparison.”

“Maybe not,” agrees the Brain, “but you do contribute. And my point is, the commands I give you and the rest of the body are largely my natural reactions to the sensory stuff you're always feeding me. Largely. But not wholly. Because the truth is, my neurons occasionally fire spontaneously in the absence of a stimulating signal. I'm subjected to a fair amount of randomly generating currents. It isn't as orderly in here as you might imagine. Often I'm at the mercy of random forces.”

In the eerie light of the indefinable dimension, the Thumb twiddles. At last, it says, “You're trying to tell me you aren't in control.”

“Exactly! Jeeze, I thought you'd never catch on.”

“Well, if you aren't in charge, what is?”

“I don't know,” says the Brain, softly, solemnly. The blob seems genuinely sad.

“Oh come off it. Those thirteen billion cells that are cooking in you, you make use of no more than ten percent of them. Ninety percent of your resources lies dormant at all times. If you'd just bother to put that awesome mass to work, if you'd quit being so damn conservative — Christ, it's no wonder you're gray! — and stop worrying about survival all the time; if you'd start sifting through those vast regions of your slimy self that haven't been explored, then you'd find out rather quickly where Central Control is located, I'll bet, and you'd find the answers to the philosophical and spiritual questions that are driving you — and the rest of us — bananas, and that because they've been answered wrongly (by that ten percent of you that makes an effort) have fostered the worst features of civilization. You're holding out, that's all.”