Do you form whole sentences in your mind as you go about your day.
An essay that runs through your head in a gentle voice as you form and reform commentary. Not like hearing voices. This voice is your own voice, searching for just the right word with just the right sound. A running dialogue as though there is a friend next to you who listens and nods. Yes, yes. I know. And you want to get it just right so they understand.
Do you frame and reframe pictures thinking why did you leave Camera House inside. Taking pictures with your minds shutter. Click. Reframe, tighten, click. Zoom. Tuck. Adjust. Wish I had my camera! Oh I know you all do that!
Do you have a soundtrack that plays in the basement of your mind, often just out of earshot like the whine of a mosquito in the next room but sometimes it escapes through the smudged door of your lips as a hum, and other times as a verse of a song and other times is finished with a shout of “Get behind you useless excuse of a dog! Good Boy Ton Ton. Good boy. Sit Boo Boo …SIT!
I hope it is not only me who does these things.
Do you imagine meeting people you have not seen for years, maybe they are even dead already and then you have ordinary little conversations with them about cabbages or planting trees or cakes or how you both despise pink icing, but there are no sounds only smiles on your lips that someone else may interpret as happiness but really they are just smiles.
Do you look at the sky and see the vapor trails of planes flying so high you cannot hear the engines. Carrying all those little people and all their important dreams and they do not know that you are watching the vapor tail of their plane and you wish that soon it will be you going home. But home is a vapor trail. Nebulous in its whimsical sandcastle construction. Home is not where the heart is, home is where the child was.
Do you ever think what the hell am I going to make for tea tonight. It feels like every single day of my life since I was 15 I have had to decide what to have for dinner, plan it, time it so it is all hot and cooked at the same time and on the table for dinner when someone else wants it. Because I don’t. And then clean up after it. Of course I have not had to cook every night but sometimes it FEELS like it. It is not the cooking that bothers me it is the deciding WHAT to cook. Do you ever think to yourself, if I have to do this one more time I am carting myself off the loony bin. i will make the call. I will wrap myself in the straight jacket. At least they give you four square meals a day there and then you wonder why they are called ‘square’ how can a meal be square. Does it come on a square plate? Is the food arranged in a square? Why four? Are you mad already?
Then you think something else but it is so fleeting that it is gone before you can take a mental note but who reads mental notes anyway. They perch yellowly, stuck to the walls of your brain, fluttering just out of reach. On the tip of your tongue like litmus. And then do you think I better not be thinking idle thoughts, that would be a terrible waste of time. The devil makes work for idle hands and idle thoughts seem like a natural extension.
And you try again to think about what to make for dinner and end up making an apple pie because you have apples. And since the oven is on you make some bread as well.
Do you ever think like that or is it just me. Do you ever wonder, like I do, why my food shots just look like food. They have none of the sharp moody charisma of the real food shots.
Do you ever think about a person then wonder if they are thinking about you?
Do you ever wonder why the males of the species in the animal and bird kingdoms are the most flamboyant and colourful but not in the human kingdom.
Do you ever think in words. Do you dream in colour. I dreamed once that a man gave me a gate. A big wide farm gate. This is an old dream. I walked down a pot holey country road in my city and short skirt carrying a wide green heavy gate. Though in the dream it felt more unwieldy than heavy. 
Askance. That is the word that accompanies your look. You look at me askance, but you see – it is OK not to get it right all the time. It is OK to sit down and think what am I doing. Am I doing it right. Can I do it better. Do I need to bother. It is OK to say – what do you think? It is!
Are you sometimes very tired as the autumn approaches. The time for moving animals off to the abbatoir, the weight of the choices that are mine. Their eyes sit in my eyes. We blink. The time for closing the gardens and windows. Ticking down into our hibernations. Our caves full of wine and tomatoes. The time for counting your stores and laying in the layers, hoping there is enough.
Do you sometimes wish you could undo life’s silver Thought Domes, guiltily clicking the snaps apart with deft fingers, and slide the thinking off for a minute and lay it folded neatly on the chair to breathe on its own for a wee while and then you step out of your thoughts so you can be the light again, just for a moment. In the moment. Just for a moment.
Good morning.
I hope you have a lovely day. I do.
your friend on the farm, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
133 responses to “Do you ever think in words?”
What a beautiful post, Celi–the entire exchange, really. I may print the whole thing so I can read through and digest it all. Yes to the talk in my head, yes to the background music, and most certainly YES to the getting-tired-of-cooking part. I swing widely from loving to cook one day to hating it the next! The routine and feeling the responsibility get to me after a while. I love trying new things, especially when they turn out well. Anyway–lovely, lovely post and lots of wonderful comments. (Happy birthday, Misky! You’re just a babe!)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes…(enough yesses?) I am tears in my eyes moved. You speak to my heart woman! I carry on these kinds of conversations all the time, every minute, every day. I also inherited my grandfather’s soundless whistle, when I am really concentrating, making jewelry perhaps.
Yes.
All the time, Celi.
I only scanned the responses after reading your post C – but what I came away with was a symphony, a small oratorio of arts and real matter fusing into the air into liquid silver notes, and I think my gosh, one on for the pigs, and the dirt, mud, farm and Boo, and I also am reminded, that in the food chain, the elements sacrifice, going towards higher order. Hmmm what does this mean? The mineral goes to higher level into the vegetable; the mineral has powers of cohesion, and the vegetable cohesion and growth, and then they go into the animal, who has feeling capacity, and then it can go into man (generic) who has the power of thought, and it’s the concept of sacrifice of lower elements to the highest, and then round and round again; a life process.
Your writing was heavenly C, and I tell people about your blog; mighty powerful poetic thoughts!
YES! XO
I wonder why the wheels and mudguards on American wheeled things are so different to the ones around me.
Lovely thoughts and photos Ron wants to know what year and make the Truck is in 2nd photo? We have one looks so much the same he is redoing right now 🙂
If you come east you can see me and Maggie we live 40 min. apart and we have a Beach or two 🙂
As I sit in waiting rooms or at restaurants I’m a people watcher & usually end up making up life stories for them based on their expressions & the way they talk to people. I can never sit & force a blog, it just has to form in my head so that when I sit down, everything just flows.
Would certainly love some of that apple pie right now.
Look at all the thoughts your writing has given rise to! Words, even. You write what many of us experience but cannot say so poetically. I have often said, it is not the preparation of the meals that gets difficult, it is the decision about what to make… and your photos are beautiful, and yes, feeling the weight of sadness or responsibility at times makes us human. It is okay. X
*dashes to the fridge and comes back with an icepack for an overheated brain* 🙂
That is certainly a LOT of thinking!
What a great post! I found myself saying ‘yes’, and ‘yes’, as I read. In creative mode, the thoughts tumble in so fast that I have to reach for my little writer’s notebook which I carry with me always. And in answer to your last paragraph: how to escape all that thinking and take a rest? – that’s why I meditate. Thought-free stillness is like bathing in a deep pool and emerging completely refreshed. Being the light again, as you so eloquently put it.
Do drop in at your beach for a moment:
http://seasonalinspiration.blogspot.co.nz/2013/09/a-childs-eyes.html
My beach, you have brought tears to my eyes.Darling Juliet.. . Thank you,. i shall pop into my beach .. and i will meet you there in 2014.. well maybe in ack, but close.. c
Oh, how exciting that you’ll be back!
I’m just about to pop down to your beach right now and celebrate spring equinox.
It is not only you. I have mental post-it’s and a flurry of sticky-ones with scribbled words. I have a notepad and pen and untidy night scribbles. I have songs in my head competing with conversations, past, present and future. And yes, some days I would cook anything for dinner, or attempt to, if only someone would tell me WHAT. Some days I want to go Home but I’m not even sure which home I mean. There are many different me’s in other places, other times, just waiting for a visit. And yes, every day when I make choices of what to eat, I make that choice, consciously, gratefully. You make it at a different level, more engaged, closer, so it’s more significant, courageous.
Yesterday, Saturday, the G.O. had gone off to work before 5.30 am, the apartment and bed felt too empty to go back to sleep, so I made a cup of coffee and came to that place where I knew there’d be kindred spirits – the Farmy, the Commenters Lounge. It is a fine and generous thing that you are so inclined and talented to share with us the many and varied aspects of your life and thoughts, and provide the forum for to do so too. It’s not much but… thank you 🙂
You are most welcome, this is like a gift to me, your words.. thank you for them.. c
I feel and do those same things every day. Even living completely different life styles, I knew exactly what you meant. Thank you for this blog. I mean it. It is a source of constant for me when I am sick and can’t get out. I know I’ll get to see and read about interesting happenings at your end. Hope all is well!
Ash,
All is well darling.. just thinking that is all! c
Thank you for a thought provoking post. I talk to myself constantly, but I believe that’s alright, its when you begin to answer back that you have to start to worry 🙂 I hate cooking dinner, so I have a glass or 3 of wine whilst preparing. I have been vegetarian for 2 years, my husband loves his meat so every night there are two decisions to make – but I love to eat and eat good food so that’s why I enjoy my wine. Twice a year I stop drinking alcohol for a whole month and the dinners then are very quick or slow cooked and often its “have a sandwich” . So glad I found the farmy. Joy
mercy .. no drinking for a whole month.. let me know when next time you do this (not soon i hope) and I shall try to join you.. what an excellent idea. I think… definitely good for the health and the pocket!! c
Here in Aussie there is Dry July when we abstain for July and many people donate to the cause which is supporting families coping with cancer with loved ones in hospital, like creating accommodation etc. Secondly is Febfast which is not so widely advertised but fund raising too. Its all in the mind – I just say to myself “Make a coffee and cook the meal quick smart”. My husband joins me too and is happy to get dinner at a decent hour, unlike the other ten months when I spend ages fiddling about in the kitchen (and pouring another glass 🙂 ) I dont feel much different for it except its a challenge and I love to challenge myself. Joy
Of course, Celi! I don’t think the everlasting conversation is just in my head: it is withing the whole of me it seems. It makes me very comfortable and I have never had a lonely moment I can remember ~ and yes, there are plans, and conversations, and wording for my work and uni essays, and music often breaks thru . . . don’t know I exactly ‘talk’ to people unless planning an important conversation . . . and since I paper-plan my meals at least 3-4 days ahead, well not that also. And, oh yes, I just love, love,love watching plane trails high up in the sky during the cold months of the year . . . And tho’ I loved the piggies, do like your new heading. [Off topic] the Elizabethan Ruffle’ scene which greets me every morning always makes me begin the day with a huge smile 😀 !
I am going to try to plan my meals, that would be such a relief.. c
Mostly only one me ‘neurotic’ nutritionist: much, much easier! Sleep well, dearheart!!