A Pennsylvania probate court declares Otto incompetent, closes his bank account, and secures his holdings for the present.
“You’ve stripped him of his civil rights,” Adams tells Pamela on the phone.
Pamela, in Pennsylvania, depressed at having to do family business, leaving her latest work to hostile critics (who have grown tired of her Dangerous Words), snaps, “You sound like his lawyer.”
“I’m concerned about him.” “He’s a drunk.”
“And Jurgen’s a louse for doing this.” “It’s been very hard on Daddy. He’s not in good health.”
“God’s punishment.”
“Let’s not argue about it, all right? Have there been any more reviews?”
Adams had decided not to mention them, but her attitude upsets him and he reads them to her slowly.
To begin with, the base structure of the brain: numerous diagrams exist showing right and left hemispheres, frontal lobe, etc. Problem: how to make a drawing of the brain that isn’t just another wiring chart? CAT scans are colorful, but less precise than the best road maps. After long consideration Adams chooses for his Point of View oxygen and glucose, the two most active elements in the brain.
On the computer Adams sketches gentle hills interrupted by valleys, some in shadow, with deep gullies. Dark sky, cobweb stretched across it like a silvery dome. The cobweb represents the arachnoid, a vaulted bridge connecting the crevices of the brain. Cerebro-spinal fluid flows like a system of rivers into the valleys, widening into lakes where thoughts splash like noisy children. He gives each lake-child an oversized flashlight, representing electrically charged cells. Next problem: Is the brain the mind? Centuries of debate between behaviorists, idealists, dualists, etc., have failed to answer this question.
Constraint (if he agrees that the mind is intangible): a map must refer to a physical landscape.
Whether the mind’s assumptions are learned or a priori he cannot show on his map, nor can he determine whether mind is attached to substance and weight.
“He said they were going to take us all somewhere else because we were involved in subversive activities here. This made us very sad because we did not know what subversive activities were.”
A Guatemalan peasant. Adams has noticed that the Third World makes up most of Rosa’s dead these days, since she has become politically active again. On Tuesday evening Maurice Bishop told her, “In spite of my clash with the CIA, I didn’t understand the true meaning of destabilization until I abandoned my body and entered the cosmic realm.”
Rosa tightens her grip on his hands.
“Compañeros, Christian greetings from a poor Indian farmer, slain shamelessly on the night of the purge…”
Hegel says there are no bare facts. Things enter into our experience because we conceptualize them. The yard. The barbecue pit. The field behind his house. The boys’ rockets. He will never in his life encounter an object he doesn’t have words for. Even when something’s strange to him, he is able to describe its shape, color, etc.
All things, then, exist as ideas. But every thesis has an antithesis. Every positive a negative.
Negation, Hegel says, is the creative force of the mind.
What does that mean? Adams pauses for a moment. He considers the crescent roll lying on the plate on his kitchen table. My consciousness of that crescent roll depends upon my awareness that I am not a roll. I don’t get lost in rollness. Separation (i.e., negation) is fundamental to consciousness.
He wonders how to represent negation on a map, then realizes that maps are by definition negations of territories they do not include.
If every positive implies a negative, it follows that every negative implies another positive, and so on. Self-generation.
The universe is constantly working itself out.
He pours himself another Scotch. The problem remains: What is working itself out in the universe?
He picks up Hegel again. “Reason is the substance and energy of the universe.”
But where does Reason begin? Like a mathematician, Adams must isolate the principles. The beginning of Reason. It must be the most abstract conceivable thought. Being generates Nothing, and vice versa, so this, Adams thinks, is the ultimate abstraction: a blank idea into which anything may fit. Being is the quality without which a thing ceases to be itself. He looks at the crescent roll again. He could remove the brown color from it but it would still be a roll. He could change its shape but it would still be a roll. He could take it apart any number of ways but nothing he does can tell him why, when all of the elements are joined, a roll is formed.
Is language Reason? That seems a little suspect. He marks his place in Hegel, buckles his pants, and walks down the block to the library. A white cat zips across the cemetery, a single bulb burns in Rosa’s kitchen. Adams whistles a tune as he walks up the street.
In the library he settles himself at a scuffed oak table with several heavy volumes. Locke identifies ideas with all objects of consciousness. Consciousness is the mind’s apprehension of its own processes, and the wellspring of knowledge.
But what is an object of consciousness? An object, Adams thinks, is something toward which consciousness directs itself. Words? Thoughts? Ideas?
The intentionality of consciousness: It is always conscious of something.
Locke is no help.
Berkeley says an idea is a mind-dependent Being. Closer to Hegel, though Hegel would not restrict ideas to the mind.
Sartre: Consciousness is an insatiable hunger.
Adams’ stomach growls. He chuckles, catches the eye of a girl who is trying to study. She gives him a severe look and returns to her book. Adams wonders if he has any cheese and crackers at home. He walks back up the street. The wind rises, blowing paper and cans along the curb. He stops and looks at the field of the dead, the chilly marble stones and bent flowers in copper cups.
What we want, as human beings, is to know.
What we look for in other human beings, a knowing that knows our knowing.
Reason seeking recognition of itself.
The light goes out in Rosa’s kitchen. A Volkswagen Rabbit turns the corner, sputtering loudly. Absurd to anticipate Reason in a world that’s running down, where people’s needs are so opposed. Still, when he recalls Hegel — “Nothing remaining but the mere action of subjectivity itself, the Abstractum of Spirit — Thought — ” he feels braced.
Hoping is harmless, he thinks. He bounds up Rosa’s steps, rings the doorbell. She comes yawning to the door, dressed in men’s pajamas. “Sam? What the hell are you doing out so late?”
“Rosa,” he says, “Reason is working itself out in the universe.”
Adams takes a few days off, leaves the kids with Pamela’s friend Cyndi, and flies to Pennsylvania to help Otto adjust after leaving the sanitarium.
“I want to change my will,” Otto says. “Cut those bastards out of it. Pammy’s a good girl, but she listens to her daddy.”
He’s twelve pounds lighter than the last time Adams saw him. A sallow swirl around each eye.
“You don’t have anything left to bequeath,” Adams reminds him.
“I’ll get it back, don’t you worry. Got me a Southern lawyer.”
That afternoon, while Otto sleeps, Adams talks to the lawyer, a Harvard graduate in her thirties. Her name is Sharon Wells. “I’ve been hired on a contingency basis,” she tells him. “My fee depends on the settlement.” She is dressed smartly in a kneelength navy skirt, an Arrow shirt, and a man’s red tie. Her hair is ash-blond; round glasses magnify her eyes. “He has a very good chance of regaining his property. They violated his civil rights.” She is currently drafting a new will in elementary language, echoing Otto’s style, naming Deidre and Toby as beneficiaries, as per his wishes. She intends to videotape the signing in case there is a question about Otto’s competency. Adams leaves the office impressed.