I recently read a poem called, “My Mind Is a Kaleidoscope,” that was inspired by my mother sitting in a nursing home, with dementia nipping at her brain cells. She also often had urinary tract infections, which made her hallucinate and contact dead relatives, and I had to visit the nurses’ station and urge them to check her for a UTI.
My mind has always been a combination jukebox and pinball machine. Some phrase or rhythm will come up and my brain will match that to a classic song, and possibly write new lyrics to that summoned melody. Or it’s just as likely my mind will begin playing a song in my head for no apparently reason (unless my cranium is receiving FM broadcast waves and converting them to my thoughts).
As for the pinball part, at times my mind races from thought to thought, and one thing will remind me of another. It’s like looking at clouds on speed or hallucinogenics. Life is surreal, often for only a moment, but that’s enough for me to know my mind is still working.
Case in point: a recent visit to an Olive Garden. There’s the basket of breadsticks. Clearly it’s only a breadstick popping out of the napkin. But it reminded me of something else.
Of course I find this entirely normal, which is likely one of the reasons I appreciate Salvador Dali and the surrealist movement as I do.
Here’s the aforementioned poem:
“My Mind Is A Kaleidoscope”
“My mind is a kaleidoscope,” she said,
As she lay in her nursing home bed.
“But that’s not what I meant,” she said—
But I think it was.
A white sheet of paper,
A vacant screen,
A blank canvas,
An empty mind—
Tabula rasa.
What we learn constructs the unlimited city all around us:
The churches, the temples; the dwellings of gods and men.
Artworks to celebrate human events,
And greenspaces in which we walk and grow.
All that we live we write in our memories.
But mental parchment turns to dust,
Crumbling through personal antiquity;
In time, cracks form in the wrinkles and we crumble like an ancient monument.
And remember, all we are is dust,
And unto dust our memories return…
As we wish for fireflies to dance and light our way into the Void.
MUSOFYR 