Unite Unite Unite, or at least try.
After finally forcing myself to do the reading assignment, it
occurred to me that not only have I been failing to unify my hemispheres,
I am respectively failing to utilize either side of my brain effectively on
their own. While my shortcomings are more often with my Sign mind, where
"rational, logical representation of reality" and "ordering
thought into communicable syntactic form" is the arduous task at hand, it
doesn't necessarily follow, though I thought so initially, that my writing has
the characteristics of "richness, depth, and originality" assigned to
the Design mind (216,217). Yes, I would call my thought process and writing
non-linear, as I scribble down whatever comes to mind, and yes, I am quite
positive that my right hemisphere is the boss of me. I have never, however,
been loyal to the pure randomness of my emotions and thoughts. They're always
censored, and for what reasons, I don't know. I cannot recall a time that I
wrote purely, from my heart, without quickly replacing it with a nicer, safer,
or more intelligent sounding interpretation of what surfaced from my pen. And
so, all my life, I sat in awe reading beautiful prosaic songs and ramblings
from authors and artists, wondering how I could articulate such emotion,
honesty, and brevity, while at the same time unifying my writing with the most
sensible, logical sequence. Alright, I decided, this was that chance to learn.
According to Writing the Natural Way, writing is "a
constant back-and-forth movement between tentative vision and emerging parts
and sequences, to a more clearly delineated whole" (223). Even as I was
writing this, I wasn't doing so well in the "clearly delineated
whole" aspect, but I accepted this as part of the
"back-and-forth" involved in writing the "natural way". As
I continued reading I decided "Journal" would be my cluster word in
which to spur my creativity, and before I knew it I had words, sentences, and
arrows scribbled in the margins. Through this process, I realized I was scared
out of my mind about this assignment-- I know I'm not the best writer, but I
felt like I had something to prove. Perhaps that I'm not the worst or maybe,
that I'm better than most or at least, that I can follow directions. I
frantically scribbled a mini-rant about that, and I developed, or so I thought,
an entire theme for my cluster to be unified under. I later discovered this was
the first of several mini "felt-shifts", each with their own
"direction to follow" and "complex image" developing, but
all of which failed to connect the "randomness of [my] clustering"
(225). As quickly as my inspiration came it failed me, and I trailed off once
again into undirected ramblings. Like a stalling car, I'd start in one
direction, sure that I was on a roll for good, only to have my engine go out
and to regress. As I continued, one bit of clustering flaking off into another,
a slight tingling turned to an inkling which crawled up my back and hit me
upside the head- a larger, more dramatic felt-shift had emerged. I could
incorporate these thoughts, these frantic doodles in the margins as an overall
process I went though to create this-- this journal entry, depicting my desperate
attempts to prove something to everyone. Could it be? Was this the ULTIMATE
felt-shift? So it seemed, "through the writing the trial vision continues
to evolve" (229). And it certainly had. I did feel it, the relief,
happiness, the realization that a logical structure as best as I could create
it had evolved. Putting the entry to the test, I reviewed it. I was honest with
myself as the thoughts came. I didn't care about sequence, how it all was going
to work together or if it would impress people enough. I just wrote, and then,
organized. And here it is. And my ultimate question- Did I... you know...
hammer my thoughts well enough?? Well, I employed everything in the margins in
one form or another, and to me that's something to be commended in and of itself,
and while I have much to be desired in the ways of eloquence and making every
word count, I'd say, as far as my own writing is concerned, this was a valiant
first bludgeoning.
