Right and left

May 23, 1998

Chances

branch

skeletal against the light

Choices 

brush

fingerlike but out of sight

Days and nights

and a waning moon

a tilting planet

a rent cocoon

Caught or falling

awake I dream

Madness in the pattern round me

Serenity in an upper stream

Lightning quivers, winks and dies

Gravity has pulled me down here

roots my muscles

Time flies.

This poem keeps running through my head these days.  I wrote it back when Seth was one and I was agonizing over work and home and all those balance of life things that I'm still agonizing about.  I know it makes very little sense but it is exactly how the inside of my head looks right now.  Somehow writing down the chaotic mess inside me has always made the chaos easier to bear.

Anyway, part of the problem is the switching back and forth from the right side of my brain which is all images and intuition and feelings and colours, and the left side of the brain which is science and rational thinking and evidence-based and problem-solving in the conventional manner and scoring all the standardized tests I administer.  I like both parts of me but they get in awful arguments sometimes.  And then I really need a vacation from my head.  The thing I like so much about Attic Therapy is the chance to use both sides of me cooperatively.  Working with kids who don't express themselves verbally (at least not well) means that I need that intuition and nonverbal perception.  But dealing with parents and other stakeholders - the health care system, the education system, and funding agencies, means using logic and verbal reasoning quite a bit to explain the other stuff.  So it's all good but somewhat confusing.

Writing a blog - well, I feel like I need to pick a side.  And either one won't be honest.  So I have been mulling over all weekend whether I can be honest enough to use both voices.  I don't know yet.  But as I haven't come down on one side or the other at the moment that's what I guess I'm going to do.  Share the chaos!