Mind

Your mind can play funny tricks on you. It’s a wonder how it works. Even the most unimaginative person in the world can think strange things, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s like your mind has a mind of its own- thinking what it wants to, and by doing that it makes you do things you might never do, and think things you might not otherwise think.

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Have you ever had that dream where you’re falling? You see the sky rising beyond reach as you topple backwards, and you suddenly wake up as if your back has hit the bed from a height and your stomach has done that funny flip flop? It happens to me more often than not and I always find myself thinking ‘What if I had actually fallen? What if by some miracle I had floated from my bed in my sleep and the fall woke me up before I realised the truth?'
I plan to test my theory one day, by recording my nights. But then I wonder- much like how Father Christmas knows when you are sleeping, would I subconsciously know I was being watched and stay stiff on my bed so as not to reveal the strange things that happen?

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Have you ever had the feeling of being watched? When you’re walking home from work one night and the shadows from the trees or the lamp posts stretch towards you menacingly, creating odd shapes or faces of gnarly fingers ready to grab at you. Everything suddenly seems dark and mysterious and in your mind you can hear the horror movie music begin to play. You get really paranoid and imagine footsteps walking just out of tandem to your own and then you feel a set of eyes boring into your back; just staring, unblinkingly, watching your every move- until you make a mistake so they can lunge forward and attack. You take furtive glances around you just to make sure you’re not losing your mind, and then laugh at yourself because there is no way something like that could happen. You relax and cast your mind to other things, but still can’t help but look around- just in case.

*

Have you ever been so bored that sitting and staring into space sounds like the most exciting thing in the world? It happens to me more often than not. A blanket of snow falls over my mind preventing it from working properly and I cannot think of a thing to do that seems interesting. In my boredom I reach for a pen and a piece of paper and begin drawing lines and swirls and zigzags. I’m not drawing anything in particular- I have no finished picture in mind, nor am I paying attention to what I am drawing. I just am. I absently thicken one line, and curve another beneath it, and before too long the page is covered with doodles that make no sense or fit with each other, but I find myself somewhat less bored and I feel the need to do something more- something with purpose. Maybe that’s how our mind copes. It places itself on auto-pilot to rid itself of the thoughts that crowd it and once those thoughts have gone it has the ability to work correctly again.

**

It’s ironic how you think of the most wonderful things just before you go to sleep. Many times I have been lying in my bed, hoping to drift off but my mind jumps from thought to thought, secretly exciting me with its words and pictures. I very much want to get up and write these thoughts down but, in an act of rebellion my mind decides to keep up these thoughts but refuse to let my body move I’m that tired. I fall asleep to these thoughts and dream them, and then, as if toying with me my mind refuses to let me remember these dreams past the first five minutes of being awake. Instead it allows me to pick some handfuls of what has fluttered through my mind and it is unfortunately never as good or satisfactory as it had been the night before.