Sometimes, thoughts won't be grasped you know, at least not in a way they can be explained. It's like knowing the definition of a word and the context it should be used, but being unable to formulate a comprehensive sentence to explain that term or its usage to someone else. I take information in, some say like a sponge, but I cannot for the life of me pass it on when the moment arises. Not when it's requested or could be volunteered, not when it could help some other seeking knowledge. Knowledge that I already have, a short-cut to wherever they want to eventually get to.
No, the words die in my throat, tail off when I notice the uncomprehending look in people's eyes: what is she blathering on about? Or worse become a burble of mismatched words which don't go anywhere and leave the enquirer no clearer, still, in fact, knowing nothing more than where they started from. And if further questioned as to my explanation, I'm liable to lose the plot, to um and er a lot and to throw my hands up and out in uncontrolled gestures. My hands moving of their own accord as if to divert people's attention: follow my hands and not the words streaming from my mouth.
Nobody has ever fallen into a trance nor stopped listening to what I'm issuing although the hands have been followed. It's a curious effect, not even mildly hypnotic and yet even I, in the midst of talking, get distracted by the other person's darting eyes, so that really all it is does is confuse and make me painfully aware. My hands continue to dance, as if they're separate from me, despite desperate attempts to rein them in, and so in certain situations now, where improvised gestures would be unforgivable I have to sit on them.
I've never asked what the other person sitting or standing opposite me thinks of this shadow puppet show. I'm not sure I'd want to know. How much notice do we take of other people's mannerisms, or even of our own? Perhaps I'm unusual in that respect; self-centred, self-absorbed even or just distressingly self-conscious.
Too much time to mull, I suspect. A writer's failing, not that I really think of myself as a writer. I prefer not to categorise whatever this is, this exploratory outpouring, except to know that if I didn't allow a blank space for it I'd probably go mad; they'd be too many thoughts and nuances running amok up here.
Up where? In the unsolvable maze of my mind whose hedgerows are undefined. What once seemed to lead somewhere becomes a dead end; what was once a cul-de-sac opens out. Its pattern changes on a frequent basis, so that everything that appeared simple is complex and anything anticipated to be complicated is simplex. It's akin to a 3D design, which if viewed on a lit screen, you can look at from every conceivable angle, except the one in my mind runs to a different, though not entirely incompatible, program to its host.
Now, I've heard of independent thinking, but this is frankly bizarre. A sure sign, though not the first, of madness or a contracted virus. And some, it's true, is in a code I don't recognise until I locate the Master Key to unlock that particular door, but for that you need convergency and that rarely occurs when I want it to, least of all when I deliberately give thought to a situation or a puzzling affair. But then perhaps my analytical behaviour is too much of the kind you'd ordinarily associate with a much younger person; my mind lagging behind making that transition to full adulthood, and therefore determined to raise uncertainties for me to ponder over, such as where do we come from? where do we go back to? and could an Angel have been flung from Space to take my place and erase my default settings?
Picture credit: Convergence, Jackson Pollock
