Those who are curious are always asking why. Those who are not curious don’t have this word in their vocabulary. People who read are curious. What it is that makes readers curious is that, in reading, they are activating the why center of the brain. It resides between the right and left brain, in the corpus coliseum. This area is like a huge amphitheater, only larger. It lights up when activated.

For some, this area remains dark. If left dark for too long, the energy needed to light the area up diminishes and then goes ptttoooooo. This generally happens at any age, there is no rhyme or reason for it. The lack of rhyme and reason is one of the identifying characteristics of this sad, sad, condition.

Animals have Why centers. Sad to say, only a small percentage of animal owners encourage activation.

My animals ask why all the time. They also see no reason why not. Raudi is the most this way. She does what she wants, has always been this way. I look at her, and she says to me, when, say, she moves in on Tyra and Hrimmi’s hay, “why not?”

Reading at Sutton Library

Why not goes hand-in-hand with acting upon ideas. The question, can I do this? Is followed by the words, why not? Acting on all ideas is not possible. It is like remembering every single thing that has ever happened to you. Too many ideas, too many memories, and the circuits jam. And when the circuits jam, you may as well kiss all your ideas goodbye because you will be rendered inert.

I have had many, many ideas days. I am lucky in this respect. My biggest regret in life is that I have not acted upon enough of my ideas. I think this every time in which I come across a good book, which these days is at least a dozen times a day.

Old habits die hard. I have been so busy that I have not had the time to generate ideas. So I’ve been having what I call ideas nights. I will wake up and start coming up with ideas. The portion of this dispatch, ideas generated during the day and ideas generated at night; this came to me one night.

The odd thing is, I do act more on ideas that I generate at night than I do on the ones that I generate during the day. I think that I winnow the not-so-plausible ideas out when I finally fall back asleep and hang onto the more plausible ones. The one in which I decided to talk about personal/academic writing with Pete’s students was an idea that clung to my subconscious and made its way up to my conscious.

This was an idea that I acted upon, sort of. I could and should have said more about it. I still could, although I’m not sure now which journals are publishing this sort of thing.

I think I’m going to end this dispatch, right here.

Next: 88. 3/30/24: End of March 30, 2024