Life in Non Sequiturs

Once, when I was twenty, I spent an evening in a café in Amsterdam waiting out a fierce thunderstorm and to pass the time I wrote down everything that came into my head without stopping to ponder. It was an interesting list and a revelatory experience, as I realized that minds like mine never really travel in straight lines. This is great if you’re working in advertising, but it’s bound to drive the people who have to keep up with you every day completely bonkers.

I was reminded of this in the middle of the night when I sat up with the lyrics of Kingston Trio’s They Call the Wind Mariah running through my head. Don’t ask me why because I couldn’t tell you. Anyway, it made me want to try the Train of Consciousness experiment again, just for fun. Here are the results from fifteen minutes before breakfast:

Escargot, Camelot, volcanic craters, Houdini, flower bulbs, egg salad, Aristotle, Xania, iPod playlist, raspberry preserves (maybe I shouldn’t sit in the kitchen to do this), soprano, batteries, mildew, Albert Camus, Thomas Edison, drag racing, Kleenex, widdershins, gravitas, Fibonacci, raw diamonds, home remedies, Scarlett O’Hara, catechins, microscope, almond butter toast (maybe I shouldn’t do this when I’m hungry), sea urchin, otters, gas cooker, castle, hemostats, soy sauce, existentialism, plastic plates, drain pipe, laundry soap, throw out the dead plant, wash the sheets (NO! This isn’t a TO DO list!), Switzerland, condensation, healthy soil organisms, magic markers with no caps, shearling, pizza-pizza-pizza, orthodontist, ranunculus, smell of a burning soccer ball, tropical vacation, geometry, egrets, guitar lessons, Kermit Lynch, Topher Delaney, Shakespeare, cable, quantum mechanics, this list was much more interesting last time, crispy English muffins for breakfast, yay!

Okay, now you try it; come on, you know you want to see what happens. Then post your results on the comments page if you’re brave enough to share. Just don’t over think things or you’ll start to actually make connections, and then you really will go nuts…