What Things Are Made Of

Brain Silos

75 Brain Silos If weirdness is beauty, and beauty, truth, weirdness is true. —Marginalia Does each silo plunked down along this highway hold the living brains of movie stars or geniuses contemplating gravity, the spotlight, perfect sentences, the thrill of atoms trilling in platinumbombshell hair? Or are they average brains, shucked from the heads of plasterers and managers of donut stores—cab driver, shoe salesman, swimming teacher brains, rejoicing not to be pinches of slush, flakes of jerky, or lumps of nothing, like the flesh they used to ride? Are my spirits high because my brain’s so close to its own kind, thinking of dance lessons and peach cobbler, fixing screen doors and de-fleaing cats— average thoughts like those that floated up from Candlelight Lane on August evenings, bobwhites whistling, Mom frying chicken, Dad just home from work, tackled by kids before he plopped into his Big Chair—thoughts of bluegill fishing and hot grounders, swing sets and cheerleader tryouts—no red envelopes marked “Final Warning,” no coke-addict daughters or catastrophic mammograms—generous thoughts, well able to embrace a field of wheat under a sky heaped high with clouds—happy thoughts, filling the air parting in front of us like herds of Jersey cows clogging the road—thoughts that cushion me, my wife, and our son, who heard brain 76 when I said grain, from the world’s jolts and jarrings as I laugh, and yell “Good thinking!” to the silos as our Rent-a-Wreck blasts by. ...