May 22, 2005

• Topic: Holy f’in s#$@, if you ever read a post, read this one:

  
  

  Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, something has happened.  Something has happened to the way I think, and before you get all weirded out by this post, I want you to know that some real differences have begun to happen in my life the past 3 days.

  
  

  Suddenly…I remember things whereas before I didn’t.  You know when you read a page in a book, and completely forget what you were reading, or don’t forget, but realize you weren’t paying attention.  Well…I think that’s been the case for me for most of my life.  But…suddenly, that’s not happening.  I’ve never told stories about things I’ve read, and suddenly, I’m telling my mom about these stories I’ve been reading in America’s Best Travel Writing 2004, one story called “14 ways to describe a void,” or something to that extent, about various people’s perspectives of like in the Sahara desert ranging from Niger up to Algeria.  And then I just read a story about state fair’s in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

  
  

  OK…let me try to explain a bit more.  I’ve always been completely daunted by professors.  How can anyone get up and speak at length about something?  And I remember once I was at a Phish concert in high school, and was overlistening someone reciting set-lists from concerts that happened years ago.  And yet…I would go home that night, and couldn’t really tell you more than one song they played. 

  
  

  Part of my beef w/ college is that I learned nothing.  And while there is room for improvement, I am left to wonder what role I played in my own college failure.  How is it that I could attend lectures, and absorb nothing?  And then this winter, where I went on a streak of having political posts…I showed that I was able to use my mind analytically, but not once did I tell my roommate was I was blogging.  All I could say was…”check out the intensity of these debates,” but my mind was never really able to hold onto all that was going on and present it in a cogent way.

  
  

  And then there’s my fear of public speaking.  When they would go around and take attendence, and come to me, “Dan Lilienthal,” and they’d say my name wrong, for no reason at all my heart would be pounding.  I’d actually spend the minute or two leading up to me practicing my name, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to say it when the time came.  And that’s not just because it’s a tricky name, it’s because when I’m put on the spot, my brain kind of freezes. 

  
  

  And for the last 3+ months, I’ve been in a depression, and just the other day I put a finger exactly on the problem.  “I can’t have conversations.”  I couldn’t talk about anything, except sort of brooding about life, and I’ve become comfortable w/ that, but even that I was finding myself lacking the words.

  
  

  But…it all started to change the other day when I started doing the accent thing.  Because I was finding a way to connect my speech with my thinking.  And I want to explore this more further, but I’m having trouble going back to how I was before, and to be honest, I don’t want to.

  
  

  In the last 12 hours, I have gotten myself to bike about 20miles and run a few miles.  I’ve folded my laundry the neatest it’s ever been folded in my life.  I’ve come to the full realization that I need to find a job and I need to get myself health insurance.  I’ve come to the realization that while I am interested in travelling, I can’t even take myself seriously about it right now.  Most people plan travelling a bit more than me…i literally just check out flights and think, “yeah…maybe i’ll just somehow fly to Israel in like September.”  Now…somehow, I’ve managed to live and do a half-decent job up until now.  I’ve had friends, got into a difficult school, I did graduate, I did do all this Outward Bound stuff and such.  But all the while…I’ve been gaining little.  I’ve been more like a kid when you give them a baby to handle, but they don’t want to handle it, they’re kind of scared, uncertain.  I think that’s how i’d describe myself most of my life.

  
  

  But…this isn’t just a post about my thoughts.  I can literally feel a different part of my brain being used, being strained.  You know when you’re really at thought w/ something, and it kind of hurts a bit in your head, just above your eyebrows, the front part of your brain.  That’s where I’m feeling it.  Sometimes I take note of what part of my brain I feel thoughts coming from…for example, I just relaxed from this “new mode of thought” I’ve been in, and I immediately noticed my thinking coming more from the back of my head, and I immediately noticed my intensity relaxing, and my mind floating more into creative/dreamy mode.  It’s the part of my brain I use when I write.

  
  

  For the past few months, I’ve sort of been in this dream mode, the back/creative part of my brain going to work.  I could be in a room of people, and say nothing, almost feeling myself drift out of the picture, to the point that my thoughts would be, “Here I am, in a room of people,” instead of, “OK…so we’re going to begin on Appalachain Trail map 4, and make our way down to map 3, and then we’re going to have a pick-up on the 4th day at Paw Paw Benz alongside the C&O Canal.”  All those detail type things have eluded me, COMPLETELY. 

  
  

  So…I started to realize that when I spoke w/ my “foreign” accent, I was actually using a different part of my brain.  I wasn’t creating a character, I actually got up in my room and practiced giving a speech, and it came out so elegant, as if I was writing.  And just tonight, the accent disappeared and gave way to my normal voice, but I realized that I was tapping into the front part of my brain.  If you burrow (might be the wrong word) your eyebrows, that’s the part of the brain that I’m referring to.

  
  

  Shit…they talk about only using 10% of your brain, I feel like I’ve been using only .00001% of it.  I don’t know how many conversations I’ve been a part of that I haven’t really been a part of, I guess I may have developed a knack for the smile and nod. 

  
  

  Yeah…and so I started having this conversation w/ my mom, and god bless her heart for all the anxiety I must be putting her through.  But…the idea came up to work for a unviersity in any way, so that I might be able to take grad classes for free.  And since now I’m thinking a bit more practically and focussed, instead of having this vague feeling of what life should be like that come from my creative/back side of the brain, I began thinking how wonderful it would be to work on a college campus.  I could be the person who works w/ RA’s, I could work in student services for mental health issues, I could be an advisor.  All I know is I don’t want to, nor do I really have the means to disappear this coming year.  And, more importantly, I know that it’s going to take me a bit of time to see if this change is real and significant.

  
  

  But I really feel like I’m remembering events, or at least paying attention to them more, and not drifting off into my imagination.  I don’t think I can really tell you what the movie Sideways is about, I posted about it when I saw it, but I spent most of the movie thinking, “hey, he’s a writer, i want to be a write,” and “he likes wine, I like wine.” 

  
  

  Just yesturday, I caught Democracy Now! on television here on Long Island!!!  I was quite excited, being that I watched it daily over the winter (don’t remember what I watched, only the general idea that it’s corporate-free news and it basically presents the news at you would expect it).  Anyways…they showed an extended excerpt of a speech by Bill Moyers given at the conclusion of a media reform conference held in St. Louis.  And it’s remarkable that I’m remembering that…It’s kind of strange that the whole left bar of my xanga is full of these political things, and now I don’t even go to those sites anymore.  I feel like I’m attracted to interesting/exotic/intellectual things, and in some way I try to collect them, but maybe I’ve never fully grasped them, or, I only grasp them in a temporary way..again, the brain thing.

  
  

  Well…I’m actually really digging this new-found voice inside my head.  It’s like having a new friend.  I went running, and instead of just being, “oh…I’m tired,” I was saying, “hey, you, come on, pick it up already.”  It was this voice of maturity, saying, “hey, get your at together.”  It was my reason coming to take over for my imagination.

  
  

  Literally…the inner voice within me has changed, and it’s something real, and strange, and I can sense my creative side thinking, “wait…this is kind of scary actually,” but to be honest, my logic side is saying, “A lot of good you’ve done us so far!”  It’s kind of interesting to think of it as a battle between the two, since they’re both important, but at this junction in my life, I’m desperately needing this adult thinking side of my brain to kick in.

  
  

  Relaxed dan: “I’m looking around my room, there’s a towel lying around, hmmm…not really sure what to say, laddy dah, laddy day

  
  

  New dan: “See, what the F was that.  I can look at that same towel, but stay on task.  It’s just a friggin’ towel. Just because you can see it, doesn’t mean it needs to consume your mind.  And relaxed Dan is completely directionless.  I’m more like a drill seargeant, I know what needs to get done…although I’ll admit, things are kind of in a jam thanks to you know who.”

  
  

  Relaxed dan: “Just sitting in the room.  No thoughts really…just letting the evening slide by.”

  
  

  New dan: I need to make a goal for tomorrow.  It’s Sunday, so it’ll be a chunky NYT arriving.  I’m going to try to read a good amount of it, and then come back here and digest it.  See how much I can recall from memory.  No more copying links to show I’ve found something interesting, I need to retain it.  My creative side has asked a million good questions, and at least half of them might have been answered if I was around, or at least, I may have remembered the questions, instead of filling up a forrest of notebooks.

  
  

  Alright…let’s call it a night, and hope that this phenomena continues on tomorrow.

  
  

  OK…so I quickly did a further investigation on my theory, and did a google search on “parts of the brain.”  So, there are 2 main parts of the brain, the cerebral cortex and the brainstem, each containing more parts within.  Within the cerebral cortex, we find four lobes.  The front lobe is called the frontal lobe.  The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that I was describing earlier, and it’s the part of the brain that is used in speaking, planning, and making judgements.  Behind the frontal lobe we have the parietal lobe, and the parietal lobe is the part of the brain involved in feeling.

  
  

  So…this totally makes sense.  The two parts of the brain that I was describing before, the front and the back, are actually the frontal and the parietal.  These 2 dan’s are literally two different lobes within my cerebral cortex!!!!  There’s still the two other lobes to deal with, the occipital (site) and temporal (sound), but those aren’t really my concerns right now. 

  
  

  And now i’m reading that ADD might actually be related to larger than normal parietal lobes.  oh…this is getting too much.

  
  

   

  • 12:32 am
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