I was sitting outside in the sun a bit ago and had an acute feeling of having my brain stuffed with information that, when it comes down to it, the living organism that I am has no need of. I wondered what it was like for someone a thousand years ago, whose head was only full of useful information necessary for day-to-day life. Mine's bursting with information about things I can't see (atoms, germs, black holes, dinosaurs, etc.), entertainment trivia (the photo of Franco Corelli cooking soup with his dog, flux capacitors, the costumes for a 1958 production of Il Barbiere with Maria Callas and Tito Gobi, Muffin the Mule, etc.), people I'll never meet, some of whom are dead and some were never alive at the same time as me (Hitler, my mother's friend Morag who was married to a pilot, Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin), internet culture detritis (TIL, Foreveralone, 404, numa numa, nyan cat, BSOD). My head is like those inflated zentai suits: never intended to be treated in that fashion the risk of explosion or at least leakage seems high.

No wonder my head buzzes like a beehive and no wonder, too, many people have skewed priorities and unrealistic views of the world. I wonder what it was like long ago. It seems as though there'd be no distractions from the concentration on real matters at hand, such as smelling the breeze, planting seeds, stalking game, sweeping, and so on, except for actual, real distractions like sudden hailstorms, a friend shouting, nosebleeds, etc., which would cause a bifurcation - not the mind-split-in-a-million-directions-at-once that we have all the time.

When I'm creating stuffs I am single-minded, though. It's always been quite a refuge.

Labels: Cogitation