Welcome to the 2nd jumping and jiving issue of the Beany Brain newsletter! I’m glad you’re back. Really, I’m still swimming around in the murky-pond-learning-stages of this newslettering stuff, but I’m telling my brain that we can do it. Let’s jump on in…

Table of Contents

• Welcome to the 2nd jumping and jiving issue of the …

• It’s a Jungle in This Here Brain

  • The Best Kind of Introverted Networking

    • Yeehawesome!

It’s a Jungle in This Here Brain

Have you ever been so bowled over and jumpy about a book that you have to tell everyone?

The London Jungle Book by Bhajju Shyam has done that to me.

It seems like a fluke that I even found it at our huge prefectural library because it wasn’t in the English books section. We’re avoiding our house if possible while the main living-dining-kitchen air conditioner is broken and Sunday afternoon after church we spent a few hours at the library. Just after finding two cushy seats together, I saw a little display around the corner with books that you could look at but not check out.

This one was extremely attractive to me: the art, the style, the backstory.

Bajju Shyam is an indigenous Gond artist from a small village in the heart of India. He had never left his village, let alone gone on a plane anywhere. Someone knew of his art and invited him to London for two months to paint murals on the inside of their upmarket Indian restaurant.

His view of the world outside of his normal life is fantastic—the book is full of his art (based on reflections after being in London) and his stories and outlook. Just look at that book cover (above photo)! That’s just a snippet of his fantastic imagination: time in his village is represented by a rooster crowing in the morning and time in London is portrayed by the clock tower (Big Ben). The way they intersect as the eye is Bhajju’s view.

That’s how I see the world as a neurodivergent person, as a sort of Bhajju Shyam, an immigrant in this world where a lot of things seem upside down and backwards. I look at life around me critically and also with a perspective that neurotypical people don’t and can’t. It’s OK. It’s also challenging and frustrating. (Even in my mother language, English, it seems like folks are speaking Greek to me sometimes.)

But it can be beautiful and funky too. Maybe my life will be an Abigail Jungle Book that someone looks at someday, has a strong impulse to grab off the shelf, and it changes their own perspective.

The Best Kind of Introverted Networking

Neurodivergent people can be extroverted or introverted (I tend toward introverted—I definitely need my alone time to regroup my brain cells). Really, as the saying goes, if you’ve met one neurodivergent person, you’ve met one neurodivergent person. We’re all human and all have our own fingerprint and brainprint and personalityprint.

I’d been wanting to create a multimedia group for folks who may not want to join a regular book club. I mean, I don’t think I’d appreciate having to read the same thing as everyone else every month if I were in a “normal” book club. I want to read and have my own experiences, and if someone else happens to have read the same book and wants to talk about it, that’s great.

If we’re on separate pages (I’m proudly intending my pun), you do you and I’ll do me. So I created my Rebel Monthly Media Moment group on Facebook where we’ll meet once a month and do a show-and-tell of whatever we’re reading, watching, listening to, or experiencing at the moment. No pressure. Just fun.

And that’s exactly what the author of this HuffPost article said: As an introvert, he was not enjoying meet-and-greets, so he upped and made his own book club where folks just bring whatever they’re currently reading. (I made my group before he wrote his article, but obviously we’re on the same page.)

We have our first Rebel Monthly Media Moment gathering on Zoom this coming Friday night (US time) and Saturday morning (Japan time). If this sounds like your kind of thing, get in touch!

Yeehawesome!

Yeehawesome! will be a happy-brain roundup in each issue of Beany Brain. What’s happening that’s good in brain land? What’s bringing me joy?

1. I promise that Yeehawesome! will not be infested by corn every week, but a friend brought this special corn bag for me back from another prefecture in Japan and it brings me so much joy. She told me that she looked at it and immediately thought, “That’s an Abigail bag.” (Am I too corny?) Let’s all remember a time when someone knew us so well that it brought us gratitude.

2. “The Sleeping Gardener” painting above is so serene and chiarascuro-y that it reminds me of our humanities class in college and learning all about light, dark, what makes a classic painting, and how we can add extra meaning and depth to our lives by looking around and noticing details. “Notice Details” is my middle name (OK, middle names). When I get overwhelmed by sensory input, I can remind myself that it’s a gift.

3. Simone Biles is neurodivergent! I just found out. How fantastic that she’s worked with her ADHD all these years, takes medication, and says it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Go, Simone! You get the gold for being neuro-affirming!

Special announcement (not an affiliate link): The Kindle version of Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon.com for the whole month of August. I loved this book and have listened to the author’s podcast, Tilt Parenting, for a while now. Debbie Reber is a research and encouragement queen. I hope it bolsters you like it did me.

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Thank you for reading this installment of Beany Brain! You’re very welcome to hop on by any old time.