Lately, I’ve been feeling the changes that come with age. The bones are a little creakier, the eyes need more light and time to focus, and I don’t have the zip and vigor I did when I was 20.
When I was travelling the last few weeks, I could feel the effects on my mind. I would interview people and 30 minutes later not remember the details of what they said. Over and over, I’d ask my mother to tell me the name of a miniature gardenia or thin-leafed oleander she had pointed out to me just hours before. I could not remember.
Volumes have been written about ways to keep the body in shape when biological breakdown causes us to expend greater effort for less reward. But what about that most delicate of organs, the brain?
There is a June 15th article in Blogcritics Magazine about the effects of aging. In Ten Ways To Bench Press Your Brain, Craig Harper compares the aging body to the aging brain:
People typically slow down mentally as they age. They experience short-term memory loss (where are my keys?), process information more slowly, find it harder to concentrate and focus, are more easily confused, become vague, and tend to be less creative and less adventurous.
The moment we stop using it, we start losing it. The good news is that our brain (like our body) is amazing and can adapt (grow ‘muscle’) at any age. We can (to an extent) undo some, if not most, of the damage. It’s great to be in shape physically but what’s the point of having four percent body-fat, Olympian biceps, and veins on our veins, if we have a mind like a Dalmatian?
Harper, a motivational speaker from Australia, lays out 10 reasonable ways to keep the gray matter in shape. And what’s #7 on his workout list?
READ!
I’m taking lucky 7 as a good excuse to set everything aside this summer and take action on the one thing most writers (and books on writing) seem to agree on: to be a good writer, you have to read! Read everything you can get your hands on (especially in the genre in which you write).
For other ways to increase brainpower, here is a shortened version of Craig Harper’s tips for exercising the mind. For the full article, head over to BC Magazine Sci/Tech – Ten Ways to Bench Press Your Brain:
1. Set goals.
The moment we stop setting goals is the moment we start going backwards. Without goals we don’t have to think, plan, rationalise, problem solve, or create (as much).2. Laugh.
It’s not illegal to laugh, be silly, or have fun as you age. Although some grumpy old farts will take me to task on this, they’re wrong. “Hey Johnnie… pull my finger.” (So juvenile.)3. Play.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.” Two of my favourite people in the world are a (nearly) seventy years young couple who ski, ride mountain bikes, run up and down sand dunes, hike, lift weights, travel, help others, play practical jokes, and hang out with ‘silly’ young people.4. Study.
You don’t have to go back to college and get your PhD, although you might, but maybe explore short courses, workshops, anything to blow out those cerebral cobwebs and get those rusty cogs turning once again.5. Learn a new language.
Research tells us that people who speak two languages regularly age (mentally) at a slower rate than their unilingual buddies. They stay in shape (mentally) for longer. It even delays the onset of Alzheimer’s. Now, if you spoke three languages…6. Express yourself creatively.
Write something: a book, some poetry, a business plan, or start your own blog. Paint, draw, or sculpt. My father began to paint at sixty-five, and now is an awesome professional artist. Invent something. A lot of the best inventors are crusty old guys. Come on, you crusty old guys… invent something!7. Read.
Not just romantic novels. Read stuff that makes you use your brain, challenges you a little. Makes you think, reason, and remember; exercise your brain.
8. Consciously try and remember stuff.
It’s there, you just need to dust it off. Find your old school photos and name all your classmates. Try and remember (and replay in your mind) moments in time. Your first boyfriend’s, next door neighbour’s, brother’s… name (the one you kissed).9. Do some mental workouts.
Crosswords are fun and great for your brain. Puzzles, problem solving stuff, Su Doku: force yourself to think, reason, and calculate.10. Have a project.
Something to keep you thinking, communicating, planning, solving problems, and remembering. In general, bench pressing your brain.
Below are a few related posts with comments rich in book talk. One writer who frequents red Ravine is spending the summer reading the classics.
If you feel like adding your summer reading list to our comments section, it might inspire us all toward a few more presses at the bench.
What are you reading this summer?
–Writing Topic – 10 Slam Dunks
-The 1950’s – What Was America Reading?
-Dreams Of A Creative Insomniac
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007
Timely, timely post. Thanks much, QM. So generous of you to provide the list, etc. because I methodically went through it point by point, to see how well I’m exercising my brain.
I am in the middle of a technology vortex, switching from PC to MAC to learn Final Cut Pro — a very sophisticated movie-making software program — and while in tears with breathepeace one afternoon about my frustration (I only learned bold and italic a couple of years ago), she reminded me how much learning this new technology will “exercise” my brain, something I need to do now that I’m in my middle fifties. I hadn’t thought of it that way at all. I had assumed that I would have to take up crossword puzzles for that. So, I’m undertaking #5 and #6 from the list above. I may end up banging my head against the wall on a daily basis learning this technolog stuff, but my brain, at least, will be alive and active! And I am doing alot of summer reading about documentaries, including the book I started today: Doing Documentary Work by Robert Coles. A book for all who document life . . . including writers.
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I’m impressed by your willingness to dig in to something you don’t know and begin to master it. As someone kindly reminded me today, it’s the hardest (and many times most rewarding) work to stick with creative endeavors when they seem the toughest. I consider the “head banging” stage one of the toughest.
You’re definitely learning a new language. What great exercise for the brain. Keep us posted on the Coles book. I’m especially interested in how he organizes the reams of material, film, notebooks, video, tapes, photographs, etc. that we gather before we write the first and subsequent drafts.
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BTW, I’m practicing #2 and #3 right now. I’m finding I am working way too hard. I need laughter and play. 8)
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The Aspirin Age
(http://www.genetunney.org/aspirin.html)
Rex Stout: Death of a Doxy
and then choosing among these:
Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye
Hugh Ford: Four Lives in Paris
Dashiell Hammett: Lost Stories
The Portable Graham Greene
Jorge-Luis Borges: Selected Nonfictions
Richard Rosenfeld: American Aurora
san francisco noir
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My wife and I are on #10 right now. We’re moving out of our rented apartment into a condo we’ve bought…and the condo isn’t finished yet!
Everything is in boxes and bags. Its a mess! We have too much stuff!
Lots of details to tend too and a lot of communication is needed (which is a challenge since Spanish is her first language and English is mine).
I leave for the USA in about 3 weeks, so lots to do and get done. While in the USA, I hope to hit the bookstores and buy some new reading material.
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My first summer book:
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE
A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver
Which I hope will help with 7,8 and 4 above, giving me strategies (and motivation) to eat foods grown closer to home…which doesn’t appear on the list, but is probably better for your brain, as well as the environment.
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breathepeace, if you like Kingsolver, ombudsben did a good review in his piece, Kingsolver – and more porcine flights of fancy (link). He read the book for pleasure, then went back and deconstructed how she wrote it. Good for the writer in us.
BTW, when I met with Mrs. Juarez last week (8th grade English teacher) we were talking books right before I left. Kingsolver was one of our mutual favorites.
I haven’t read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle yet. But I did go on a macrobiotic diet for a year and ate only foods grown close to home. I felt the best I have ever felt in my life. But it was so hard (for me, at least) to keep the macro diet going long-term.
Come back and let us know how the book is!
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mm, are you going to see ybonesy when you are in the USA?
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Believe me I’m trying on all 10 at once…being a lifelong over achiever.
What strikes me so funny is remembering as a girl never carrying a purse. Heck, a comb in my back pocket was sufficient.. Well, I did fall slave to those hand tooled purses for a while… the ones with the fringe…ugh!
But I laughed at my friends as we got older with their enormous bags storing all sorts of paraphernalia they were afraid to forget. I told them all I needed was my little wallet type bag with it’s skinny long handle over my shoulder to alleviate me holding it…and everything else would be stored in my brain.
Now I look at that small little bag in it’s 9th generation…with my keys dangling from a large exterior hook so I don’t misplace them… and my phone in it’s little jacket strapped to the loop your belt normally threads through… and I wonder how many more things can I attached to the outside before I finally succumb to a larger bag where I actually store things inside…
Then I think NAH! I’d rather go back to pulling a red wagon 🙂
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My God QuoinMonkey! I just checked out the Red Ravine info area to see who’s looking at my blog.
Mabel Dodge…I thought I was one of a hundred people that knew who she was to the arts. I’ve bathed in DH Lawrence’s bathroom and walked every path in the yard leading out.
I studied the lives of Adams for photography and Georgia for her beautiful art, leading me to Mabel and Tony. It’s a big world out there but somehow we all seem to find each other…don’t we 🙂
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QM,
You bet! Ybonesy and Jim are two of my favorite friends!
MM
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ombudsben, I had no idea about Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey. Quite a testament to the power of story. What’s myth, what’s truth. I liked this:
I had always liked reading–and this had a practical side. I found that books helped in training for boxing bouts. One of the difficulties of the prizefight game is that of relieving tension in training camp, getting one’s mind off the fight. The usual training camp devices were jazz phonograph records and the game of pinochle. I didn’t like jazz, and the mysteries of pinochle were too deep for me. So I resorted to reading as a way to ease the dangerous mental strain during training. I found that books were something in which I could lose myself and get my mind off the future fight–like The Way of All Flesh, which Brian Bell of the Associated Press found me reading while training for Dempsey.
Thanks for the link to The Aspirin Age. This one looks good, too: Dashiell Hammett: Lost Stories.
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anuvuestudio, so I bet you’ve walked over to Kit Carson to see her gravesite? I go there every time I am in Taos and pay my respects. There are many who comment on red Ravine who know Mabel. You are in good company. And it is indeed a small world.
Many of the photos I’ve posted on the site were taken at Mabel Dodge Luhan House. When’s the last time you were there?
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I love the “set goals” one because that’s the one I tend to do least when it comes to my own endeavors. (I think I rebel against the structure of my work environment and decide to wing it and be more spontaneous when it comes to personal projects.) So, I’m going to adopt setting realistic goals.
Yesterday on the plane ride to San Jose I started The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion), and today on the flight home I almost finished it. She wrote it while her grief was still palpable, within the first 12 months post her husband’s death. I’ve been thinking about how for some things a writer needs to sit for a long time with the thing it is s/he’s writing about before it can come out, but in Didion’s case, it’s like she’s writing out her grief real-time. We watch her mind fall into “vortexes” (speaking of, Sharonimo) and watch her wander aimlessly and watch her connect seemingly unrelated fragments of her life. It’s a beautifully written book, something to sink right into for summer, yet fast and relevant to any writer. I highly recommend it.
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p.s., not only will mimbresman see us, he’ll stay with us while in ABQ. That’s our routine for many, many years now, even when he was living in the reservation or silver city. some times a few days, some times more than a week – but always a place to call home away from home.
Hey, QM: you and mm might be in ABQ at the same time. We’ll have to look into that.
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Cool! I smell a good writing practice session. 8)
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BTW, I’m amazed by this connection that anuvuestudio has to Mabel Dodge. How cool is that? And you’re right…we do end up finding each other, don’t we?
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This rings so true for me, now getting perilously close to 50. I won’t get into any gory details but things surely do happen to the body (and mind) post-30-something.
I’m really enjoying your posts. Reading is surely a great way to exercise the mind and it seems that at this stage in life there is precious little time for a good read on a regular basis although I do read extensively only.
As a published writer I do as much promotion of reading as I possibly can. Balancing reading with creative writing is a daily challenge.
Thanks so much for the resource rich blogging you offer here.
Cheers, Don
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Hi Guys…The last time I was in Taos was when Georgia’s Museum opened in Santa Fe…hum…10 years? I had to swing by ol’ Mabel’s to make sure condos hadn’t gone up. I first stayed there in 1992 and it wasn’t fully restored at the time. I remember alot of noise about Dennis Hopper and his motorcycle friends tearing up the town. I never saw his head depicted as a Pinata but I’ve no doubt they would have loved the idea…I was driving through the different communities to check out the Lawrence Tree and lay on the bench like Georgia had before she painted it and walk around Ghost Ranch. Mabel’s was a must stop and stay.
Glad to meet you folks. I’m Heather from Huntington Beach, California and I can’t swim a lick!
Anuvue is “A New View” or a new way of seeing the world
(and my hope for a Gallery/ Studio for other Creative’s when I find the right building someday).
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I love your line I’m Heather from Huntington Beach, California and I can’t swim a lick!…I bet you don’t much care for sharks, either 😉 (it’ll take perusing a few prior posts to get the history on that subject).
Don – glad you found red Ravine. What do you typically recommend when you promote reading? I’d be interested in knowing, esp since I’m looking for some books to stock up on this summer.
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Heather, here are some links on a few pieces we’ve posted on D. H. Lawrence Ranch. ybonesy and I were there a few times this year when we were in Taos.
I have a few photos of the Lawrence tree that Georgia painted. Maybe I’ll post one soon in your honor. I’m also fond of Dorothy Brett’s history there. Anyone who hasn’t been to Kiowa Ranch should check it out when they are in Taos. A peaceful place with a lot of history.
Giant’s Sat Here (link)
Re: Giants Sat Here – I Remember (link)
Dorothy Brett’s Blue Chair (link)
More Sunflowers (link)
Great vision for a Gallery/Studio – Anuvue is “A New View” or a new way of seeing the world. Keep us posted.
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Don, I find it a daily challenge to balance reading with creative writing, too. In fact, it feels like I spend a lot of time just trying to find a good balance to everything I have going on.
I have a different perspective on time than I used to. I’m finding the best way to stretch time is to try to stay as much in the moment as I can. Every minute counts.
Like ybonesy, I’d love to hear what you promote for reading, too. I’m glad you stopped by.
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