Well, reader, I feel like I owe you something closer to insight, or fact, or revelation.
I went on vacation! It was nice. I stayed at a place that looked out over a small lake. There was a verandah with a little wicker couch facing the water. I made a wee reading nook there. It was the bomb. So good. I read most of Kevin Kwan's Lies and Weddings on that wicker. I left my phone and iPad in my room (upstairs, far away, no distractions), and I would read, sip tea, read, look out at the lake, read, adjust my position on the couch etc..
Planning this post, I initially thought that what I had learned was that reading with a view helps. I tested the theory at home this morning by reading on my front porch (Jodi Picoult's House Rules, a book I picked up at the lake place when, after I had already packed my mostly finished Kwan novel, there was a delay and I needed something to read in my nook and it was in the cabin's "grab a book if you need" basket).
At home on my porch (see photo above): yes the view helped, it was nice. Something about bare feet and wind helps too, as I have remarked in a previous post. I have a colleague who often slips her shoes off while reading or thinking hard, I've noticed. Is there something to this? Has a neurologist/ cognitive scientist ever studied feet as they relate to thought processes?
Really though, my observation is about cognitive processes being somehow intermittent.
This last month has been a struggle with my computer and my wifi. I learned through that struggle how much my ideal writing process is intermittent. Technically, I can blog, or work on my other creative writing offline. However, I realize I have a dependence on keeping silly, meaningless tabs open and flipping to them periodically.
I like writing for a bit, and then flipping to another tab and [reading a horoscope, looking at Facebook, glancing at McSweeney's or The Onion]. Productive writing happens in bursts, with short periods in which my brain needs a rest and so I look at something else passively. It's not multitasking. I am not productive on anything other than writing. What I flip to in other tabs is fluff: nothing that truly engages me. I can't watch FB videos: they suck me in too much. Instagram likewise, I get pulled into something too long. The news, likewise: too strong an emotional tangent. Email--don't go there; it requires focus.
So, I write for [I'd guess 5-10 minutes--I haven't precisely timed it, and it varies I think based on how difficult the writing task is: harder would be shorter] and then I read my horoscope. And then I come back. It's like my brain just needs a minute. It's resting, yes, but I think it is also still working somewhere back there. It's still kind of on task with the writing, but needs a moment to let that work happen in the background somewhere (in the cool, shadowy, deep of head, murk of not really conscious thinking from whence truly good ideas actually come) before I press back to typing (which is sharp and shiny work somehow, and feels very frontal, piercing, hot, all eyeballs and forehead).
Reading is not exactly the same as writing. I don't feel reading as all eyeballs and sharp. It's not as intense and front of the head and bright as writing is. Maybe it feels like it's in the middle of my head (which tracks with what I know about parts of the brain involved in reading fiction). HOWEVER, it is the same in that I need to come in and out of a tight focus. I read for a while, and then I need to look at the plants and green things. I read for a while, and then I lift my gaze and I sort of look at my surroundings, but lightly. I am not looking around intently, not trying to see or hear or feel my surroundings. I am just taking a moment to pause from the stimulus the book is creating and to process. My eyes may be looking at purple coneflowers, or a lake, or someone at a nearby table eating a croissant, and I may very lightly be engaging with those things, but the depth of my engagement in those fallow moments is still with what I am reading.
I may have looked up for a few minutes, but during that looking up my brain is still working on, working out, thinking of, reflecting on, absorbing, processing, the thing I have read. This moment might look, from the outside, like distraction, but I don't believe it actually is.
I think intellectual process is a wavy line: one swerves in and out of tight focus on task, and needs the swerve away into a "resting" moment. The swerve away is as important as the tight focus. They balance each other. I'm "on" and then "rest" and then "on and then "rest"--THAT is how the reading or writing moves forward.
As for the wind and one's toes: not sure yet how that figures in but wouldn't it be a fun surprise if it turns out there is something important there, neurologically? Readers with fMRI facilities, can you please check into this possible connection, stat?
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