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Art After the Stroke, Part One: Seeing Every Thing
I've promised to write this up for a while now, so here's an actual start on it. This is part one, about the change in perception I noticed after my stroke, which happened in the wee hours of January 5, 2011.
After the stroke, once my recovery seemed to be going very well and I had been out of the hospital for a number of days, the excellent neurologist who treated me had a few things to say in case they came in handy. Those things were about some changes in perception and related matters that apparently some people experience who have strokes in the area they figure I had mine. Dr. Azhar was both clear and kind, giving me some information that I bet has been useful in reassuring a number of people, because the effects he was mentioning can be pretty disconcerting.
(Please note: anything I say here is a paraphrase of what Dr. Azhar said, and whatever he actually said was put much better.)
He mentioned, among other things, that some of my perceptions might be more unmediated than I was used to before. When he got to the part about how some people in some places meditated a lot or did other things to achieve such a state of mind, Juan started to make small amused noises, and I was grinning by the time he looked back at me and said, "You may have some experience with this sort of thing already." I allowed as how I could work with that, and thanked him for telling me.
He was right to tell me, and it was indeed happening to me. I've described it to other people since using these words: "I can look at something, and I see it, and I know the name of it. I know the word for it and I can find that word any time I want -- but the word is not between me and it."
It's hard to convey how precisely I mean those words. (Feel free to ask questions.) I'm not being metaphorical in ways people think I am; I'm saying that my perception of something is no longer primarily filtered through the name-and-identification-and-long-history I have with things-that-also-wear-that-word. I'm seeing the thing, not the word. And it was that way with every thing. I saw every thing. None of it was filtered out. And pretty much all of it was interesting.
If any of you know a Liavek story about an art critic who runs afoul of . . . well, circumstances too complicated to explain, really, and he winds up seeing beauty in absolutely every piece of art, then you might understand why I found this whole thing just a bit disconcerting. Well, I would have said worrisome, but at that point, my worrier was still turned off, which is another happy side effect of my stroke, at least for a while. Still, seeing every thing is pretty amazing. There are reasons why people do all that meditation and other stuff to get there.
The difficult part came when I sat down to sort beads. And I'll write more about that soon. For now, if you have questions, please do ask; answering them might help me make more sense of this in words that can be shared.
Art After the Stroke, Part One: Seeing Every Thing
Art After the Stroke, Part Two: Counting Flax Seeds
Art After the Stroke, Part Three: Frozen in the Fields of Plenty
Art After the Stroke, Part Four: And By My Eyes Be I Open
... and more to come.
After the stroke, once my recovery seemed to be going very well and I had been out of the hospital for a number of days, the excellent neurologist who treated me had a few things to say in case they came in handy. Those things were about some changes in perception and related matters that apparently some people experience who have strokes in the area they figure I had mine. Dr. Azhar was both clear and kind, giving me some information that I bet has been useful in reassuring a number of people, because the effects he was mentioning can be pretty disconcerting.
(Please note: anything I say here is a paraphrase of what Dr. Azhar said, and whatever he actually said was put much better.)
He mentioned, among other things, that some of my perceptions might be more unmediated than I was used to before. When he got to the part about how some people in some places meditated a lot or did other things to achieve such a state of mind, Juan started to make small amused noises, and I was grinning by the time he looked back at me and said, "You may have some experience with this sort of thing already." I allowed as how I could work with that, and thanked him for telling me.
He was right to tell me, and it was indeed happening to me. I've described it to other people since using these words: "I can look at something, and I see it, and I know the name of it. I know the word for it and I can find that word any time I want -- but the word is not between me and it."
It's hard to convey how precisely I mean those words. (Feel free to ask questions.) I'm not being metaphorical in ways people think I am; I'm saying that my perception of something is no longer primarily filtered through the name-and-identification-and-long-history I have with things-that-also-wear-that-word. I'm seeing the thing, not the word. And it was that way with every thing. I saw every thing. None of it was filtered out. And pretty much all of it was interesting.
If any of you know a Liavek story about an art critic who runs afoul of . . . well, circumstances too complicated to explain, really, and he winds up seeing beauty in absolutely every piece of art, then you might understand why I found this whole thing just a bit disconcerting. Well, I would have said worrisome, but at that point, my worrier was still turned off, which is another happy side effect of my stroke, at least for a while. Still, seeing every thing is pretty amazing. There are reasons why people do all that meditation and other stuff to get there.
The difficult part came when I sat down to sort beads. And I'll write more about that soon. For now, if you have questions, please do ask; answering them might help me make more sense of this in words that can be shared.
Art After the Stroke, Part One: Seeing Every Thing
Art After the Stroke, Part Two: Counting Flax Seeds
Art After the Stroke, Part Three: Frozen in the Fields of Plenty
Art After the Stroke, Part Four: And By My Eyes Be I Open
... and more to come.
no subject
That's cool.
no subject
Yeah, that does sound like it or very similar. And since I had some of it already, it's not totally disconcerting or unfamiliar, but it's definitely an increase and takes more skill to manage.
I intend to put visual links into one of the following posts, to show some of what I mean.
no subject
Also, we had squeeze fish for breakfast. And I thought of you.