A filter removes contamination, however, what is captured, has to eventually go somewhere….

My mind, often seems like a forgotten mountain lake.  It is remote, isolated, and surrounded my thick pine trees.  Sometimes I let people dump trash in it.  Why do I do that?  It just rots and festers.  My thoughts tend to swim, like fish in the lake of brain.  They dart, dive, and bump into each other.  They feed on bits and pieces of what I read, what I watch, what I hear, and grow.  Sometimes, if the food is corrupt, they mutate.  A way out? My writhing army of thoughts, my deep chasm of slimy fish are about to escape.  A bar screen lies deep in the bottom mind.  The swirling water is dark, and algae sways in the shadows.  A fishy thought wiggles through a broken bar, it twists and flops down a dirty pipe underground.  It is hidden.  Big fish escape, and become words.

That is why, I installed a filter.

Ideas in their raw form, are barely palatable to most listeners.  In the past, the twisted fish of my mind would leap into the air, morph into words.   A splatter of emotional puss and guts would spray all over the ears and minds of my audience.  It air smelled, and people would become angry.  I found out, an unfiltered thought, that finds its way into words, is a dangerous thing.

My filter is online.  It holds a mass of coal and sand in a deep concrete pit.  I slows my speech and prevents unnecessary contaminants from making their way to my mouth.  As I think, and get tired, the filter plugs.  I get irritated.  My words become ambiguous and aggressive.  The filter is failing.  Then I stop my life.  I take five minutes, it is time for a backwash.  My minds lake is cut off.  I ask, my Creator to walk with me, to ride in the car with me.  Clean water, pushes up from under the grain.  Filth, and debris are lifted out of my filter.  But where should they go? The brine of my evil thoughts, the filter has stopped, are still there.  I could let the dirty water, go back up the pipeline and into the lake.  Then, my thoughts would feed, and grow.  They would become worse, stronger, and worst of all, more dangerous.  I give them to God.  I don’t understand why he would take them.  They are gross, and smelly.  But, he takes them every time.  Now, I don’t have to deal with heavy dark ‘fish guts’ thoughts anymore.  It is a good feeling.

Meanwhile, the fish, still swimming in my mind, are eating trash, and looking for a way out.

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert