It is perhaps the most boring thing ever. In fact, I have often thought of making it more interesting simply because it’s derivation is so incredibly mundane. Without getting into minutia, as a fairly grounded gent who is somewhat skeptical of “other plains”, it is truthfully, bizarrely, the one thought in my head that I was never in control of. You know how your thoughts ping back and forth.. sort of like a large, vast pool of ping pong balls? Maybe not. But some are placed there, some are errant and roiling over through time and become apparent again after some great migration across the expanse of this liquid analogy… they come back to you after great adventures and great moments, and these ideas are apparent old friends because you recognize the ping pong ball and remember handling it, or remember the casual brush you had against it before it went on it’s Homer like odyssey and returns as Aneas, becrowned and celebrated. Whatever the case… you know these ping pong balls because you put them in this pool, but one day, as I sat in a movie theatre in Boulder, Colorado in about 1995 – my mind and eyes tantalized by the drapes drooling gently down the screen – a palette cleanser between trailers and film – it simply entered my head. All these heady, moody ping pong balls bobbing to and fro, weighed down with subterfuge and depth of intent (oh my ping pong balls… they are so important).
And this damn thing pops into my head. It’s not weighted, nor is it imbued with any meaning or depth. It’s just this empty vessel of a phrase, “Uncle Fishbits”. That’s it. It wasn’t meant to be a name, it wasn’t meant to be my own. It was simply a ping pong ball in this vast slick of deeply thoughtful ideas (I stave off conceit by acknowledging that may sound a bit thick of myself) – and this ping pong ball is one that I had never come across. It may have been a different color, and it certainly was moving in the same manner that my other ping pong balls are accustomed to… in fact, it was obviously an outsider… but again with this nobility of having traveled far and wide and deep. And unlike the other ones… there it stayed… in the forefront.
It wasn’t an idea or a name or a happening.. it was a completely arbitrary and random moment in my life, where for the first time ever a thought (oh so many thoughts) was *not* in my complete control and almost seems as if it was proffered forth. Like, this isn’t yours… but it’s for you. I am not appealing to the ether or invisible forces, by any means.
I just know it was the first completely conscious unconscious thought I have ever had in my life. It was incredibly centering… it may be odd to some, goofy in a sense, but it was a pure moment of Zen. If that makes sense? I don’t want to sound flippant…. because that unladen boat of a name does seem weird. But it was the most detached mental experience I have possibly ever had, it it’s frightfully hard to explain. Yessss… I was sober.
I mean, who am I to judge the workings of my mind? Not me I can tell you. I am unanimous in that.