ideas in exile

What is it that I write here? Not my greatest work, certainly, but also not my worst. (The very worst is reserved for emails, in which I type as fast as I can think with little regard to form or content.) So, what is it that I write here? I suppose this is a repository, of sorts, for all of my malformed, misshapen ideas - all the ideas which have no other place in any of my other writings. (But this is the easy answer, and even I know it is a lie.) It's a place to deposit random ideas, so that I might have room to think of other things. How many memories can a human brain hold? Is it possible to run out of space? The artist's fear: that this is possible. Too many images. Too many visions. Too much beauty. A mad rush to get ink on paper, paint on canvas, to work out that melody on the piano. Banish them from mind. Ideas in exile.

This morning, I wake early to watch the rain clouds roll in. All misty-eyed and quiver-jawed, too tired, hungover, staring out the window at a grey outside. A cup of coffee growing cold. Wet pavement growing wetter. Trees, already too green, drowning. Saturated. Waterlogged. Like me. My house can't stand the silence, so she creaks in the wind. Her windows rattle. Bored for a century. Memories of last night: too much drink, bass thumping, lights flickering on shiny ice cubes. Yell, dance, drink, ad nauseam. Stock memories, they need no special place to reside, for they are everyone's memories. Dance between the beats unless you want to look like a fool; think between the memories unless you want to be a fool. Why go out? Why leave the house, ever? It's all been done before.

How far is it from my door to yours? The distance is static, and can be covered in an unchanging amount of time, with an unchanging amount of energy expenditure - it matters not when I leave, but which route I take to get there; and, in this case, there is only one. I'll get there, still tired and maybe a little hungover. I'll be wet with rain and my sneakers will be muddy from walking in the alleyway. Oh, and I'll be a little late because I had to get this out of my mind. This important note to remind myself of what I'm doing here - recording memories and ideas, so that I might have room to think of other things. In a sense, I've reminded myself to remind myself not to remind myself. A pointless task. I pull open the front door, and the house gasps for a breath of fresh air. Stifled. I step outside, into the rain, and she is glad to be alone.