London 2010 Day 12

London 2010 Day 12 0725 Baker St Internet Cafe.
Feeling a little triste this morning, since its the last one of these assignations with the world via Baker Street I will be making for at least some time. Writing in an internet cafe has its own tones and colors, its own smells and touches. Particularly reminded of that because of yesterdays trip to the Wellcome Building and exhibit, on Euston just opposite the station. One of the many exhibits in the genre of art in relation to medicine was a 5 piece item by Mary Cattrell illustrating the 5 senses. To make it, she worked with fMRI people to get an image of what activation of that sense produced in the way of a proton wobble signal in the brain, then used that information in a fast prototype machine that carves in 3D the series of scans..., then or at some point tinted the otherwise transparent 3D model of brain activation slightly brownish, and finally potted the whole in a block of transparent plastic. Each block is about a foot cube; they are standing on little plinths. I have included a photo of 'smell'. Of course the first thing you notice in comparing the 5 is how much 'deeper' smell reaches, and now little it has to do with the prefrontal or frontal areas. Also, what an add-on vision really is...sitting way back there by itself, and so fragily connected to the outside world. Great art, perhaps not. But most interesting for us senseaholics.
And that was only one of the miracles and marvels on display. The current Wellcome special exhibit is 'Skin', which I had hoped might include a live tattoo gallery, but didn't. In fact, I guess they figure the tattoo and other 'body art' has too much exposure. (Tattoo, from 'tattau' in Samoa, as borrowed by sailors in the 17th century. Also 'moko', the Maori chiseling and inking of skin, and irizume to create horimono (Japan). Not to get into scarification and some of the extravagant piercing going on these days. Otzi the iceman has more than 50 simple tattooed marks, and it probably dates back at least 10,000 years in Japan)
But even without much body art, or any horrors of the Nazi era, its a pretty great exhibit. There were lots of students in there, sketching away, and some good movies intended for education about skin disease. And then there is one movie showing on a big screen that thankfully either does not have an explanation, or hides it away. It's basically closeups of bursting furuncles...thats right Virginia, pus bumps..and has got to be one of the most disturbing bits of film I have ever seen...luckily, most of the people walking by seemed to have no idea of what was going on, so it clearly requires context to be fully yuck. As it was, the teens had some trouble with the vaginas and penises; the entrance is clearly marked as 'includes graphic views of human body' or something like that.
The Wellcome as a whole is smallish and very do-able. It also has a very noisy but open and interesting cafe on the way to a great bookstore. I finally had a chance to read a little about the woman I knew as 'Helen Lane' but whose actual name is Henrietta Lacks. As you probably know, due to this and other recent publications, HeLa cell lines, grown from her cancer samples, were the first successful 'immortal' cell lines...able to sustain themselves in culture medium indefinitely. And as you probably also know or can guess, HL herself was poor, black, and died, leaving a family who are still poor and angry about the biological rip off. And this all happened as I was entering high school, not in some other century. If the list of white collar on black collar crimes were laid end to end, it would probably stretch at least as far as the Middle Passage.
The Wellcome is also a block away from the NE edge of University College London, my old college. And so I spent some time maundring around. Ate in the UCLU cafe, which I can't recommend except for those desparate for student company. That's next to the Bloomsbury theatre, which is UCL's . And right next to it, I discovered two newly named buildings, The Bernard Katz and the Andrew Huxley buildings...both housing biotech initiatives, both my mentors. Talk about realizing how old you have become. BK was my post-doctoral advisor..and Andrew was probably the most charismatically intelligent physiologist I ever met...at least insofar as his understanding of analytical mathematical solutions to physiological problems...and , lucky me, I met them both before the Nobel Prize they shared with Alan Hodgkin (Rick and Bertil studied with him) for an incredibly elegant explanatory model for how nerves manage to transmit information at 100 meters/second without any wires. As a historical note, I don't even try to teach the model to medical students anymore.
I walked on around Gordon Square, where I studied the Locke and all them Empiricists with a bunch of very bright and articulate philosophy students who raised my feelings of inadequacy to levels that even the study of Marx never did . And then North down Malet Place to see the various museums at UCL, all of which were closed for one reason or another. So ended up with the dependable Jeremy Bentham, sitting, as usual, in his special glass case in the central rooms of the college. His preserved head is no longer at his feet,however. After it was captured in a prank by Kings, it's been removed to safer keeping.
And if you haven't revisited Bentham's thinking about human society, it's well worth doing. They now have a timeline on the wall beside the case holding his padded and dressed skeleton (as per his wishes, his body was dissected for the edification of science shortly after his death, and the display is per his written wishes). Turns out he spent most of his later life consulting with various governments, trying to get his 'greatest good of the greatest number' principles incorporated into their emerging constitutions. Simon Bolivar must have been one of his greatest disappointments...and we all know something about the trouble that has come in South America as a result of the directions that The Liberator actually took.
As if that wasnt enough, I sat around the courtyard, re-experiencing some of the emotions I felt in 1960 when I arrived on my Junior Year Abroad experience. And eventually turned up at Fencing society, and was paired up with Paul. Its about the same, physically, but a lot less busy, as activity has shifted to the newer buildings. Still, the Slade School of Art squats across on the North side, and there is a Beadles hut at the entrance, as there ought to be. The medical school, which used to be in a red sandstone monstrosity across the street has largely shifted to the Royal Free site further north. And the hospital is in a completely new building.
The walk to the British Museum, even on a grey day, is still pretty enjoyable. You go by the ULU building, another nice cafe, and then RADA on the right, Birkbeck on the left, Tropical Diseases all around. The little enclosed park on the West side of Malet near the museum is still without its metal pickets...taken off during WW II for the iron and never replaced. And the tour busses lie panting under the plane trees on the Montague side of the building, waiting for their babies to come back to mama.
I spent time in Sanchi and Mathura, worshipping Yakshi's and Tara's. And Jade, there is a special corridor show devoted to Chinese Jade. Some of the pig-dragon split rings have just the right distribution of weight and curvature, just the right tension between ends and beginnings. And then time in meso america, since there are unfortunately much better examples of the carvings than are left in any of the sites where they were actually used, in Oaxaca. I've attached one example of a lintel; check out the huipil on the kneeling consort (who's abrading her tongue in a blood sacrifice, just in case you think your marriage is onerous), you huipilista's!!
Well, it's coming time for your last encounter with Suzuki Roshi, for this trip anyway.

"Just continue in your calm, ordinary practice and your character will be built up. If your mind is always busy, there will be no time to build, and you will not be successful, particularly if you work too hard on it."

Suzuki Roshi p 58. 'Right Attitude' in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.

'And so it goes'
Kurt Vonnegut, passim

Aloha

Alan