Sunday 24 July 2016

A Life in Two Halves.

For the first half of my life to date I was a predominantly left brained sort of individual. For as long as I was allowed to have an academic career, I did very well in all subjects. I was good at figures, good at writing formal letters and reports, and good at organising things. I was formal in most things, and mostly anaesthetised by the hum of mother culture. And I functioned generally within the tram lines, being safely settled in the expectation of a regular career path and the accumulation of those accoutrements which normal people are supposed to accumulate.

And then I moved to a cottage in the country and my perceptions began to change rapidly. The second half of my life followed a very different road on which the right brain supplanted the left. Bohemian elements appeared in my psyche, and the winds of both fate and intent blew me this way and that, often in highly disparate directions. They led me into photography, theatre work and the discovery of the language of fiction. It’s how I became poor but maybe a little less boring than I had been before (although I suppose that’s for others to say.) And this was the place that brought about the sea change: 

Not very prepossessing is it, and yet I have reason to be grateful to it nonetheless.

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