Weirder Things.

Many times, I have no clue where my ideas come from. Today, however, I do have an inkling as to the Genesis of this blog. Driving down the road my wife gently announced, and I paraphrase here, “You think of strange things”.Now my wife and I have been together for almost 35 years. If someone is going to know me, better than I know myself, it’s going to be her. She also hears all my crazy ideas for books and reads the multiple drafts of everything I write. She has also decided to join me in China teaching, she can be weird too... It would be safe to assume she knows my thoughts as well as I do. I was going call this blog stranger things, but let’s be realistic, that title's been kind of taken.So why weirder things. I find it hard to shut my mind off. If I’m not worrying about something I have zero control over, I’m thinking about something I want to write about, or something I need to do to get ready to do something I might have to do in the future. This can be exhausting.Yesterday in class Doctor Shimko was explaining Symbolism, and what the original Artists were attempting to show. But first a quick joke, how many surrealists does it take to screw in a light-bulb? The answer is, fish.If you didn’t get the joke, it's okay because you weren’t meant to get it. The joke was one of the ways surrealism was explained.But for Symbolism, I think the explanation which struck home for me was the idea: when you’re lying awake at night at 3 AM and you can’t sleep because your mind is thinking about all those things you’re thinking about. When you get so tired you can’t think about anything else, there is a feeling left. That feeling is what Symbolism is trying to reach.This spoke to me. Many nights I have laid awake until I couldn’t think or worry about anything, any longer. There was a time, if I put a name on a feeling I had at 3 AM, it would’ve been dread or anxiety. The feeling of dread has left me. I still worry, I still think about things I have no control over, sometimes until I’m so sleepy I just can’t think about another thing. Now when I finally reach the point I don’t know what I feel. I know I feel, but I can’t put a name to it.Surrealism is the dreamlike quality which as soon as you put a name on it, it’s no longer surrealistic because you’ve named it. A feeling when to normal things are put together that don’t really go together like in a dream. I remember the old REO speed wagon album, “you can tune a piano but you can’t tune a fish.” I think I get it now.That’s surreal, isn’t it?What do you feel at 3 AM?