Dr MacDougall

Dr. Duncan "Om" MacDougall (c. 1866 – October 15, 1920) was an early 20th century physician in Haverhill, Massachusetts who sought to measure the mass purportedly lost by a human body when the soul supposedly departed the body upon death.

NYT article from March 11, 1907 In 1901, MacDougall weighed six patients while they were in the process of dying from tuberculosis in an old age home. It was relatively easy to determine when death was only a few hours away, and at this point the entire bed was placed on an industrial sized scale which was apparently sensitive to the gram. He took his results (a varying amount of perceived mass loss in most of the six cases) to support his hypothesis that the soul had mass, and when the soul departed the body, so did this mass. The determination of the soul weighing 21 grams was based on the average loss of mass in the six patients within moments after death. Experiments on mice and other animals took place.
MacDougall measured fifteen dogs in similar circumstances and reported the results as "uniformly negative," with no perceived change in mass. He took these results as confirmation that the soul had weight, and that dogs did not have souls.

In March 1907, accounts of MacDougall's experiments were published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research and the medical journal American Medicine, while the news was spread to the general public by New York Times.



Contemplate
the tiny weight
of my soul.

My essence
when I'm late,
departed,

if captured
on a scale
is 21 grams.

Yep. That's all I am.

This skin, this bone,
these molecules,
are not my own.

This house, this home
of cartilage,
is sand and loam.

For, Dr MacDougall,
now we know
there is a
vortex in
my atoms
where protons spin:
at the heart of me
a hole
wherein,
perhaps,
the God particle
(the Soul?)
flows.

So Friends,
don't look for me
in life and death,
in soil or air,
in wind or breath,
in matter hard or weak,
sky turned stars
or puddled streets.
I will be no more there
than anywhere.

Instead I may be
flowing through
the tiny spaces in
the heart of you.

21 grams.
That's where
I am.

One Under

Sometimes I consider
drops of rain
lying on the steel girder
of a railway line.

I think of them
shaking and glimmering
as the engine nears.

As if sentient,
trying to speak
or make a sign.

Yesterday the train
was delayed again.
Not leaves this time
but fallen tears.



Wikipedia: "...train drivers have used several phrases to refer to suicides, such as "person under a train", "person on a track", "passenger action", and "one under".^[3]

Why I seldom talk to strange women at parties.

It
started
as a
dribble.
Erratic,
tickling
this way and
that.
Like a spring
in a mountain
cave. A slight
tinkle flowing
over lips of rock
beneath flipping bats
of eyelids and other
facial exclamation marks.
I liked the sound, the flow
in the speech, the ribbons
and currents wending in the air,
moving in rushing waves, sounding
syllables like poetry in water, music,
until slowly the build, the head of stream,
started to overwhelm, and I felt cowed
and unsteady, beaten by the force, a swimmer
against a tide I could not overcome, and so I turned
thrashing in the noise, and swam, striking for the shore,
swam, swam, violently for the safety of the silent, gaping, door.

Sweeney

"Here's a thing..." the barber started,

putting down his scissors,

"Let's suppose you have a weakness, 

a desire you can't allay.

Should you avoid the circumstance, 

simply walk the other way?" 

(His razor now moved deftly 

round to the back of my neck)

"Or should you face it, fight it, win or lose: 

at least you'll know yourself?"

He inclined slightly to consider his art.

"Maybe it's best to avoid temptation.."

I countered  "...if you already know your heart?"

I caught his eye in the mirror

and was conscious of my bare throat, 

the razor, the easy slice.

"Well, perhaps you're right Sir...yes, perhaps you're right"

he backed away a step or two

"There then, all done"

and held a mirror showing me my head 

from a different view.

"Something for the weakness?" 

He laughed at his own pun

as I stepped from the chair,

feeling tension slide away

with a small cascade of hair.

Winter Conversation

With the snow
a quietness fell.

Not just the
white muffled wrap
of furflake,

broken by
shivers of wind
through icicles
hung like a Mark tree,

but the stillness of thoughts
being gathered
as logs laid before
a weakening fire.

Storm Clocks

Low down,
the valley dog
is barking,
troubled by a
wolf high up
in the woods.

No matter how they thresh,
the trees cannot part
the darkness
or step out
of the rain.

Afraid of silence
I'd wound up all
the clocks.

Now they're drowned
by rain rattle;
knocks
of a branch
on my window;
an outside dog.

An atheist gets a Christmas reminder

In the bleak mid-winter
a kid with a gun
killed twenty children.
'Happy Christmas
Everyone!'


Westboro baptists say
it's the work of God.
Fuck them. But if they're
right: Fuck Him too,
and His son.