Like a hoarder, I collect experiences. My brain is cluttered with a snippet of a memory here, a quote there. The Gandhi and Mother Teresa bin is overflowing and I have a temporal lobe chock full of song lyrics.  As I meander through life and come across a new one, I always experience that delighted gasp that I first felt as child coming across a freshly hatched robin’s egg for the first time; enchantment at the uniqueness; wonder at the preciousness of such a delicate thing. I am awash with awe at the inherent depth of something so simple and small. As with the remnants of that soft blue, blue egg, I gently tuck my gatherings away, certain they will eventually have some use for me in the future. Certain they will serve some vital role if not now then later, as I try to make sense of the world. Certain they are gifts that deserve protecting. Perhaps these collections are the evidence of my belief that almost always the answers to life queries (both large and small) are laid before us like a field of daisies. We just have to choose not only to see them, but gather them up one by one, making in the end a whole beautiful and complete bouquet. These are indeed, my tchotchkes of the mental world.

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