Skip Fox

Radical Harp Curve

Gamma oscillations during cardiac arrest were global and highly coherent; moreover, this frequency band exhibited a striking increase in anterior–posterior- directed connectivity and tight phase-coupling to both theta and alpha waves. High-frequency neurophysiological activity in the near-death state exceeded levels found during the conscious waking state. These data demonstrate that the mammalian brain can, albeit paradoxically, generate neural correlates of heightened conscious processing at near-death.¹

      or arch . . .        from the paradox         a brace of correlates flush

          into rush light         & the hilarity of silences            connectivities

      previously unconceived          realms in-folding         saturated with light

  & memory             neural coordinates ablaze                  essence of living over

       radical heart curve         dying                vibrance encircled by nothing

            droplets       of brilliance        in consummate darkness          all things       

     flowing       thru what was once             center                   now a new

          issuance         as from a darkened corner         or different           core

   no longer             executive function           involuntary systems           integrated

      with assorted cerebral events                    predicated on the furtherance

of an impoverished identity          but globes of sudden luminescence              floating

        thru resonant sonorities             understanding at last          what thinking

     might be              frontier to port city         continent discovered in a flash

histories bound by eternity’s slightest twitch         all we ever thought        not even

     a wriggling speck            in what came before      & shall surely come after

          a sense of pure sentience            within vast negations                     earth’s

     radiant signature                      signing off                      or a detonation

  animating the ambient         illuminating the cusp of consciousness           collapsing

                the limbic span         an explosion of alphabets           animal alphabets

               of wind and earth’s vibrations                           alphabets of wonder

                  existence’s fluency            

                                                                 the signing off         without regret

                                   perhaps

                                            . . .

                                                           imagine the rush light         recognitions

            and recombinations         flowing into an infinite indeterminacy           

    bounding     over               whatever was conceived

                                   without borders

                                                     all the while wondering . . .

© Skip Fox

^[1]from abstract to A Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain,@ Jimo Borjigin, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 8 Aug. 2013.  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/08/

1308285110. (I sensed none of this when I later had a heart attack in the spring of 2014. Or maybe I can't remember or my arrest was not arrested long enough. All I sensed was nothingness.)

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