Birds of a feather

Sarah worked thoughts. She molded them, coated them with colors, packed them into square boxes or wheels. It had taken fastidious attention at first. In the beginning she had had to learn each word intimately, turning it over and around in her hands, listen to it whisper its desires and fears. Sarah discovered what kind of skin certain phrases had and what they liked to feel against their bodies. She noted which thoughts were friends and which were enemies; which ideas like to be alone and which ideas craved company; which conversations craved praise under a spotlight and which preferred the humble shadows.

Sarah also watched people accept these ideas. She discovered some people preferred a certain phrase packed in a red circle while others seemed to take the phrase better when it had a green stripped cushion around it. Some words seemed to slip straight through a person without them having been aware that it had touched them. She studied the thoughts were mutilated once they’d made it into a person. She watched as a purple wheel of an idea slid into someone and was then crushed and twisted ruthlessly until it became a yellow box. The yellow box then came flying back at Sarah and she stared at it like she’d never seen it before.

For a time, her time was filled figuring out how to package certain ideas so they would be accepted quickly into the people she talked with. Sometimes the creations would bounce of someone; sometimes they’d sink in slowly, working through some resistance initially but finally making it in as they changed shapes and colors in the other person’s mind; sometimes they made it inside but fell heavily under the gravity of disregard.

Try as she might, Sarah was never able to create a combination that didn’t have to undergo some change as the other person accepted the words she gave them. She could get close to the right shape and color sometimes, but there always seemed to be the need for a subtle change on the other person’s end of things. And she found the same thing happened with her.

She watched the phrases produced by other people and she felt they had a tendency to come out in ways she’d never seen before. Words that she thought would normally be shiny and metallic triangles were given to her as flat, octagon disks. She worked to dismantle these disguises and rework the words so she could understand them. None of the thoughts ever came home to roost without the same tweaking she witnessed in other people.

This process had become so familiar that it happened in the background. She was only aware of the routine when it was extremely important that the ideas and thoughts be accepted by her conversation partner with as little manipulation as possible. Most of the time autopilot took over the molding and shaping and conversations were fairly smooth. The effort of translating became second nature, a reflex that she took very little notice of.

One day, she was shocked back into awareness. She was talking with someone and watched the thought float towards the person and slid inside easily. This person didn’t need to make small changes to the colors or textures. There was no grinding of gears, no manipulation of thoughts. She watched wide eyed as the ideas settled in like they were as at home there as they would be if this person had created them. A little shocked, Sarah tried to brush this off as an anomaly that wouldn’t be repeated.

Then came with another surprise. This person produced a new series of words and ideas. As they came towards her, Sarah froze in disbelief. She’d never seen anyone produce words identical to the way she would have done them. She felt them ease into her and she could detect no tweaking that needed to be done. As they settled into her, she felt as if she herself had produced the thoughts. They didn’t feel alien - didn’t need to be quarantined until they had been fixed. She had never realized such a thing was possible.

Over time, Sarah discovered that this was not an odd occurrence during conversations with this person. In fact, the opposite seemed to be true. Words were traded between the two with such ease, thoughts took on the proper color naturally; there was no quarrel in either of them about the ideas and how they should be formed. Sarah began to crave this newness. During these conversations she found there was no need for autopilot; there was no need for any struggle at all. Muscles that had moved automatically in the background for many, many years found that they could rest, a sensation they had never been able to experience. She felt softer and more at ease – less watchful of the ideas flowing towards her. There was no longer a need to brace for the struggle to change things into something that she could understand.

And life continued. The same caution of shaping thoughts, the same frustrations of watching them fighting to find a home in other people followed her. Her automatic pilot still did a lot of the driving. But Sarah found that she looked forward to the times of rest, when conversation could be had and there was no need to shift colors or shapes for the ideas slid in cleanly and with acceptance.