My Overstuffed Mind
posted September 17, 2009 - 6:10pmCan a man have too much on his mind? Too much in his mind?
In. On. Under. Around. A dozen prepositions, a hundred adjectives, a thousand verbs, a million nouns. Where would a woman put all this stuff; how would she ever fit my head in her closet? How do I fit all my memories and reflections, a virtual warehouse of minutae inside my not-so cavernouos cranium?
What the hell is stuffed in there anyway? Lines from long-forgotten films; advertisements from the 1960s; (I can't believe I ate the whole thing); the annual rainfall percentage in Botswana ; and the team batting average for the 2006 Boston Redsox.
Birthdays and anniversaries; a good friend's favorite flavor; cell phone numbers and a plethora of passwords. Volumes of vocabulary; words like "plethora," and "onomatopoeia." Sultry scenes from lascivious teen-age liaisons; childhood whippings and going to bed without any dinner; the fragrance of night blooming jasmine on the best night of my life.
What are thoughts and memories anyway, but minute electrical impulses, synopses and chemical sparks stretching along neurons in neuro-muscular junctions, spiraling up some ganglia. How bizarre! It must take a billion gazillion ganglia just to comprehend what I just wrote.
Sometimes I think my mouth is nothing but a hole in my soul, a puncture where all the thoughts and ideas and imaginations slowly hiss out. I wonder if my mouth was bigger, if more information would escape - a gusher, a high volume, high pressure stream of jibber jabber and yackitty-yack.
In the animated Film "Yellow Submarine" there is a character by the name of Jeremy Hillary Boob who kind of reminds me of myself. He speaks in verse, introducing himself as an "eminent physicist, polyglot, classicist, prize-winning botanist, hard-biting satirist, talented pianist, good dentist too".
"Lousy poet," an animated John Lennon quips before the Beatles break into a harmonious rendition of "Nowhere Man."
Am I just a lonely, loquacious over-analytical, testosterone-riddled version of Eleonor Rigby? Maybe all these thoughts, these You Tube-like snippets of trivia and brief flashes of useless knowledge are just wall paper, decorations, a disguise that masks deeper pains or discourse that is too painful to really confront.
Maybe I am just a victim of the Information Age, filled with Internet data and television tripe, overstuffed with adverstising jingles and bilious billboard copy. Perhaps I would be better off brainwashed, purged of all platitudes and piffle. Is it possible that if I turn off my computer, assume the lotus position keep saying "Ohm" then my thoughts will become pure and my overcluttered mind will look more like the sanitary work station of an anal retentive executive?

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