Here’s an interesting question: do we have two brains?
I think it’s in Buddhism or Taoism that they believe we also have a sort of brain in our belly, a body brain that, while pretty rubbish at crosswords, exerts care for our health and wellbeing.
It’s what we call a gut feeling. It’s the part of you that’s happiest outdoors, stravaiging hither and yon, or sitting on a rock staring glaikitly out to sea, as your correspondent is prone to doing.
Some days you head out, possibly because your belly brain is holding up an imaginary lead like a wee, fat dug desperate for walkies, and it’s saying: “You can’t just sit in the hoose all day, ken?
‘You’ll start watching daytime television…’
“Your legs’ll go funny and your morale will plummet and you’ll start watching daytime television, and then where will you be? Answer: nowhere.”
Your thinking brain, the one located in your heid or thereabouts, has to admit that your belly-aching abdomen has a point, so you spend 15 minutes (if you’re anything like me) selecting an anorak and making sure your hair’s nice in case you encounter an otter, deer or heron.
Then, taking a deep breath for courage, you head out, kinda still on mental auto-pilot, your heid whirling with worries and cares.
When you realise you like it
But – and here is my point (Reader A: “He has a point!” Reader B: “Who knew?”) – after time among the trees, rocks and wind, your body announces telepathically: “We like it here. We’re happy here.”
Many of you will have experienced this.
The joy, the relaxation, happens almost in spite of your self, your mind, your worries, your cares. It overrides them.
The answer lies outside
It’s why it’s always worth going out into the green.
If you’re in the city, that includes the parks and many lovely spaces with which urban Scotland is blessed.
Your body becomes less tense. But what is your cranial brain daein’ all this time?
Well, your heid-brain is taking a well-deserved rest. It shuts out the noise. It doesn’t completely switch off, but might make you feel unusually optimistic or contented.
Wonderclout? Oxyphonia? Why?
Thus calmed down, sometimes great thoughts appear unbidden, such as: ‘Why do people not use the word “wonderclout” any more? Or “oxyphonia”?
“Is it true that I’m a solivigant? How did that happen? Have I any soup left? Was the person who invented fish fingers ever knighted or elevated to the House of Lords?”
Sometimes, you might also think deliciously: “Nobody can get me here. Any time there’s hassle, I just need to come here. The trees don’t judge me, apart from the odd critical remark about my troosers.”
A break from the politics
Once a week, when the House of Commons is in session, my freelance duties include having to watch Prime Minister’s Questions. Such a hullaballoo.
Then I’ve a tight deadline and, afterwards, I head out to the Lonely Shore and am so glad to be so far away from it all.
That’s me: a solivigant (someone who wanders about alone), far from the world of wonderclouts (showy but worthless things) and those afflicted with oxyphonia (shrillness of voice).
Back home, all that can be heard from my tummy now is borborygmus.
That – an abdominal rumbling noise – means it’s time for soup and fish fingers.
