Everything’s Coming Up Rosen: Random thoughts

Posted on 01 June 2017 by LeslieM

By Emily Rosen

ERosen424@aol.com

www.emilyrosen424.com

I try to impress upon my writing class the importance of focus.

You must have a theme, a point of view, a message you want to convey,” I tell them.

For emphasis, I ask that they be able to verbally express in one or two sentences the premise of the writing. And so, with that acknowledgement, I want to thank some literary precedents for what I am about to do. There are times in one’s life when there is a necessity to set upon paper a “stream of consciousness” — random thoughts that have been a-haunting, thoughts that seemingly have no connection to each other, but that spring from an uninhibited authority that needs to punch itself out of the box.

Here’s how it goes, and welcome to today’s creepy innards of my secret brain — without attention to rules, sentence structure, consistency of tense or pronouns, or point of view, just as messy and random as thoughts tend to be:

Isn’t it interesting how people never stop learning … How once that diploma is in our hands, it means that the learning is actually about to commence, how we learn so much more out of school than within its confines, about new ideas, new ways of thinking, about how I had evaluated the character of a certain person and, then, how I have changed my mind about that person, and actually, how I thought about myself and find so many aspects of me that have changed? And — wow! How good it is to be flexible, to be able to change my mind, but on the other hand, does that make me unreliable? Is changing one’s mind a flaw or an asset? And are other people static in their character, or am I only shown what they want me to see, until some kind of crisis occurs and I am able to recognize more than what appears on the surface of their character?

And getting back to me – there I was semi-content about not riding my bike daily, as I had been doing all of my adult life, feeling insecure in my new setting after the move, interesting how people choose their activities. Not for me “working out” — gym classes, Pilates, Yoga, Body Balancing, Tai Chi, fitness machines, massages, — just give me two working feet for walking, a pool would be nice to do my exercises at my own pace and a bike, but then I didn’t have the bike because my 26 in. wheeler made me feel insecure as I got older, as people around me began to fall, increasing the coffers of the orthopedic community; and then, last week, my friend Maddy told me about the new bike she was about to order — choose any wheel size … any wheel size? Hmmm … maybe a smaller wheel will give me more confidence, and I did it and – OMG – what a difference. After three years, I am rolling again on 16 in. wheels. Life is good, isn’t it? Interesting how people never stop learning, especially about themselves — never thought I’d ride a bike again.

Conclusion? I am over my word limit. It’s Memorial Day and random thoughts about its meaning sneak into my brain. It is surely a concrete subject for another essay – just not for today.

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