Wassily Kandinsky’s Fixed Points, 1942                                                                         The artist who consistently poured the contents of his mind onto canvas

Neuro-science has come a long way in the last twenty years with some neurologists even gaining RockStar status. It continues to be a wildly complex landscape, whose contours remain obliquely unfathomable even to its most intrepid explorers: but leaps across the crevaces wherein lurks ignorance are made daily, narrowing gaps in knowledge [that’s enough metaphor mixage, Ed].

Why, when currently there are so many other things to think about, reflect on the motor of our machine? Ach, call it diversion and for the purposes of this article we will assume that the brain is the motor and separate from the mind, which is a thinking thing.

Pondering a thing until plausibly disproved affords a larger canvas on which to paint one’s life. And dreaming adds colour, depth & sometimes resolution of ambition. So when a brain injury destroys the ability to dream, an important seasoning of life’s flavour evapourates.

In earlier times when neurology was giggery-pokery and dazed-looking patients staggered around in bewildered insularity, received wisdom held that everyone dreams.

Speaking as one who sustained a brain injury destroying, inter alia, the faculty of Dream, I can assert with empirical certainty not everyone is so lucky. It’s as though spark plugs are covered in grime thus unable to bridge the ineffable chasm for ignition of dream in the mind.

Amid the avalanche of lessons taught us by 2020, the importance of having one fixed point has been lit high on the list of priorities. We ponder, therefore we exist.

Dabbing Tiers, bid Farewell to this howling, benighted year; mebbie giving Thanks for 2021, encouraging all humanity in pondering and genial living of their dreams.

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