The little black dress

...A dispatch from bewilderness

Once upon a time, there was a town ensconced in my brain. Or rather, my former brain. The town was perched in the often scenic paths above my ears and behind my eyes.

Things burst and break sometimes, and I broke just like a little girl. Or rather my brain did.

When your brain breaks, your memories break, your thoughts break, your dreams break, too. It’s not like heartbreak, which can disassemble your heart, then put it together and heal it with time.

You get a new life complete with new mind, though you would not have chosen either of them. This is sort of like being beside yourself. Your first self beside the self you are now. You catapult between them in a feat of gymnastics which likely is the only exercise you get.

Brain breaks disassemble your mind and your present and future and past and don’t hand back the pieces intact, or don’t hand them back at all. That is called amnesia. They also cause verbal catastrophes so words can go just about anywhere at just about any time, but I’m writing anyway.

The beauty of lists is that they ground the ungrounded, anchor the unanchored, connect the seemingly disconnected. In other words, sometimes make things make sense. On our list today:

An occasional 3-dimensional female protagonist. Confetti-colored visuals. Flowers in Crayola hues. A little black dress. A book called “Is It Just Me? Or Is It Nuts Out There?”

Plus the life I had. The life I missed. Tips and tactics. Dos and don’ts. How-to’s. Like how to grow crops on Mars. How to behave Tuesday and Thursday. (Sadly, nothing for the other five days.) Plus humans who fry eggs that begin sunny side up but end scrambled like everything else.