Entry 2 - Deep Thoughts

Thinking about the mind requires a level of comprehension our minds can't handle. If it is true that we only use 10% of our brains, then a mind might be able to comprehend itself, but we -the 10%- could not possibly comprehend the mind. Let's just hope the 10% isn't staging an occupation anytime soon (or has that already happened?).

Icy Treat

Don't worry, years of living haven't slowly eroded at my sanity and I'm not writing a Psych term paper. But I had a rare chance to really think, a chance afforded by a week spent recovering from a fun trip to the doctor's office (my tonsils had overstayed their welcome and had to go). I didn't think about my own mind -after all, I wouldn't climb Everest without grappling hooks, a parka, and the good sense to turn around. Nor did I think so much about the chalky taste of otherwise amazing foods (like pizza and icy treats), the 10,000 movies I watched, which ranged from the typical comedy, drama, sports, and superhero action genres to the Ryan Gosling collection my friend provided (no I didn't watch The Notebook and yes I would've watched pretty much anything), nor did I think about the resentment and scorn I should have felt towards my evil tonsils -the root of my prior week's discomfort and the source of so many disagreements in the past. I didn't even think so much about the pain I felt in my throat, although that would be close.

Movie I watched the most (tied
 with Wedding Crashers at 3 times)

Movie I was disappointed
I had purchased

Movie I was most surprised
I really enjoyed

Instead I thought about how I felt while dealing with the pain during recovery -how I felt experiencing the cocktail woozy combination of anesthesia wearing off,  happy painkiller pills, movie action, soothing dance beats, and pain giving away to it all. I am not a hippie and don't do drugs (although I did love Pink Floyd back in the day). So perhaps my feelings could easily have been induced by a regular dream or a placebo -a high school boy drunk from O'Doul's or a college freshman high from plain chocolate brownies- but even so, my experience was nevertheless real to me, real to my mind, real to touch, feel, and remember.

Wordsworth could think
with the best of 'em

These emotions recollected in the tranquility of a near full recovery deserved reflection and form (boy did that Wordsworth know what he was talking writing about). When piecing together the following poem I began to realize I was trying to capture how my own mind works, how reality and dreams are distinguished, how control over our perceptions can be at one time illusory, the next real, and then at another time both at once. For brief moments I could perceive and enjoy the real and the dream with an awareness as to each that stretched my 10% mind usage rate. Deep stuff? Perhaps, but I suppose there's enough room in the deep end for all of us -regardless of what my title might suggest.


Dreamsville Population One

A trance-filled state where sleep surrounds and colors dance,

Wheels spin on a galloping steed, ungrounded, unbounded...

Reined in only by twisting and turning thoughts,

A tenuous grip on direction, space, and time,

Between slow breathes of bottled air.

A loopland cereal cartoon and baseball in a summer field

Warmly beckon and keep awake my slumber;

The pain is gone and feeling sent to Dreamsville population one,

Where I know that as the pain goes I’ll not return,

Save for words on a simple screen,

Typed to capture the fading memory of a hidden world,

Discoverable perhaps only by the pulling of a dusty book,
The striking of a single key, or retreat into a wardrobe's shadows,

So we might keep a wandering mind from being lost.

-Esso the Esquire

Sweet dreams!

PS
True life: I dreamed of a horse galloping in mid-air with wheels instead of legs, churning up colorful sparks in fast-moving whirls. If I had a large reader base I'd start a contest to see who could draw the best wheel-horse. Actually, I already considered entering that challenge.
And for some reason breathing was hard when I was recovering, I wasn't about to die or anything. I'm not that dramatic.