Bart Blog

Surgery in two days. The rational part of my brain knows the statistics. Modern anesthesia is safer than the drive to the hospital. But rationality doesn’t stop the other thoughts, the ones that orbit through my day like persistent satellites: What if consciousness isn’t what we think it is? What if the person who wakes up isn’t really me, just someone with my memories? If consciousness is the continuous stream of awareness that makes me “me,” then its complete interruption under anesthesia might represent a kind of death. The end of one stream and the beginning of another. The person who opens their eyes in recovery would have my brain, my history, my relationships, but would they be the same continuous experience of being alive that I am right now? At least whoever wakes up will have no way of knowing the difference.

These aren’t productive thoughts. The only thing they’ve produced is this terrible piece of poetry:

Open me, there is shit inside

Guts, and bones, and blood that tries
to keep my typing fingers warm.
It all needs to work so I can feel stupid.
It all needs to work so I can feel sacred.
If I wake up, I will have another drink.
If I don’t, maybe I had one too many