Mature Brain

[Image of human brain while doing yoga] ... A brief but satisfying conversation last evening with a psychiatrist at a social gathering where the topic was writing and performing. I mentioned that since being retired I've found writing in new forms {especially short story] flowing on demand -- maybe not wonderful poems, short stories or the NaNoWriMo novel but easily written. The images and voices come and the word follow effortlessly. I trust the subconscious to continue yesterday's story when I have left it although I do not know where it might go and only sometimes know how it will end.

Said he, "It's neurological. The mature brain has acquired that ability, it's a fact." There were many other people around, interruptions, I wanted to ask for sources, for references to research. He seemed so certain and factual, I believed him. I've followed a lot of the brain research with Tibetan monk meditaters and of people doing yoga -- MRIs very definitely show changes in parts of the brain used. I find all this very exciting. It is also part of the reason I feel older people who have written little but now want to should not only be encouraged to "just do it" but should also be offered pointers and structures toward good writing that goes deeper than the surface, tells more truth than the sentimentalities and nostalgia I see too much encouraged. The capability is there, let us not be afraid of the truths we have learned through all our living.

writing group - 2

The picture is a batchelor herd of eland --see, they all have horns, the longer more graceful the older these guys are. You see, unlike human males, these guys get better looking as they age. Sorry for the crack. Actually I don't know much about male elands, and sometimse feel I don't know much about male humans, or female ether. However, I recently read that brain scientests have shown that parts of the brain used often definteily group larger while little used parts don't grow larger. Whether they shrink or just seem smaller by contract wasn't explained in the fairly shallow article -- as newspaper science articles tend to be.

I'm thinking about this because I watched the dynamics of my new writing seminar and feel a sense of hopelessness at the group dynamics. Our two loud ladies badger the men about "emotion." They want angst or something spelled out in caps. These are guys who have no practiced emotional expression in some 60 years. They don't have the words, and I don't think they have the feelings. The badgering is a power play that is ugly and alienating. One man awkwardly but sincerely described dealing with his wife's new debilitating disease, a muscular weakness. I thought him very brave to write about massaging her legs and looking into her eyes and seeing a more beautiful woman than he saw at 21 -- a bit of a cliche, but an extremely brave on in the circumstances. Madame Badger wanted more. I wanted to choke her. The man was brave. He needed only some format pointers, not that harrangue.

Another man alluded to a very dramatic scene in a classroom. I suggested it would be wonderful to see the seen in a dramatic form, with voices and such. He said he only wanted to write what will fit on a single page of Microsoft format -- a stupid limit toset himself. Anyway, it was so powerful I came home and wrote the scene for myself -- no doubt entirely differently than happened as I had to imagine almost al of it. At this point I don't know whether to show him next week or not. It may seem an invasion, I'll have to find a tactful to express it. How undirected these people are. They want to write well but they get nothing truly helpful from the discussions

I'm pondering whether to offer to lead a "writing skills" class, possibly called "Writing with the whole brain" as a pay on the Drawing with the Left Side of the Brain. I wonder if anyone would shop up. Maybe I can't know if I don't offer it.

Getting to Know the Neighbors

I am still a newcomer here. I have always keep much of myself to myself because I have a variety of interests. I slowly find friends and acquaintances in each area, but only a few friends who are aware of the spectrum. So I talk to Jenny, next door, who has beautiful plants on her patio about my geraniums and tomato plant. I chat with only a few others in the complex -- it's a friendly place but I checked out the Wednesday morning coffee klatch and found it gossipy, checked out the Thursday evening needlework group and found found only a few with very narrow interests. I do not feel a need for immediate friendships, Rachel et al are nearby and I have always been happy pursuing my interests alone. The poetry group is shaping up nicely, a good discussion every couple of weeks and an ongoing impetus to find a poem getting written in my head [so far only first lines].

There have been a couple of conversations with Jenny and Marilyn, who is further down the hall, about new trees planted in the yard, and the regular visits of groups of geese -- attractive to see, but layers of landmines in the form of their droppings which are plentiful. Yesterday as I returned from a walk Jenny and Marilyn were conferring about the trees. I joined the chat and then Jenny asked if she had seen a quilt on my wall through the window. Yes, of course. Both ladies had tried quilting at some time, but in a dabbling and not very enthusiastic fashion. Of course I invited them in to see the quilt on my wall and one lead to more, to the "studio" [I did not call it that - the word sounds pretentious and I am not of the "artist" caliber.] But they were mightily impressed. Yes, I have a lot of projects going -- I'm trying to clean up several unfinished ones. I think they're interesting quilts but far from awe inspiring.

This is a gossipy place, before long many people will know that I'm "the quilter". Fine. It's a hobby of the passionate sort. I'd like to find some true quilting soul-mates, maybe only 4 or 5 to share my enthusiasm. However, I am impressed by how impressionable people are. Not that I didn't know this but I am the very opposite, not at all easily impressed, perhaps judgmental, cynical, or a nice word "discerning."

So far I have been careful not to say to anyone but Rachel & Patrick that I'm working on the TCB biography. People have an even more knee jerk awe of those of us who say we are writers. I have not even spoken to the poetry group of the bio or of other things I have written. While I think there is no magic in writing I suppose I'm wrong -- to an extent. I read Wislawa Szymborska's Nobel speech last night. She spoke of inspiration which for her is to say "I don't know." [I wonder if the translation might be more correctly, "I wonder if--"] She says most people do not ask questions. What if Isaac Newton had said not said "I don't know what to think of those falling apples?" Others would not ask, they'd just grab an apple and eat it. Perhaps she is right that only a few people think in this way. I don't want the neighborly gossip mill to tag me "the writer" -- I'll be content with "the quilter". And those who might eventually know me as a writer will probably have absolutely no interest in quilting. So it is in the world of infinite interests -- and the more usual world of limited interests.