MIND LIKE A JUNGLE

I can't quite remember why I said that my mind was like a jungle. I did though, I said that tonight to Katie, without really thinking about it. It's because I have lots of thoughts all at once and they all intertwine, or swing from tree to tree, or scuttle away into the undergrowth.

Infuriatingly for others, sometimes this happens right in the middle of a conversation. I actually stop mid-sentence as something else occurs to me, and I'm drawn right away from the original thought and into a sort of paralysis. I don't like this diversion into the jungle. Most people get confused and frustrated that they haven't gone with me. While they're saying 'pardon?' or 'sorry?' or whatever, I look like I'm daydreaming. I will usually return though, and sometimes more quickly.

It happened to me on the way home from practice too. I was walking back through the allotments, wondering whether I could pick my way through the darkness without a torch, when I suddenly stopped and looked up at the Moon. It was nearly full, glowing bright and bold in the night sky, beaming from the corners of greenhouses and corrugated sheds.

I stood there for ages, thinking about how moonlight is just sunlight that's travelled a little further. I imagined myself, lit up by its beams as my cool shadow fell across somebody's vegetable patch. I'd have a silvery outline, I suppose, a kind of glistening figure standing like a scarecrow in the middle of the allotments. Then I felt moved to pray about something else, so I did, staring up at the Moon. I wasn't praying to the Moon, you understand, just using it as an anchor point to bounce my prayers back to the Creator. I chuckled to myself when I realised that that's a bit like moonlight in reverse.

Anyway, I digressed there. See? I had a thought in the middle of another thought and because it was connected, I explored it even though it was a bit of a tangent. I don't know if there's a word for that. I think I have a low concentration span, or I'm just interested by lots of things. One more example, then I'll bring it back to jungles and wrap this whole thing up.

I was talking to Tom in the kitchen. Tom is a colleague who is about to travel to Brazil to be there while his fiancée gives birth to their first child. I quizzed him (sensitively, don't worry) about all that and he explained how it happened. The situation I mean, not the pregnancy... Tom told me that he has to be careful in Sao Paolo because there's a high chance of being kidnapped and held to ransom. In fact, a friend of his had already had his car stolen at gunpoint while he was in it.

Anyway, for some reason, I then launched into the story of how I had had a gun pointed at me once, in a field in Gloucestershire. I explained how I was playing at a conference on a farm, got lost trying to drive back to the main road and a farmer thought I was a traveller on his land. For a moment or two, in the brilliant beam of a pair of Range Rover headlamps, there was a shotgun aimed at my head.

Half way through the story, I realised that this would not necessarily cheer Tom up, as the crime rate in Sao Paolo is almost certainly higher than it is in Gloucestershire. I had to finish it though. And all the time I was searching through the jungle for something I could say that that would make Tom feel a little happier at the end of it.

I think that if my mind is really like a jungle, I could do better at sticking to some more tried and tested paths, at least when I'm thinking out loud. Sometimes though, the trail is so unclear that the only thing I can do is stand in the clearing and wait until I can figure out which of the thousand interesting things around me is the best to talk about. Imagine that! Imagine having so many competing things going on in your head at the same time that they all get squished as they fight for space through the exit of the jungle-mind.

I thought about it between the allotments and home. Writing it all down, might be a start, I thought. So I did.