who rules the wasteland of the empty mind has stirred from it's lair this evening and laid ruin to all in it's path. My head is so full of things I would like to say, that they've become all tangled and knotted, like that string of Christmas lights that seems, no matter how carefully you wrap them, somehow gain a life of their own in your attic over the warm months; they twist and squirm unseen, until, in that dark and dusty smelling cardboard carton, they contort themselves into an unfathomable wreck. You fight them and curse them and swear to become an unbridled heathen, just so you don't have to contend with them, and yet you toil on to un-invent their self made cat's cradle of glass and wire, until you have overcome them and in a fit of pride, dare to plug them in, just to test them, you understand, and... they don't work. Twenty four shiny, multi-colored C-2 bulbs, just lying there on the living room carpet, dark, cold, dull and useless... such is my mind this evening. I have plugged myself in and like that old string of lamps, I am no doubt wired in series, not parallel; one dead thought kills all the others and there's no telling where to start to try to fix it. I suppose I could ply myself with some of the vintage from the recently restocked wine cellar under the center staircase, but somehow I think that would be cheating. Writing is like love; when it's on, it's on, but when it's lost, there is nothing to fix. So, I guess I'll sit here in the candle glow and peck away and hope that something worth reading might issue itself forth and delight all comers. Or not. It doesn't matter, really, does it? That's the one thing I always come away with when I finish a book. I either like it or I don't, but I read on and, once finished, my opinion on the thing really doesn't matter. I've digested it. It's become part of me, never to leave, never to diminish in my mind, whether I ever consciously choose to recall it or not. Reading is called food for the mind for a reason. You can't un-eat an apple; you can't un-read a book; you can't un-see a picture; you can't un-hear a song. Makes you wonder where all that stuff goes in our pitiful little lump of gray matter, huh? Millions of pages, millions of words and pictures and notes all dispersed amongst unknown numbers of neurons playing shoots and ladders with equally unknown numbers of synapses, firing away, always there, ready at the moments desire to bring back everything we've ever stored away, for good or bad, better or worse, till death do we and our thoughts do part... or do we? Maybe we become all that we've absorbed; maybe that's why we have such a desire for knowledge, maybe that's why we understand so little of what we know - maybe it's being reserved for a better use down the road a piece. Or not. Perhaps it's all a hoarded treasure, squandered. Maybe the whole idea is that we disperse as much as we learn, share it all, give it away, cast all you know before every one of your fellow sufferers who make up this mortal coil and see what you might reap... I should like to try that sometime, but I keep thinking about what happened to Jason, who sowed the dragon's teeth...
but that's an old story, isn't it and these are much different times... I think.
So, once again I've lulled you into wasting your precious time reading my drivel, when you could have been doing something constructive, like reading something actually worth reading, or standing outside and communing with the night. Sorry. Really, I am. And I do thank you for your time.
Be well.
pearls before swine...
