Lt. Commander Foster - Philosophy and Fireworks
Jamie LeBlanc
((Hong Kong District - Starbase 118)
Foster: I dunno, I have known my fair share of neuroscientists and neurosurgeons in my day and they all tell me that you brain needs rest. Not just sleep, but rest where you can just turn it off and not dwell on anything. Just… watching something and let it wander.
Wyn would also state – if he was being low-filtered – that all those neuro-sciency types often irritated him with all their advice. But at the exact same time he’d admit they were right more often than not.
Irritating, but oh so true.
Kel: That tracks. I’m very good at letting my mind wander—I’m just not great at letting it stop working when it does.
And that was the trick, wasn’t it? Wyn supposed that some people had blissfully calm minds. Minds they could turn off, that would get lost in the nothingness easily.
But, like Kel said, Wyn also had an active mind and he had a very hard time getting it to turn off.
So he tried to heed his own advice and just … look… at the surroundings.
Foster: I guess to me they look like… fireflies. These luminescent bugs that were at my dad’s house on Earth. What do they look like to you?
Kel: Lanterns. Floating ones. Like the kind people release during remembrance ceremonies on Trill. Each light its own story… drifting, overlapping, but never quite colliding.
Wyn let his eyes unfocus and he tried to imagine what it looked like. The lanterns on Trill. He had seen pictures, even holo-reproductions of Trill but he had never really been there. He knew it was very blue-green, and he tried to imagine the highlights of golden light against the blue-green sky as it grew slowly dark.
Kel: I guess that’s the nice thing about this view. It doesn’t ask anything of you. It just… lets you look.
Foster: Yeah. It does.
He didn’t add much, nor did he feel like he needed to add much. There was something pleasant about sitting there with someone, taking in the sights.
Kel: You mentioned watching fireflies near your dad’s place on Earth. ::He let the moment breathe, not rushing the thought.:: What was it like? Where you grew up, I mean. Did it feel anything like this… or is this a completely different kind of quiet for you?
Wyn thought back and gave a little ‘hmm’ sound as he let his mind linger on his memories.
Foster: There was a low rock fence, covered in moss. There were a lot of little fences built from piled up stones. Beyond the fence there was farmland. In the spring the corn would be short and the fireflies would gather over the tops and flicker endlessly, they were a lime green contrasting the white stars and the black sky. I used to sit on the fence eating popcorn and watching the fireflies.
And to this day he had a fondness for popcorn, which was just about the least Andorian food he could think of. And then, utterly randomly, he wondered of sh’Sonora would like or hate popcorn.
Kel: And when you actually manage to turn your brain off... really turn it off... what does that look like for you?
And for a moment Wyn blinked. That was a very good question.
Foster: ::he paused and looked towards Ryden:: Why do you ask?
There was that inner voice coming out. The endless ‘why?’
That was a question that had propelled Wyn to extreme success in the medical world, and yet plunged him into deep mental darkness in his early days as a Starfleet officer. Like so many things it was a blessing and a curse all at once,
Kel: Because I’m starting to think everyone defines “rest” a little differently. I’m not sure I’ve ever asked you what it means to you.
Foster: : It’s… I had to work at it. I have a strong inner critic that asks why a whole lot and I finally had to force that to turn off. I started by just looking at something on the wall, studying it until my brain shut up and just processed the wall. After some time it came more easily. So it looks like just absorbing what is around right here, right now. No inner commentary, no outer worries. Just what… is.
Kel: So… what are you hoping tonight gives you, Commander?
Wyn shrugged and looked over at Kel.
Foster: A little peace, a little companionship. Maybe even a little more understanding.
Kel: ?
Foster: Everyone’s different, right? We know this academically because you can look at a Human and a Gorn and think ‘yep, they’re different!” Different biologies, different planets, different cultures. But I don’t think we really appreciate how profoundly different others are until we try to listen to them and understand them.
Kel: ?
Foster: Because somewhere along the way I realized that I was stuck in my own head, and being stuck in there was pretty miserable. When I tried to see things from someone else’s point of view I slowly realized that some of the things I believed were pretty stupid. Not all of them, of course. But we’re often our own wort critics. So it was an exercise in stepping outside of myself and trying to see the world differently. It made my own head a much better place to dwell in.
Kel: ?
Foster: Yeah, I do think people are also the same. You get to learn things and figure out what’s the same, what’s different, and what you are curious about.
Kel: ?
Foster: For example, I’ve never seen the lanterns on trill or been to a remembrance ceremony. What do you remember about them? What did they look like?
Kel: ?
~*~
Tags/tbc
~*~
Lt. Commander Shar’Wyn Foster
Executive Officer
~Julian Beck
E239010ST0