The Brain

Been in a fairly romantic mood today. Not romantic as in mushy-gushy, lovey-dovey (not that those moods are bad). Romantic as in Romanticism - nature, humanity, concepts of beauty and wholeness and the like. I've had the same Emily Dickinson poem running through my mind all day. It's one of my favorites (for now).

"The Brain - is wider than the Sky - 

For - put them side by side - 

The one the other will contain

With ease - and You - beside

The Brain is deeper than the sea -

For - hold them - Blue to Blue - 

The one the other will absorb - 

As Sponges - Buckets - do

The Brain is just the weight of God - 

For - Heft them - Pound for Pound

And they will differ - if they do - 

As Syllable from Sound"

Literature and writing can romance my soul in a special way. I love writing (though this blog doesn't do justice to writing as an art) and when I read things like this poem, I can get lost in inspiration for hours (all day in this case). I'm with Ms. Dickinson on her stance on "the Brain" up until the last stanza. There my beliefs differ slightly. Dickinson's religious beliefs changed a great deal over her life time, raised a Calvinist and becoming more of a Deist, or even Pantheist, in her later life. The last stanza here illustrates her belief that humanity, the human mind and spirit, differ from God in small, near indistinguishable ways, if at all. I get where her romanticism is leading her, but here I take a different path. I believe "the Brain" to be far less than the weight of God, differing greatly, like sound from perfect syllogism. The Divine is unerring, beautiful, logical, lovely, whole. The human mind is fragmented, beautiful merely as flecks of something more than itself, as raindrops catching the sunlight. 

But alas, as so often happens when romantic inspiration sweeps me into its streams, I'm full to the brim of wonder and bliss, but can't put it to words nearly adequate enough. I feel like a tightly tied water balloon filled to bursting, straining to share what I can through a teensie pin-prick in my side. How's that for romantic??

So here I'll sit, moon-eyed and rapturous in an over-sized sweater and tights, longing to be a faucet like Emily Dickinson.