The total package

I'm having a brain problem right now. 

I remember when I was a kid there was always some complaining going on about whether reading junk was really reading and people trying to Save The Children From Trash.  Me, I loved trash, it improved both my vocabulary and my working knowledge of human sexuality and I am all for both.  And I believe that the more you read the more your sense of nuance improves.  Which is to say, you grow out of junk the way you outgrow Twinkies. 

Tastes like plastic, but EVERY once in a while you just gotta.  Maybe even a lot.  And then one day, revulsion (I'm trying to find my revulsion for fudge iced yellow cake right now).

Which is fine.  I don't approve of calling books bad names because someone somewhere decided they weren't respectable enough.  In the end the quality of the writing shapes you and sends you in new directions.

Which brings me to my brain problem.  I seem to be going in a new direction.  I had a long no reading period after my dad died, and then I was more into - pop non-fiction.  Some of which was great. And satisfying, because it grappled with big modern questions of survival and understanding. 
But fiction grapples with survival and understanding right?

Not the fiction I'd been reading.

So over the last 2 years maybe I've been reading again, but sputtering over it - 12 books at once, not much focus, trouble tracking complex ideas over the structure of the book.  I feel like an old dirty engine, not quite turning over, idling roughly before dying again.  Feeling like I used to be smart.   No - AGILE, I used to be agile. 

Then, last weekend I came to be hanging out with the parents of someone I went to grade school with.

She was the hippy mom when I was a child, who taught yoga and went back to school and worked as a physical therapist and fed the geese where they lived on the lake and worked for the environment all those years ago.  She took me for my very first walk in the woods when I was in the first grade.  It was magical, with rocks and lichen, like nothing I had ever seen or felt.  I told you about her a few months ago actually, which makes it especially weird I should run into her NOW. 

We talked about oh - people we knew in common, and how my hometown is bad and good, and how to change the world in small pieces and later her husband came downstairs and we talked about human potential and The Trial and the doors that are ours to walk through if only we know how and Slavic literature and the Good Soldier Svejk - which is one of the 17 books I am 3 chapters into right now - and she mentioned the Master and Margarita, which coincidentally, I had bought a month or too ago, but hadn't felt up to starting.  

And there is a fantastic story about THAT that I can't really tell you 'cause it's about their stuff but it ends in a oil painting like a Russian fairy tale and it made me glad to be alive.
It made me remember not feeling rusty, made me remember agility, it made me remember this piece of myself I've been looking for, and I feel like I just backfired through my own carburetor and woke up.  

I confessed to a few of my friends Monday this realization, that really, I'm an intellectual.  Over the howls of laughter and my defensive explanations - Bookish Wendy said "dude - it's like you're coming out of the closet - but we all already knew..." which is mortifyingly accurate - came awareness: I have sort of gotten into a place where I suppress this bit of myself - at least partly because it has no non-recreational outlet in my life.  Suppress it so hard that the skills, the habit of complex though is corroded.  I've been neglecting my brain.  Maybe I had to.  10 years ago I was all brain and nothing else and I had to learn to be heart and body too. 

And I did.  

I think its hysterical and inevitable that I discovered yoga NOW.  Of course.  Because now I need balance and integration (as well as the calm to survive this economy and its et ceteras) not merely the brute strength to change.  

Where was I?

Oh, brain problem.

My goopy old, gunk-clogged engine of an intellect is coming alive and I am glad to see it but boy howdy am I worried about the damage that may have been done.  I've been reading more, and struggling with serious, complicated paths through other people's thoughts.  I'm 50 pages into a dozen things, digging my mental fingers into the rock, looking for traction and it hurts like weightlifting after a 6 month break to go a bit deeper than the facile.  

Its all about fear too, isn't it?  What if I can't deliver, what if I'm not so all-fired clever after all, what if I dig and come up short? What if the brain that is the one thing about myself I've never doubted turns out to be a thin shield. 
I am always surprised to rediscover how little maturity and experience really shield you from fear and change.  Stress, yeah,  experience lets you eat stress for breakfast, but self-doubt not so much.

Ah well, I'm only ever happy when I'm evolving. 

Comments

[k]

You know what? Most people are driving me insane, and you're not posting. Is there a correlation?

[Emily]

I'm sure your brain isn't the same as it was 10 (0r however many) years ago. Whose is? Although you may have lost the habit of thinking in a collegiate-type way, your life experiences have changed you, helping you to grow and think in new ways. That's a good thing. The people I know who haven't changed and grown since college seem stunted to me. You aren't stunted. You've walked farther down the road we all take to our own humanity. When you revisit that older method of thinking, you'll bring all your recent experiences with you, and your mind will be richer for them. Just make sure to talk to people about what you're learning. It's amazing how much that interaction helps!

[Chandler (formerly Mome-rath)]

I dunno—you might doubt your agility, but for me reading your blog is like going to yoga class. I huff and puff until I finally achieve the blogging equivalent of a slightly wonky Triangle pose, and then I look to my left and there you are, pulling off the One-Legged King Pigeon with nary a blink.

That's agility. You've got it in spades, and we, your readers, love every verbal asana.

[em]

After reading these comments I think it would be very cool to spend a weekend listening to you all as you get yourselves up to speed. Because though I'm an intellectual too, I think the self doubt is running too strong at the moment to join in. What you said about the 10 years it took you to get out of your head? It took me a little longer.

That little throw away half a sentence about the doors that are ours to walk through if we only knew how broke my heart.

[Kim]

"Its all about fear too, isn't it? What if I can't deliver, what if I'm not so all-fired clever after all, what if I dig and come up short? "

What were you doing listening inside my head last Thursday evening at dinner after my son graduated? I swear this went through my head listening to my ex-H, father, eldest son & youngest son's girlfriend discuss the cultural ramifications of social network media. That would be a 72, 52, 18 & 15 year old (engineer, social worker, future anthropologist and a really cute, funny, super bright, red head that likes my youngest son). And they are all smarter and more inciteful than me - what if they figure that out?!

However, if I keep pulling off dinners like I did that night, I think I can stay ahead of them for just a little bit longer. :)

[Kim]

I'm right with you on the creaky brain issue. You, obviously, are smarter than I am. I just got readmitted into my Ph.D. program and have two years to finish. Haven't read an academic book in 3 years. Better get my shit together quickly. Perhaps I should have just tried reading again first...

Best of luck on your intellectual journey.

[Leah]

Man oh man. YOU Thought You Are NOT Intelectual? Well.
You are. There; I said the obvious.
Isn't it queer that we cannot see the obvious in ourselves?

I suggest, while you are trying to deal with the Economy and Stress and Stuff, that you pick one book (1) and read it; give yourself permission to re-read the three chapters you read already. I think you will find you follow it much better and that you will regain faith in your intelect.
I live alone and don't listen to electronic noise. I have found that reading aloud to myself is very nice. I like reading aloud. I like listening to myself read me a story. You could try it and see what you think.

Fear makes me very Stupid.

Intelect isn't everything. (sigh) It is fun though.

[Lisa]

I really like the way you connect the dots. Seriously.

[Janine]

Hmmm. My life has run in parallel with yours, apparently! I'm trying to stop the habit I've fallen into of re-reading (for the umpteenth time) mystery novels that weren't that great to begin with. My husband--a real polymath-- keeps a reading journal in which he summarizes each book he's finished. I admire that kind of mental discipline, and I'm beginning to think, like you, that it's time to put some shine on this creaking brain. Thanks.

[Lynn]

Oh, you're clearly agile now. Perhaps less so than you used to be, but I didn't know you then. However, it is clear now that you are agile now - it's simply bred in your bone. That's part of who you are. So enjoy it when you want to; don't if you don't. As Laurie said, it's only sitting still that's the problem.

[Laurie]

I always think of a postcard I have: "if you rest, you rust".

[Joan]

I like to think that coming here is quality brain food too.

[Michelle]

I am invoking all of my own powers of intellect right now but this is all I can come up with:

:)

Also, I heart you. Big time.

[Bullwinkle]

What Lizbon said. ;) My brain isn't awake yet.

Thinking is like a riding a bicycle. And from the outside, we who read your blog, know this is just self-doubt and that you are just fine.

[Gretch]

If it helps, reading you blows the gunk outta my engine. In a good way.

[naomi]

This is yet another of the many times when you post something that's a lot like some of the thoughts that have been rattling around my head, but which is better expressed than I've managed. (With some of the obvious personal differences, of course.) Thank you.

[Jocelyn]

Well, Master and Margarita will definitely help blow gunk out of the neural engine, no doubt. And while I truly do recognize that self doubt (mirror, mirror on the wall), based on what I know of you, I have to agree with Lizbon. You're going to be just fine.

[Lizbon]

Yep.

I realize someone else's assurances don't necessarily count for much, but I can GUARANTEE you that brain of yours hasn't withered away. Nor do I think it's been as dormant as you think it is. Ahem.