mind

Indistinct, undefined, nebulous, at moments fast and compulsive before slowing to agonizing stagnation.
An exquisite precision and openness of awareness to encompass all that appears in my consciousness.
Fleeting. Fickle. Frustrating

Too many coffees, self-induced anxiety, cyclical cyclical cyclical thoughts.

Compulsion to be in the sea, in any body of water – I drink, I breathe, I am dissolved by it. Immersion in the ocean, I am salt. If I were made of purely water, I would be about 63 litres. Through things, I move and move and move and now I am still. A rolling stone gathers no moss yet thick green grows from my pores and clings, matted along the surface of my skin. Small things, small steps, I go forward one and back three and try to forgive. Some days of nothingness, utter inertia. The hollowness of an empty house, my thoughts echo through spaces and return, distorted, back to me. I make a pasta bake to last me a few days and eat it in one sitting.

Don’t mind your mind, she said to me.
It’s lying to you.

consciousness perception thinking memory intelligence judgement language imagination

Speaking about the process of forgetting an idea Solnit writes that ‘it is as decayed as a real book might be after being buried or abandoned, and when I think of the scraps that remain, I wonder what weather in the mind so erodes such things.’*

This happens with all my ideas. I carry notebooks and sketchbooks with me wherever I go; they remain mostly empty. Half finished drawings and half thought thoughts, scattered around on some pages; never to be completed. Fragmented and floating like my mind. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll ever manage to catch up with myself. I am a dog chasing her own tail.

Still, I’ve always liked empty sketchbooks in the same way that my favourite shops are hardware stores - rows and rows of tools and utensils, a blank page where anything is possible. I tell myself I keep the books empty because it’s like holding on to potential.