The opening paragraph of Gerald Callahan's, "Chimera," has all the qualities of great fiction: mysterious characters; a setting every reader can place himself in; a rhythmic flow of language and images; and an enticing hook; the arrival of a dead spouse, in person.

Callahan says that what inspired him to write the essay was a poem in which a dead relative visits the living. The poem triggered the memory of the time he sat in a café and watched his ex-wife, dead now for 10 years, come in, order a muffin and coffee and leave without acknowledging him. He sat down and wrote the scene, and that sparked the evolution of "Chimera."

Callahan is fortunate that opening lines come easily to him. What he has a harder time doing is putting the pieces of his writing together coherently. Often the opening launches the rest of an essay. He wrote the opening of "Chimera," in one sitting, almost word for word how it appears in its published form.

Callahan has studied and taught immunology for 25 years, and has an intimate knowledge of the connection between the immune system and memory, which he eloquently explains in "Chimera." "But immune systems do remember things, intricate things that the rest of the body has forgotten. And the memories stored inside our immune systems can come back, like my first wife, at unexpected moments, with sometimes startling consequences," he writes in the essay. The slippery notion of memory fascinates him: where we store memories in our minds and bodies, and what different types of memories there are.

The notion of phantom memory is an idea that Callahan is researching with others in the medical profession: psychiatrists, biologists, and immunologists. He is intrigued with how we perceive ourselves and what immunology and biology can tell us about human behavior. In "Chimera," he says, "No one knows how much of our reality comes to us from the physical world and how much 'reality' we create inside our own minds."

Callahan is disturbed by the fact that scientists, because the nature of scientific writing, have closed the door to a lot of people on really interesting information.  He believes that scientists are bad at communicating to the public what they do. "Very few people have followed the example of Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov in trying to convey the wonder in science and the insights of who we are." His goal is to try to blend the two disciplines and re-open some of those doors.

In his first book, "River Odyssey," he says that he tried to go to the opposite side of the personal essay, using poetry as the form. He tries now to blend the two forms but finds that he too easily slips into his traditional science writing voice and all the jargon that goes along with it. Fortunately, his wife is a writer but not a scientist, and helps reel him back in when he gets too technical.

He practices writing prose by writing poetry. Every piece he writes on science, he tries to rewrite four or five times: first he'll write it according to science and scientific principles, then he'll go back and try to weave the more human side of language and idea into it. He is not completely satisfied that "Chimera" moved far enough away from science and far enough toward lyricism.

"Chimera" is the first of a series of nine essays by Callahan about how we perceive ourselves, and what immunology and biology and other "ologies" can teach us about ourselves and our interactions in the physical world. He is interested in reexamining the concept of self from the perspective of a biological scientist. He is currently conducting research on the possible connection between viral infection and certain behavioral diseases, for example, bipolarism. "There are a whole series of things that I have come across as a scientist that make me realize that there are aspects of our physical being & that suggest really interesting things about how we interact with other people, how we interact with the rest of the world, and what we really are."

Callahan teaches a course at Colorado State University's Veterinary School on complimentary medicine, that includes a section on mind/body medicine. He also teams up with the English department and teaches a course in creative science writing. His colleagues in the English department helped him come up with the title of this essay. He knew the term as an immunologist to mean an animal or plant that contains cells from two distinctly different species. His colleagues knew the word to mean a creation of the imagination. American Heritage Dictionary also includes in its definition, a mythological, fire-breathing she-monster. It's an appropriate trio; Callahan says that he has an impossible time with titles, so, he chuckles, "I got lucky with that."

Callahan went to a Catholic school in Utah for 12 years. He attributes good teachers and early exposure to literature to a latent desire to be a writer. At one point in his science career he had a hard time getting federal funding for research, and decided to spend some time writing. "All of a sudden I had no excuse not to write. Now I'm finding that I am ignoring other things in order to write."



Corinne Platt