While my mind was elsewhere, my pen went running down the stair and out into the crowded streets of a foreign of a country. Once free of me, my pen did things my mind would never have dreamt of allowing.
It went singing into the marketplace. It spoke the native language so badly and with such bravado that the woman selling tomatoes wrinkled up her nose and refused to try to understand.
But where my mind would have slunk away, my pen laughed and tried again (and again) until the woman couldn’t help herself and smiled. My pen pantomimed making tomato sauce, turning up the burner and stirring until the woman was in stitches and charged it half price for more tomatoes than my pen could possibly eat.
My pen carried the feast back home to a friend it found, doubled over by those twin agonies of pain and the shame of being in pain, and while my mind was considering whether to mention “thoughts” or “prayers” or “energy,” my pen wrote “I love you” a thousand times in cherry red with little heart-shape “O’s.”
My pen went swimming on a public beach with no regard (my mind was offended by this) for what anyone would think, and afterwards climbed a tree just to prove it wasn’t too old for tree-climbing.
My pen, panting on the grass, suggested a trip to the hill country of Australia, if there was such a thing, and my mind, looking censoriously down at it, said “It’s called ‘the bush,’ I think.”
Then, my pen, giddy with glee, sprang to its feet, and jumped up and down three times, making the “up” and the “down” skitter across the line.
It said, “Wouldn’t that be just divine?”
And my mind, tired of this nonsense, answered, “Maybe, just no more silly rhymes.”
It was about to add “This is serious stuff,” but it caught my pen grinning at it and gave up.
“All right, all right,” it said, “I’ve had enough of trying to control you. What is it, now, that you would like to do?”
And my pen, at last getting what it wanted, led me (body, mind, and soul) out into a broad field full of a crop none of us recognized, golden with the weight of late summer. My pen pointed up at geese making a V-line to somewhere. “Let’s go,” it said.
My mind, last gasp of practically, hesitated, “You know, we have a lot to do.”
And my pen, already ten feet off the ground, shouted back, “Why do when you can fly?”
Leave a Reply