Thinking

I’ve been told by a few people of late that I think too much. Which, now that I’ve thought about it for a while could possibly be true. Of course, it could also be untrue. You’d have to consider it from both angles to even begin to consider the problem. Although, perhaps thinking about whether you’re thinking too much is a sign that you’re thinking too much. On the other hand, it is also possible that a lot of other people are just thinking too little. It’s worth a thought or two. Though it seems like precisely the sort of conclusion that a person who thinks too much would draw. I think, in general, that I think the exact right amount, like when Goldilocks finally finds the right kind of porridge. Although, what is that story about anyway. Is it allegorical? A lesson book? Is the lesson that you’re not supposed to enter a stranger’s house, especially if they are a bear? Is the lesson that you need to try new things in order to find what works best for you? Is it a story about the dominance of humans over animals vis a vi what terrible carpenters bears would make? This last one seems unlikely, but I’d submit that you need to consider the story from a variety of angles before even beginning to analyze it. I guess, now that I’m considering the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, maybe it’ s the sort of thing that we should have just let go. Like, I get the Pieta and the Duomo and Les Miserables, but I’m not sure why we held on to this one. I’ll have to think about it.

The purple Columbine in our yard is in full bloom, looking like nothing so much as a very pretty tall woman going out in an evening gown. That is untrue. It looks like a large green plant with long stems rising from the base, and, at its zenith, are purple flowers. No wait, that’s wrong. What it looks like is the water at dusk, just after a bird has passed by, when it makes a soft v that ripples out to the shore. That’s wrong too. Language is inadequate, especially in the hands and minds of amateurs. I’ll take a picture instead, and I’ll replace all these words with an image, and you’ll say to yourself that it’s nice, but probably not worth a thousand words.

On Friday’s, it often feels like enough just to have gotten home. After reading books with Sadie and closing the door I’ll usually walk straight into our bedroom and lie down to sleep. I am always tired on Fridays, tired of a myriad of things, and I know it is just because I have not been looking. I know that I am missing nearly everything that the world is made up of beautiful things. Look at the flowers by the window, the fruit in the basket, if I was Georgia O’Keefe I’d paint both of them and leave everyone speculating about what I was really painting. I have books on the shelves, a hundred or so, and I know, having read almost all of them that the words inside them are beautiful, that they say things like:

I knew he believed in something that none of us ever do anymore. He believed in the nastiest word in the world. He believed in KINDNESS. Please tell me that you remember kindness. Please tell me you remember kindness and joy, you cool motherfu—ers.

Or

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

Or

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”

And, for a moment, an instant, the infinite space of time that it takes Achilles to reach the tortoise, I think to myself, there it is. How could I have missed so much beauty? And then it’s slips away again, a wave slipping back out into the near infinite sea, and I do not know if I am listening to the sound of the water arriving or leaving.

Cheesecake time