Collecting My Thoughts


I collect my thoughts and hang them on my back yard fence. Some have been there for years. Most of them get eaten by rats. I never know which thoughts the rats will eat; I see no logic or pattern in their choices. After they eat a thought, it's very difficult to remember it. Sometimes I remember the thought, but not why I thought it so it's kind of meaningless. So, I'm thankful for the thoughts that don't get eaten. Most of them are still meaningful to me and I'm glad I still have them, hanging there above the various struggling flowers and vegetables. They brighten up what is a mostly blighted yard.

When I decide to collect a thought, I need to figure out where on the fence to hang it. There are some thoughts that are unpleasant; thoughts that I do not like to revisit, but those thoughts are usually thoughts that I should pay attention to. I hang them right in the middle where I see them first. That way, when I go in my back yard, I can get those thoughts out of the way and go on to the more pleasant thoughts.

I like to surround the unpleasant thoughts with uncontroversial, noncommittal thoughts, in locations where I see them easily. They function like a pallete cleanser; something that I can think about quickly and easily, and I can think about several of them in a row. They help clear my mind.

More complicated thoughts are another story. These are the thoughts that I enjoy the most because they have more meaning. However, I need to separate them into thoughts that are resolved, and thoughts that are not resolved.

I put the resolved thoughts where I can see them easily. I put thoughts that are not resolved at the outer reaches of the fence, where they are not easily seen, sometimes behind bushes. If I start thinking about those thoughts, I might stand there thinking for hours. Sometimes, that's what I want to do, but not always.

There is an important difference between resolved and unresolved thoughts. Sometimes, if I think about a resolved thought long enough, it becomes unresolved, and I move it to a new location. However, I have never had an unresolved thought get resolved. The space for the unresolved thoughts is getting crowded. Eventually, I might not have any resolved thoughts at all.

When I have guests, I often invite them to sample my collection of thoughts. They understand and appreciate most of the thoughts. But some of the thoughts that are clear and obvious to me make no sense to them. Conversely, some thoughts that are, to me, unresolved and make me ponder, are perfectly clear and obvious to other people and they wonder why I bother keeping them.

Recently, I started to run out of room on my fence, so I began to take thoughts down. Some of them just seem to have had their day anyway. My cat is not a picky eater like the rats, so I feed those thoughts to my cat. My cat eats anything. My cat has an open mind and is a broad thinker.

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