Wrong Handed

Our bodies are mind-bogglingly complex. So many diverse things have to all line up to keep it funtioning it's a wonder it works at all!

But speaking of mind-boggling, in the midst of all that complexity the brain-muscle connection, motor-skills, can be frustratingly inefficient and touchy, even at it's youthfull peak.

For example, something as simple as putting your shirt on. If you normally do it left-arm first, try right-arm first. It's not that bad, but is noticeably more awkward and takes some thinking to get it done. And guys, don't get me started on buttoning a left-handed shirt instead of our usual right-handed shirt! (Rant alert! Just one more example of how useless a drain on and damaging to society the "fashion industry" is, sucking up resources and energy that could be put into far more productive uses without feeded envy and body dysphoria. The whole left-right button thing is an artificial artifact left over from a time when men of all classes dressed themselves [garments overlaping from the left side gave men, predominantly right-handed, quicker access to weapons tucked under their left arms] but women of status were dressed by servants facing them, making right-overlaping garments more intuitive for the servants. And the hell with women of lower status that had to dress, and often defend, themselves!)

Ahem - OK, rant over. Back to that whole motor-skill thing.

I am left handed, very left handed. Always have been. Fortunately I managed to just barely miss out on the days when lefty kids were persecuted and forced to become clumsy righties.

Well, fortunate right up 'till when I decided that I'm so left handed it would probably be a good idea to be prepared in case I get injured, or have a stroke, and can't use my dominant hand for a while.

Don't ask me why I decided this because I have no idea. I can't remember any triggering event and no one in my immediate family has had a significant stroke, not one they survived anyway. But the idea stuck.

(BTW, in case you missed it, that first photo is of two left hands)

That's why, several years ago, in the anonymous privacy of the closed-door bathroom, away from questions, wierd looks, and ridicule, I started brushing my teeth with my right hand.

It was a disaster! And not just toothpaste all over the mirror kinda stuff. Ever tried shoving a toothbrush up your nose? It hurts! Especially with mint toothpaste on it. And when I wasn't doing that I was stabbing my gums, or gagging on the damn thing because I tried jamming it down my throat.

But I stuck with it because building new neural-pathways and muscle memory takes a long time. Eventually I got to where I could brush right-handed without hauling myself off to urgent care, then gradually my left hand stopped jerking around spasticly in sympathy.

It took a long time, but now I brush right-handed in the morning and left-handed in the evening without even thinking about it. (So much so that just now I had to mime to figure out which hand when.)

Since building new neural pathways is good for maintaining cognitive brain health, once I had the brushing thing down and wasn't actually building new pathways anymore, just exercising ones that already existed (which is also important!), I decided I needed a new neural challenge and started to try eating wrong handed.

You know how when you're a kid eating is so much more important than brushing?

Well, it turns out you never grow out of that. So I haven't been near as diligent about working on wrong-handed eating as I was about brushing. I guess I figure that if I'm ever in a position to have to eat wrong-handed I'll damn sure figure it out! In the meantime, get the hell away from my plate!

But still wanting to do what I can for my cognitive brain health, I recently redirected my neural pathways/wrong-handedness efforts to drawing and painting.

Yeahhh - turns out that shit's hard!

Reminds me of fat crayons and magnets on the fridge.

This pencil-sketch was supposed to be a quick (left-handed) thumbnail-outline after I botched the the initial sketch to see if I could get the porportions somewhat closer on the next try, but for some reason, maybe because I just got a new pencil-sharpener, I kinda went nuts with it.

On the plus side, one could say my first effort was impressionistic and painterly. But oddly enough, really good loose 'painterly' works require excelent drawing and brushwork skills to pull off well. So the spastic moves of my right hand are actually no friggin' help at all!

(All double-images, with the exception of the one just below, which is left-top, right-bottom, have the lefthand version on the left and righthand on the right)

Not that I'm an accomplished artist with either hand, but my initial right-handed efforts were - well, even more pathetic than my left-hand versions! Though I have to admit the wonky buildings in the right-hand version of the drawing above certainly have more energy than the left-hand.

And somehow, unlike the eating thing, I've been able to stick with the drawing/painting stuff reasonably well. It helps that I try to draw/paint at least something every day so I'd be standing there with a brush in my hand anyway. All I had to do was switch hands.

Because I'm  not that great an artist in the first place, even left handed, for a while there I decided I need 'control' paintings to compare my right-handed works with to see if there's any progress. But I quickly figured out that I'm not too keen on doing the same painting multible times, I get frustrated and bored, so I do mirror images instead, flipping the page from one hand to the other. Same content, but it tricks my brain into seeing it as a different painting.

But sticking with it and improving are two seperate things!

Also, turns out it's a lot of work drawing/painting with my right hand. I mean, in addition to the concentration required, it's  actually physicly draining! (Wonder why my shoulder is sore tonight? - oh yeah! - )

One flaw in that short-lived control process of dual paintings is that once I do the lefthanded version I inevitably see things I could have improved on and end up 'tweeking' the righthanded version (notice that the color of the top of the earthware jar above is more vibrant in the righthand version) making it difficult to tell if any improvement is coming from those tweeks or better hand-control.

So I decided to try doing the righthand version first so any 'tweeks' are in the lefthand version and improvements in the former will have to stand on better hand control alone.

This is a rather extreme example of that.

I did the right-handed version first, then not only did I jazz up the sky colors in the left-handed version, I made significant changes to the composition, not just a few little tweeks. (BTW Art students are - erroneously- taught not to use that dead center-symetrical composition because it doesn't generate any movement or exitement, but this scene just screamed for tranquil peace and contemplative quiet.)

But eventually I dropped that whole left-handed control painting crap, when you let too much science into art the art starts to get lost (either that or I just got tired of doing so many paintings), and started diving straight into the right-handed versions.

Including this jump-in-with-both-feet-and-no-safety-net attempt at a night-time Milan street scene (by its very nature, creating dark scenes in watercolor  is not very easy so I'm not sure it would have come out any better done left handed!) based on a phone-photo of the paused TV screen (inset) taken during the Winter Olympics.

Yep, definitely more refrigerator-art, except that I don't have a mom anymore and The Wife has her limits!

It's a long slow process without a lot of visible progress, but I'm determined to become a marginally functional wrong-hander - beyond just brushing my teeth!

That way if my left side strokes out I can earn gummy-money selling right-handed pity-paintings!

I'm going to keep at it, though I fear "improvement" may be an overly optimistic goal, but don't worry, I don't plan on inflicting my attempts on all y'all anymore!