The pawed and the painted

Shit title, but, see, I decided to take a picture of the cats who were looking so perfectly positioned.

And, of course, my lost-art was in the background. On the easel... something I played with... look, it's crap.... but, well, I got the paints out...

No, I don't know what I was doing either. The cats are clearly far more aesthetically pleasing.... but at least I got the paints out.

In theory, this summer, and indeed, as it looks, for the rest of my life, I should have plenty of time to redevelop the habit. I need to make a commitment. Every day. Something. It needs to become a habit again. Go through the first month of forcing myself and then find a route back to pleasure and in time, perhaps, some skill.

It would be good to stimulate the old right hemisphere... ah yes, I am reading Iain McGilchrist's The Matter With Things. Impressive: 14% so far, of the 3000 pages. What he claims is that people with my psychiatric diagnosis are left hemisphere dominant. Yet so much of my thinking and the things I like about myself seem to be right hemisphere traits.

The first part of the book is all hemisphere stuff with loads of neuroscience research - usually people who had strokes or lesions in one hemisphere or the other and how that impacted them.

Certainly, some things I have experienced - time slowing down/thoughts speeding up, hypomania,and something else that I can't recall... ah, irritability - seem to be either left hemisphere excitation or right hemisphere damage/limitation. But then, as I said, the thinking, the creative thinking, the interconnectedness, the uncertainty, all that is the reverse. Maybe, I thought, I have a whole brain issue that switches sides?

I sat reading in the garden for a while and watched the male and female blackbird interact, a conversation in body and sound. She bosses him about. He pleads. She threatens. He is all scrawny and dull-feathered. She looks just fine.