Instead of helping, the procedure caused horrific and ever-worsening complications ― a cycle of insidious misery that I feared I would not escape until I drew my last dull, stifling, unsatisfying breath.
No better example of the synthetic approach can be found than Düsing's mathematical treatment of Darwin's argument for natural selection favouring an equality of the sexes, forgotten until I drew attention to it in an article in The American Naturalist in 1998.
Until recently, however, I drew the line at HBO. We'd tried it once, back in the Golden Age of Television, when the "Larry Sanders Show" was on the air.
"Until the last breath I draw, I will fight to stop soft money and to give this government back to the American people".
When I have had enough of work or of the simple problems of life, I get on my bicycle, focus entirely on the road ahead of me, and I ride and I ride and I ride - until my mind clears, I draw connections, solve problems, and simply figure things out.
"Then I draw them until I get to the place where it just says 'build me.' ".
For years I felt this and never understood why until I read "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" a book by Betty Edwards that talks about the creative process in art.
"Do they have little ones?" I breeze through the fringe of guests sipping their champagne, until I'm drawn like a magnet to the striking Peggy Moffit, the model from my first Harper's Bazaar job, flawless in Pucci and in her same signature Sassoon cut.
No one moves in, DHS said, until it draws up a legal agreement.
She did this month by month, year by year, until I started to draw things I could see and then imagine in my mind.
Then, when the shadows moved so much that it changed the complexion, I would move on to the next seat, so that from, say, mid-morning until lunchtime, I would draw another view of the house, etc, on into the afternoon.
