Mindworks

I woke up this morning realizing that I had not written a blog entry for today. My own fault: I had two days to do it, but on the old tried-and-true principle of “never do today what you can put off ‘til tomorrow,” I didn’t.

The first thing I reached for, when trying to think of a topic, was my Whitman’s Sampler Box of Metaphors. I tend to think in metaphors a lot. The first one I picked up was one of my favorites, the “life as an ocean” one. So I started off with it, and here’s all the further I got (obviously, as you can tell, I added this paragraph after the fact):

“So here I stand, on the shore of my mind, skipping thought-stones across the surface, trying to see which one will go the furthest and therefore be the one I’ll use for the blog. The first one I tossed was about my friends Forrest and Bill, who have been together for 50 years and are two of the most blessed people I have ever met. I will definitely do one on them; just not today.

“I then tried tossing the idea of a general blog on friends living and dead, and friendship past and present: I’ve done several of those and enjoy spending mental time with them, but I’m still not totally awake and the decision of which one of hundreds to do was just too cumbersome, made a huge splash the instant it hit the surface, and sank immediately.”

Okay, let’s pitch that one for the moment.

I should have posted this by now, and I still haven’t even come up with an idea of what to write about! Something silly? Something warm and fuzzy? Something deep and pontifical? ( I seem to do a lot of those). Or reflexive, or nostalgic, or ranting, or …? So many choices, and while I rummage around in increasing panic as the minutes tick by, it occurs to me that I would be better off just skipping an entry for today.

But of course I couldn’t do that. You were kind enough to take time from your busy day to come to this site expecting to find an entry, so I couldn’t possibly not have something for you. But you’ve come for a piece of cake and all I’m offering you here is a plate of crumbs. (Uh…was that a metaphor?)

And then the guilt kicks in, and one of Dick Hardesty’s mind voices is berating me severely for being so damned lazy…for trying to just foist off a bunch of pointless babble as an excuse for an entry. I don’t like feeling guilty, but it is too-large a part of my life at times.

So I’ll just cover all of the above in a nice, shiny coat of paint which I know will begin to chip off even before it is dry, and offer this whatever-it-might-be as a small example of how one writer’s mind works: metaphor after metaphor, unconnected thought after unconnected thought; a popcorn popper with the heat turned up and each kernel a thought; a fireworks display of mental synapses firing off randomly.


So I once more throw myself on your patience and good nature, and hope you will forgive me these occasional lapses. I’ll start working on the next blog today. I promise.

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