Always Doing the Right Thing

I work very hard at doing the right thing, all the time. Fortunately, what I consider the right thing is often at odds with (and more fun than) much of popular (and even less popular) culture's idea of what is the right thing. It does not appear to me, however, that most people share my idea of the right thing to do (judging by their behavior). Nor is there overwhelming evidence that the masses are working very hard at always doing the right thing. In fact, it is my opinion that most people adopt a certain tolerance for a certain amount of wrong-doing. And if right and wrong are something that you get from someone else, then this is probably a healthy perogative: It is a little subversive, a safety valve for the soul, and can make life a little more fun.

If, however, you work very hard at determining what is right and wrong and reject others' assessments of it (whenever you first become aware of the possibility of right and wrong in some action or thing), then a tolerance for a little wrong-doing is a harder swallow. I fall into this latter camp, working very hard to figure out what the right thing to do is (in any given situation) and then doing it (regardless of others' opinions or even the consequences, though both figure heavily into deciding the "right thing to do").

I have no idea which is the superior mode of living life. Both have their problems, and it seems unlikely that any person fits into one mode exclusive of the other. But I do know that once I've decided or acted (working hard to get to action, normally), I can be quite a bear when accused of doing the wrong thing. And, as a matter of course, I then land squarely into the camp of the wrong-doers.

This is all to say: I'm sorry.

Leaning in the Brain

Yesterday, a conclusion was quite powerfully confirmed for me: I have no visual memory of my childhood home. I mean to say that there is no image, no symbol of a house with a roof, a door and doorknob, with windows on either side, a pitched roof with Mom, Dad, Sis, li'l sis, and the dogs (Smokey, Sherlock, Duffy, Walley, Watson, Jackson, Brittanie, Matt, Annie, and Rosy) out front. There is no image of the bright and happy sun, confident crayon rays beaming, and a perfectly placed tree with cotton candy crown.

My psyche misses this vital cultural crutch for Americana. According to Betty Edwards of
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain , the vast majority of folks (American- Estadounidense, I'm guessing) worked through much typing paper as children reproducing this perfect scene of potent symbolism and 90% could now sit down and draw an almost exact replica of their childhood masterpiece at any time during their adult lives. As an exercise (perhaps to demonstrate the accuracy of her theory and method), Ms. Edwards includes this adult remembering in her book. And so, yesterday, I sat down to try and immediately realized that I would be part of the unhappy 10%. Immediately next, however, I remembered that there was a landscape scene that I repeated over and over as a child, a little seascape complete with giant setting sun dipping into the ocean ( a la South Pacific), silhouetted sailboat, dunes, and swaying palm trees -- with gulls floating in the distance. Needless to say, this was not a vista from my childhood window.

How odd. Why did I never draw the house and fam.? Why the little seascape? It then occurred to me that until very recently, after Hurricane Katrina, I had never in fact seen my childhood home as a structure independepent of its geographical/sylvan context. That is, as a log cabin, it was so nestled into the trees (overhanging it, growing next to it, thick branches and leaves), that there was actually never a vantage point to view more than a small part of the house at once. The trees were tall, the shade relatively dark. This may seem very difficult to believe, but I, honestly, as a child and even as a young adult could only piece the house together. I can never remember having the sensation of arriving "home," it was more arriving at the driveway and then entering the house. (The driveway was like a green tunnel, barely big enough for a car to squeeze through, and certainly enough to keep out the faint of heart.) Nor did we have any good pictures of the house. As a student abroad, I brought the best photo of the house I had to show my host family in Argentina. It merely confused them, through some trees was a brown structure of incomprehensible shape that kept sinking back into the trees.

We had no "front door," or we did, but it was never used to enter the house, except on rare occasions. A side door, under a porch roof was typically used.

Later yesterday, when I showed my mother the seascape, she recognized it immediately and told me that to her knowledge I never drew the typical family landscape. (And as an art teacher, she took a keen interest in my early drawing). And she said, "well, how could you draw the house? You couldn't see it." "Ah, ha! My intuition was right on," I said (an emphatic paraphrase), "I was thinking the same thing."

So what does it matter? Hmmm...that's a question that I don't have an answer to.