“With
handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on what’s
important,” he said. He added, after pausing to consider, “Maybe it helps you
think better.”
I am a
hypergraphiac. I learned that from The Midnight Disease: The Drive
to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty.
(That came out in 2004, so I've called myself a hypergraphiac for a
decade now. She never uses that form of the word, but she speaks of
hypergraphia.
Now, just as
an article in the SF Chronicle on Marian Diamond, neuroanatomy professor at UC
Berkeley said back in December 2010, she "lectures the old-fashioned
way - by writing on a blackboard. She expects her students to take notes with
pen and paper so they can better absorb the information."
As I was
telling Jonathan during our discussion on Musicophilia, reading the newspaper
gets my brain into gear. It also fuels me (to mix metaphors). I
interact with the newspaper the way that Daddy did with his red pencil but I
use pen. I underline and sometimes make margin notes. So... here is
a Day in the Life of a Hypergraphiac.
The night
before you, who usually fall asleep the minute your head hits the pillow,
didn't fall asleep last night. So you read some pages bout lines from
Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing--the next book for discussion in the
JoMama Book Club--and ate the big glass storage bowl of arugula with brussel
sprouts, balsamic vinegar and walnuts. Before one you fell asleep and
rose again before 5:00. You prepared your ritualistic liquid breakfast
tray--hot Earl Grey loose-leaf tea from Parkside Market, warm milk, orange
juice--and settled down to read the rest of the introduction of Much Ado from
the big text book you used in 1967 or so--the one Hardin Craig edited,
published in 1961. (He died, I see, in 1968.) Then you devote your
usual two hours to the SF Chronicle. Today's headlines are "Google,
Microsoft will install kill switch." You also see that Obama has
sent 300 troops to Iraq--even though you specifically asked him not to--and
Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz have written a Wall Street Journal critique of
Obama's false statements. (The SF Chronicles gives a few of Dick Cheney's
own statements that took us into Iraq in the first place.) France has
the third largest Jewish population in the world--right after Israel and the
US. But lots are leaving France for Israel. You will look that up
later in French to get ready for View and Chew (Déguster,
Visionner et Converser), the Francophile/francophone group you join once a
month. You also see an article dating the Neanderthals to and you learn
that the Sima de los Huesos was in the news even 25 years ago, when it was
first discovered. What were you doing in 1989, that you failed to learn
about this? Dating your second husband-to-be? Surviving an
earthquake? You will look that up in Spanish, as well as King Felipe VI,
who took the place of Juan Carlos right after Spain failed to win in the World
Cup. Someone named McCarthy is rising in the House of
Representative--since Cantor lost in Virginia to tea party David Brat. A
college named Corinthian may have to close because it's lied to perspective
students about rates of employment and falsified grades and other matters.
You really want to read about the diminishing blackbird population, but
there just isn't time.
No comments:
Post a Comment