A Sea of Ideas & Fishing for Inspiration

I look up into my head and see an aquarium filled with ideas. They vary in sizes. Some are small but scary. They bare their needle teeth and glowing appendages at me as I swim past. I hunt for one, maybe two, good ideas. Some days I dive in and explore the depths, other times I’m scared what I might find lurking under a rock.

Swimming around in my mind, I search for the right idea. A school of shiny blue ideas swims past. The sunlight reflects off their scales creating a sparkling spectacle. Not today I say as the flurry passes. The glare of their scales draws my attention to some coral, the rudimentary day to day tasks. Behind them hides what I was looking for, it’s a dull and unremarkable brown eel. Nothing shiny about it, but it’s perfect and exactly what I want.

I approach it from the side. I don’t want to scare the idea before I can wrap my mind around it. It might slip away into the oblivion, and then I’d never see it again. I get close, and my heart beats in my chest. I notice its eyes beautifully marbled with streaks of black and white on a field of brown. It’s a beautiful idea, and I want to capture it and bring it into my world.

My net is at the ready as I glide up to it. But those shifty and complicated eyes see me, and it darts away. I swim to catch it, following it into the cave.

Into the Cave

I switch on my light and illuminate this complex rock maze. Will I be able to get out? I wonder. If I can get this shifty idea into my net, then I will find a way back. A brown bolder is illuminated by my light as I follow the idea around a turn. The small eel darts behind the structure, my idea is trapped! All I have to do is get behind the boulder.

To my surprise, the rock shuffles awake when I approach it. The bolder is alive and moving. It looks at me with eyes the size of grapefruits, and they match in elaborate marble of the eel. Its scales are unremarkable and brown as mud, rough around its edges as camouflage.

The monster daunts over me as my net floats down to the ground. I grab the harpoon gun strapped to my waist. This idea is massive, impossible to execute and out of my scope of capabilities. But I know if I leave it be I will be hunted down. It smells me and knows that it can use me to do it’s bidding, or drive me to madness in the process. I came for a small idea, something safe and manageable, but now I’m staring down this behemoth.

In self defence I level the harpoon gun. There’s no hope of catching this beast. I back away out of the cave. It slithers back and forth in place letting orbs of air out of its mouth. It gawks at me as I search behind it for the safe idea I followed here. It’s gone, either escaped through a small crack in the cave wall or it morphed into this monster as only ideas can do.

Or was it this from the beginning?

The enormous idea swims towards me, and I can feel the currents it forms pull my body in different directions. Its movement pushes me off course, and I brace myself against the wall. I’m cornered, it has used its home field advantage to get between me and the door. Either I go home with this idea, something that I have no idea how to handle, or I don’t go back at all. I weigh my options quickly yet for longer than I should.

I reach into my pocket for bait. It’s not much, I only brought enough for a small idea, but this man-eater looks hungry. No one has visited him in his cave for a while, and I don’t blame them.

As planned I’m rushed by the creature. I put my foot against the wall prepared to launch out of the way. He opens his mouth, and I see he could swallow me in a bite. He is a foot away and I kick, leaving the bait to float in a flurry of bubbles. I’m behind him, the door is in sight, but I rush for the monster’s back instead. I land and grab the rocky spines of its backbone. At first, the idea is in control of me, rushing every which direction trying to get me off and push me in the way it wants me to go. It buffs me against the cave walls, but I hold my ground, soon it will wear itself out. I summon the courage to let the idea take me where it wants for a moment.

Then, as quickly as it started, the beast settles on the floor of the cave, still and unmoving. It’s my idea now, and I direct it to the door of the cave. I still have trouble controlling it. I hit some snags on the way out, but the monster is my idea now, and I’m learning to swim with it.

What will the world think of it?

Photo Credit: Mike Beauregard, Pardee Ave, robert_leo