Category: Brain

Brain, Reading

Taken Literally, part II

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Inside the brain of the reader, a transformation takes place. Words may become pictures to enjoy, or mysteries to be solved, or conversations to engage in. Sometimes readers surrender to a text and sometimes they scrap with it. Reading is woven into the rich fabric of experience, and it cannot be separated from speech, pleasure, challenge, play, and curiosity. As much as it is an activity, reading is a habit of mind.

From part I of Taken Literally on SmirkPretty, October 2011

It is not an assignment. I require nothing. No chide or nudge prompts him. I do not even issue an invitation.

“Hey, Mom. Look at this.” He plops down on the red sofa and I scoot over to make room. Not too much room, though. I wrap my arm around his belly as he flips open his latest library book. Out loud, he reads.

“What’s the main ingredient in puppy biscuits?”

I shrug. “Bacon?”

He looks up at me through his wild hair and grins. “Collie-flour!”

We both crack up and fall into each other. He turns to the next page. “Which vegetables do little dogs like best?”

“I dunno.” I screw my face up. “Carrots?”

“Pup-peas!” He hollers.

We groan and moan and giggle through the rest of the book. My boy’s voice is low waves rolling the jokes up to where they crash on the punch line’s bright shore.

Here is register. Inflection. Vocabulary. Comic timing. This is no longer the dog paddle. It’s freestyle in open water.

He rides the current. Without even taking a breath, he plunges through words that have never shown up on a spelling list. Ingredient. Biscuit. Vegetable. We splash over and under every page together. Flitting through the sea of high-frequency wheres and yous are these surprises, these oddities. Rafting. Sunbathing. Hunting. He does not slow. Happened. Bloodhound. Goldfish. Tough.

He is doing this. My boy is reading.

And laughing.

Reading.

And surging.

This is not homework. It is not an assignment. He is choosing

reading.

And loving

reading.

Brain, Creativity

Things I’ve Forgotten

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Conjure the nouns, alert the secret self, taste the darkness. . . speak softly, and write any old word that wants to jump out of your nerves onto the page. . .

-Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

The mark on the door jamb. The combination. The locket. The circle on the calendar. The taste of his mouth. The recipe. The receipt. The dice. The route.

Changing the filter. The menu. The tooth. The thanks before dinner. The linebacker’s name. The sequence. The shoes. The envelope. The year. The rules.

The phone number. Her favorite song. The breast exam. The pull-out couch. The green felt. The tickets. The Frontline. The stamp. The 29th president. The repairman. The will.

That I’m not straight. The French for erase. The first knot. The neighbor’s wife. The soup pot. How to change a tire. The promise. The lyrics. The sound of his snoring. The pattern. The painter. The cat. The buttons. The lie.

How deep to plant them. How hard to press. The hip. The question. The punch line. The yes. The penguin. The turn signal. The fry oil. The way in.  Continue reading “Things I’ve Forgotten” →

Brain, Growing Up

Rapprochement

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How far away can I go and still be connected?
What can I — and do I — want to do for myself?
And exactly how much of me am I willing to give up for love or simply for shelter?

At several points in our lives, we may insist: I’ll do it myself. I’ll live by myself. I’ll solve it myself. I’ll make my own decisions. And having made that decision, we then may find ourselves scared to death of standing alone.

– Judit Viorst, Necessary Losses

Sometimes, we don’t even know this old push-pull is operating until our minds yank us into position and force us to see.
 
Or, in my case, the body does the yanking. At the start of the new year, it all comes rushing, this longed-for independence. No men are waiting in the wings. The ex has moved on to a new girlfriend. The condo is galloping towards me. What happens? I fall.
 
And fall again.
 
And end up in urgent care.
 
In a cast. On meds. Then in a splint. Unable to work for days on end.
 
Then wrench my back. And suffer mightily.
 
And retreat to the safe but suffocating confines of my family’s care.
 
Some part of me refuses to step forward into the open mouth of adulthood. A long-ago self insists that this is too much. It wobbles. I slip. My center of gravity tilts. I stumble. I need. I reach backwards and downwards for the kind of help that children demand.
 
Fear is a clever thing. I does an end-run around rationality. It kicks the legs out from under the boldest stance.
 
And so, I convalesce. I gather strength. Someday soon — Next week? Next month? — I will be able to come to a sitting position on the side of my bed without grasping for a handhold, without gasping for breath. And then I will make my way down the stairs. Out the door. Into the wide open day.
 
I just have to keep acting against the illusion of falling, the trickery of my fright. Alone is never alone, not really. All around, these kindnesses. These people. These approaches moving in the opposite direction of rapprochement. This mind more powerful than fear.
 
These ways forward I have not yet found. These secrets, waiting to reveal themselves.
 
—
Viorst, Judith. Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow. Fireside, New York: 1986
 

Brain, Reading

Taken Literally

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Learning can be effortless, continual, permanent – and also pleasant. . .  We can learn without effort if we are interested in what we are doing (or in what someone else is doing), free from confusion, and given assistance when we seek it.

Frank Smith, The Book of Learning and Forgetting

We are halfway through Year Three. Sirius black is on the loose, Dementors are terrorizing the countryside, and Crookshanks has it in for Scabbers. In a parallel universe, Bug’s Halloween costume is already assembled. About once a week, he pulls the cloak from its hanger and tries on his glasses, just to make sure everything still fits.

In the evenings, my mother and I bustle around the kitchen preparing dinner while Bug snaps Legos into intricate models at the table. Chattering about the latest excitement at Hogwarts usually compels my boy to spare some focus for the conversation. In the middle of a recent re-cap of the previous night’s chapter, mother asks, “I just wonder when he is going to start reading.” Continue reading “Taken Literally” →