The View from a Drawbridge

This happens to me quite frequently. I’ll have an idea for a really good blog entry just as I drift off to sleep, and when I awaken, it’s gone. There’s this sad empty feeling left behind, and more than a little self-flagellation for not having roused myself enough to write the thought down on the notepad I keep on my nightstand for just such a purpose.

Somewhere there should be a graveyard for those thoughts and ideas that slip away, never to be seen again. Sometimes those thoughts resurrect themselves. One did so while I was driving once, causing me to slam on my brakes, pull over, and write the thing down. It was just that good.

And I do have slips of paper scattered about with the beginnings of ideas. The more frustrating ones are the ones that no longer make any sense to me. I’m afraid to throw them away because one day they might. Again.

And then there are the ones that are perfectly understandable, but no longer seem like a good idea. Who was I when I did think it was a good idea? Someone else, apparently.

But I suspect that those resurrections will be fewer and farther between as I age, and that, frankly, scares me to death. No one in my family seems to live long enough to get dementia or Alzheimer’s, but I can’t think of a more terrifying way to go. It would be like constantly mourning the death of something you can no longer recall.

Here’s a random thought. Some friends of mine like to take the “ugh” out of thought and spell it “thot”. It makes perfect sense to me. And it makes me wonder if a thought without the “ugh” becomes a much better, more positive thought.

I sometimes imagine that if all my lost ideas could somehow be consolidated into one big thoughtful mass, they would create another whole person. I have no idea who that person would be, but I suspect she’d have quite a lot to say.

This is a photo I took in the historic cemetery of a Unitarian Universalist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.