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This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.

Thursday, April 6, 2023
7:27pm

“Oooofa you’ve got a clear head.”

Said by my grandmother and more than one of her sisters on many an occasion. It was not a compliment.

A clear head meant someone, usually their husband, was being woefully stupid about something. A clear head implied “put some brains in that thing.”

So you never really wanted to have a clear head, except I have news for you. A clear head is highly underrated.

I have a clear head this evening. A blank slate. Empty set.

Why? No idea. I don’t question miracles, I just absorb them and enjoy.

I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to extol the virtues of blankness. That’s how my mind feels: blank.

It doesn’t have words or stories, it’s just a smooth marble and everything is sliding right off it.

I think in words. I think in full sentences. I narrate my life moment by moment, many times out loud. Ralph has stopped asking me if I said something to him because he knows I didn’t.

So when blankness takes over, it’s quite a nice change. The flower is just a flower, not a story. My mind is blessedly blank like a new notebook, and stories may eventually be written there but for a little while I can sit back and enjoy the loveliness of a clean page.

When my mind goes blank, there is room to experience and absorb, not merely to think. When thoughts pop up they’re like little puffs of clouds, floating through, in contrast to the wild thunderheads that usually coalesce in the tornado of my mind.

I am going to take advantage while the feeling lasts, and simply… stop.

Photo: a clear sky. Blank, like my brain… with just the tiniest suggestion of a thought.