I’m currently reading Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher. In pondering her descriptions of mood swings during bipolar illness, I recognize the characteristics of mania and depression. The racing mind…so many thoughts rushing that you just can’t grab on to one long enough to do something with it. The depression that hits almost as a result of not being able to grab onto one thought and move forward.

It makes me wonder if some mental illness is made up of what we all go through, but taken to an extreme, interfering with your daily functioning. The brain not being able to manage normal processes until your capacity to control it has been completely usurped.

I recently described my mind as a ping-pong match between the right and left sides of my brain. But neither scores, and neither wins. I suppose a ping-pong game seems balanced. And my game probably is, in the sense that my left and right are both active and vibrant. But they battle…back. And forth. And back. And forth.

A Stroke of Insight

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor literally experienced this battle during a stroke. She described her experience vividly during a TED talk. A hemorrhage in the left side of her brain caused her consciousness to exist almost fully in her right brain, completely changing her perception of her body, the world around her, and of reality. Alternating between left brain perception, and what she calls “la la land”, she eventually worked out a way to plan for the shifts between hemispheres and got herself some help.

“Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter”

Ms. Taylor experienced this through her stroke. Artists experience this during their work, becoming engrossed in the creativity involved while they create. I once had a drawing teacher who said that when she was going to work on a drawing, she told her family she was “going under.” She was about to become part of her right brain…the creative, sensual, emotional part of herself that she accessed to create artwork that flowed from her. It’s difficult to communicate with someone in this state. It takes time for them to transition back into allowing the left brain to function and access the language portion of the brain. And often when this occurs, the creative spell is broken.

Alternatively, accessing this creative state can be extremely difficult. Last fall I took a weekend drawing and painting workshop with Tim Hawkesworth. Tim is a fabulous artist and teacher who encourages artists to reach within and express who they are. Even with his guidance and inspiring morning talks, I struggled the entire first day of the workshop. I was approaching art with my left brain. With the help of his associate who gave me a massage and talked me through my struggle, I was able to relax. I finally made the conscious decision to stop fighting myself and was able to produce work that surprised me.

I had never done work like this before. I didn’t know it was in me. It was exciting, fulfilling, invigorating. And yet, I haven’t produced anything since. Although it’s always hovering in the “back” of my mind. The necessity of left brain activity in my regular work day keeps me from delving into the intangeable right. I battle every day. That practical chatter cannot justify my taking the time necessary to transition to the “la la land” where my art emerges.

And yet, I love my left brain. Not only am I able to think things through to conclusion, understand words and numbers, and troubleshoot problems, I need my left brain to contain the energy that comes from the beauty of my right. The next step is to learn how to manage the back…and forth. Jill Bolte Taylor was able to determine a plan while in the midst of stroke.

I need my right to allow the left to do its work: creating structure that allows me to function properly, accomplishing what I have to as well as what I want to; managing my time so I can create the space I need for my right brain to flow; planning my finances and the steps I need to take to acquire income that will allow me to explore my right brain, as well as develop my left; and allowing my right brain the freedom to roam.

“Suppose that we carry a magnetic compass about in the neighbourhood of powerful magnets. The needle waggles as we move and comes to rest pointing in a new direction whenever we stand still in a new position.

“Suppose that instead of a single compass we carry an arrangement of many magnetic needles, large and small, swung so that they influence one another, some able only to swing horizontally, others vertically, others hung freely. As we move, the perturbations in this system will be very complicated. But for every position in which we place it there will be a final position of rest for all the needles into which they will in the end settle down, a general poise for the whole system. But even a slight displacement may set the whole assemblage of needles busily readjusting themselves.

“One further complication. Suppose that while all the needles influence one another, some of them respond only to some of the outer magnets among which the system is moving. The reader can easily draw a diagram if his imagination needs a visual support.

“The mind is not unlike such a system if we imagine it to be incredibly complex. The needles are our interests, varying in their importance, that is in the degree to which any movement they make involves movement in the other needles. Each new disequilibrium, which a shift of position, a fresh situation, entails, corresponds to a need; and the wagglings which ensue as the system rearranges itself are our responses, the impulses through which we seek to meet the need.

“Often the new poise is not found until long after the original disturbance. Thus states of strain can arise which last for years.”

from Science and Poetry by I. A. Richards, 1926

* SPOILER ALERT *

I recently finished the book Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. It is about Victor Mancini, a man trying to understand his world, the world, through the clouds of sex addiction and his mother’s slow decline. But Victor’s not the only one. His best friend, Denny, is also working his way through his addictions, and Dr. Paige Marshall, an acquaintance at his mother’s nursing home, is trying to understand through genetics.

Victor and Denny work in a Colonial village, doing ‘tricks’ for tourists, under a strict “Lord High Governor” who will put a worker in the stocks for wearing cologne, reading a newspaper, having a goatee…anything that’s not authentic in 1730s America. But Victor needs to make extra money to keep his mother in St. Anthony’s. To do that, he has developed an elaborate scheme going to restaurants and pretending to choke. Victor chooses the restaurants very carefully, making sure to have dinner where there will be people with money. These people have their own versions of empty lives and saving Victor from choking turns them around. Suddenly, each has new-found confidence, they feel capable, fulfilled, rejuvenated. They are heroes. And they keep that feeling alive every time they send Victor a check. For his birthday, whichever day it is that he’s told that particular savior, and the various troubles Victor concocts in the letters and thank you notes he sends his heroes.

As it turns out, money is not the only thing Victor gets out of being revived from choking. He is the recipient not only of his heroes’ money, but of their attention, affection, even their love. Immediately after receiving the Heimlich, he lay in their arms sobbing, hearing “you’re ok” whispered into his ear. These might be the most important moments in Victor’s daily life as someone tells him he’s ok, just as he is. He’s able to cry openly under the guise of almost dying and be comforted, even if it’s by a stranger.

Victor’s off-beat mother did her best to teach him to create his own world, from the time he was a child. She encouraged him to draw a map of what he saw the world to be. She spray painted on a mountain, using Victor’s body as a stencil, leaving his silhouette. Even when he was gone, he would still be there.

The unreal is more powerful than the real.
Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.
But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

If you can change the way people think, she said. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. If you do that, you can change the way people live their lives. And that’s the only lasting thing you can create.

After wrestling with where he fits into the world as everyone else sees it, he finally chooses, with confidence, to create a world as he wants it to be. And to his surprise, his seemingly unperceptive friend Denny contributes to Victor seeing the path to take.

An odd little book, Choke seems at first glance to be about sex, drugs, and a young man supporting his mother, while keeping emotional distance. In reality, it’s about the struggle to find a place in the world, a struggle that we all deal with. I was left at ease at the end of this book, feeling as if I can create my world just the way I want it to be.

I hope whoever reads this will bear with me as I haven’t written in many, many years. So the tone and style seen here will change, morph, and hopefully develop. I will be experimenting and discovering as I ponder. I hope to use this blog as a vehicle to get all the stuff out of my head and be able to see it more clearly.

Recently helping my elderly parents for 3-4 years changed me in many ways. I became more assertive to get what was necessary for them. I learned so much about them and our relationships. And about me as a product of the two of them put together. Of course, I think about having taken them for granted for too long, as seems to happen to too many people. But I don’t dwell on that thought because I’m so thankful for what we became before each of them passed.

Mom died in 2004, and I continued to be the main driving force in Dad’s care. That time with him had a huge impact on me. We became buddies. And we had complete trust in each other. I’m seeing now that there are a lot of things I seem to only be able to get myself to do when it’s for someone else, rather than myself.

Having been in limbo since Dad died in 2007, I decided it might be helpful to write some of the random and abstract things in my head to try and make sense of them. Maybe then I can figure out where to go next.