Where is my mind?

I have absolutely no idea how to use Blogger so these entries will have nothing extra on them for now. They will all be first drafts as well.

This approach is appropriate given that I have been spending a lot of time with Ernest Hemingway and he would appreciate the stark simplicity of a default template, although he would not agree to using first drafts. He would say to start all writing with one true sentence.

I don't know where this writing comes from or where it will go.

It originates in my mind but I don't know where my mind lives. Not just in a profound or philosophical sense but from a practical sense as well. I have emotions and inspirations and dreams that do not appear to have an origin in my conscious mind.

In dreams, we create stories with characters and plots and settings. The stories must either be created in full before we experience them or improvised as we experience them. Either way, the storyteller of our minds must be separate from the audience of our minds, or we would already know the entire story the moment the dream begins. We could not be surprised when the evil man who is hiding in the dark cellar of our nightmares springs out and chases us.

The storyteller and the audience come from the same single mind but one does not know about the other. This is strange.

We create labels for this mystery because we are human beings and we need a semblance of control over the mysteries. You probably already have your own label for this idea. You might call it neurophysiology or the Freudian id or universal consciousness or the divine will of God, and your labels will stick as long as you slap them on hard enough.

Labels are only words. They are inert placeholders until we come up with better inert placeholders. We don't really need these labels if we can learn to face the mysteries of existence and accept them as they are. And this is a difficult thing to do.