Sunday, June 12, 2005 The right side of my brain
My housemates and I pool our books on shelves in the living room, and someone added a new batch. I didn't notice for weeks, but now I have options. It's great. I would just read the same four or five books I always do, if not for her.
I picked up one called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, because I'd heard of it before. My first high school, my weird hippie school where we called all the teachers by their first name offered a Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain course, and I will remember that they did forever, because one time a boy I had a secret crush on wrote it on a class schedule as "Drawing on the Right Side of My Balls."
The premise of the book is that it will teach one to draw by teaching one to see. It came out in the late 70s, I think, and I'm a little afraid that it's going to try and empower me. That's never pleasant. It's supposed to be good, though. If one believes what it says about itself in the introduction, it will tap into powers I never knew I had and change my life.
I can't draw. I wish I could, because it seems like a lot of fun. I'm skeptical that the author's techniques will work on me, though.
For one thing, the book is supposed to teach me to send tasks to my under-utilized right brain, which will do them for me by magic. It seems so reasonable, but my right brain is the one that, according to the book, is supposed to have been recoginizing faces for me all these years.
Right brain's been dropping the ball. I often can't recognize people unless they're in exactly the same context I first met them, and they haven't changed their appearance in any way, including changing clothes. That's one reason it was so easy to be a socialite of the Key West bum scene when I used to hang around down there: I was able to tell who everyone was. That was the guy painted silver. That was the guy painted gold and wearing a wizard's cape. That was the pregnant girl who kept trying to sell me drugs. Right away, I recognized them.
Certain customers at the beauty parlor are beginning to act hurt, because I know they've been coming in every couple weeks for the ten months I've working there, and they know that I know, but I can't remember their names. "I know I'm no Brad Pitt," one regular customer said, "but, come on!" I was puzzled, but later on, I used all the brain I could and worked it out. He assumed that if he was Brad Pitt, I would not have asked if he had an appointment. People attend Hopkins because they are very intelligent. Anyway, I should have told poor chagrined Brad that it was my right brain's doing and left it at that.
My other problem with unleashing the power of my right brain is more dire, I'm afraid. The book tells me that I'm not to read ahead. Instead, I'm to do each excercise as it comes, and I'm supposed to use white paper and a pencil.
I don't have a pencil. I've looked all through the house, and there are no pencils here that I've found. We have pens and markers and eye makeup, and that's it. My one housemate goes to art school, but I keep forgetting to ask her, and I would feel bad wasting real art supplies on what will probably prove to be kind of a flash in the pan (Know thyself). I write names in a large appointment book with a number two pencil all workday long, and no one from work is going to care if I borrow one, but it never occurs to me until I'm home already.
My brain may not have any sides to help me. posted by Frenz | 6/12/2005 05:25:00 PM
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