Only 

my mind

is full

and there seems to be no cure...

My symptoms, a mind full of congestion, a stuffed up brain and a remote in my hand searching for the quickest fix, the remedy, the relief as I listen to the TV ads touting the cure to ease the pain. Sure, there is a cure, but one tenth of the ad describes the cure while the remaining nine tenths are the brutally honest disclaimers as to why it also just might kill you.

Geez.

Side effects.

Time to take sides. Weigh the benefits against the risks.

A balancing act between what to do and what not.

But my mind is so addled and fevered that I am not sure I can walk a straight line let alone think in one.

I am in need of a syzygy pill.

Something I can take to realign the sun, the moon and the earth and me.

My left brain is a cough and my right brain a sneeze, and the end result is an intercranial disconnect.

Out of sync. No coordination, no communication, simply random bursts of energy. In other words I am babbling like a brook, but in truth a brook never actually babbles, it moves in a non random gently comforting rhythmic pulse. Like the curve of the coast, the branches of the tree trunks outside my window, the petals on the tulips about to burst open in the green glass vase on my window ledge.

A field trip. I grab my camera and head outside to the garden. It is early in the spring, so my expectations of a soothing balm seem silly, but there is something drawing me out here. And as soon as I step onto the patio I glance up at the birch tree and feel my heart begin to slow.

For this is what my camera sees:

But my head sees a different picture all together. The camera captures what is there. My head, my slowing down brain picks up a watercolor brush and fills in the familiar patterns of the lime green leaves perfect in their symmetry in line, design and color of what is not there, yet.  For a fraction of a second I am able to see exactly what I have come to expect, as my brain reassures me with the memories etched over time. One side of my brain, the left side, sees the perfect little triangles while the other side, the right side fills in the blanks with whatever my imagination can muster.

There is absolutely nothing here. (Click me! Click Me!)

The healing brush. The brush most of us artists and photographers use with our left hand to erase what we do not want to see, while when placed in our right hand can miraculously fill in what we need to see.

The healing brush that restores balance and the symmetry.

Did you click? I told you there was nothing there!

How to heal a fractured mind? I tap my forehead. The answer is there somewhere, but I just can’t seem to put my finger on it. So I sit here staring at my finger and once again my heart slows a bit and I see it clearly. Not my finger silly, my fingerprint. The unique, one of a kind, whorl pattern that is my very own trademark. My fingerprint. So I tie a string around my finger to help me remember, that while I have a singular soul with no symmetrical mate, there is a theory, the string theory that defines the fundamentals of nature from the most grand to the tiniest particle, from those too far away to see to those too small to detect, but can be envisioned by the world’s smartest mathematicians.

Mathematicians.

The left brain people.Calculating, mind full of numbers and equations always in search of what is there.

Creatives.

The right brain folks the empty headed loose limbed flibbertigibbets of flights of fantasy waiting quietly for the what is missing to appear.

The Zigs and Zags of the world, at least in my little world and in my little brain, may take different paths in their search for the truth, but in the end they meet with surprise and wonder when they meet in Nature. 

The left brains call them fractals.

The right brains call them patterns.

But whatever you call them, the fingerprints of nature are everywhere.

Visible to anyone.

Willing to quiet the mind, slow their breathing, and to wait.

Wait! Wait? No nothing here, yet. (Click Me Click Me)

See I told you there was nothing. You clicked anyway. You did too!

I do not do waiting well either. I think I must move, move, move and do do something. Fill in the blank. Solve the puzzle. Answer the question. 

So I do do do and up up up goes my blood pressure, and I begin to pace, and to outline and plan, absolutely sure that the ratio of my struggles to the enormity of the problem should be symmetrical.

I worry and I fret and I ponder and exhaust myself until I nod off in my chair with my pencil poised over my paper....

And in that moment, before eyes closed and the coming of sleep, I sigh. Which is really just my left and right brain blowing me a raspberry and telling me to take a break.

We’ve got this covered if you’d just shut up and get out of the way.

And in that sweet moment when you open your eyes, and before the day rushes back in with all its watches and warnings, there, there in the stillness, between breath in and breath out, Sweet Mother Nature takes over and the elusive, the evasive, the hard to reach lies nestled in the palm of your hand and you smile.

The answer is exactly where it always is.

In you.

Like every good thing in nature’s fine design,

a portrait of symmetry and balance.

A one of a kind design connected to the rest of the world...

by a silver thread…

Honest. Now that your heart is calm and your mind is still...perhaps you will see it...just like I did...in that moment between eyes closed and the coming of sleep.

Okay...Now THIS is SOMETHING...click here.

Really really click me.