Does it help to have an image of desiccation of an apple? Yes, desiccation is removal of water. We speak of desiccated earth (you can picture it, right?) and desiccated fruit. But what about desiccated ideas?  The idea of ‘desiccated ideas’ makes ‘sense’ to me. It is a way to think about ideas that cannot be consumed when they are fresh. If they are going to be useful, they must be stored for later use, and one way to do this is to dry them.  

An idea is plump and juicy when it is first conceived. Perhaps it is a little green, but fresh for use. But there are many reasons why an idea cannot be ‘fleshed out’ when it first emerges. Two that occur frequently in my life, and probably in your life as well, are these: other priorities, and over abundance. 

My day has a course. It is filled with responsibilities some of which are long-term and time-consuming and some of which are shorter-term but pressing. But they are priorities. Ingesting an idea takes time. So, frequently, I must store it in my memory for later consumption. When I think about it for a short bit, a caption for it likely arises. If so, then I have encapsulated some of the energy (if not the life) of that original idea. If I do not jot down that caption, I am likely to lose it, so I try to store at least that much of the initial idea somewhere. You can see how this blog fits in here. The blog has become my go-to place to store my dried-up ideas. For example, the thoughts I first had about this topic, Desiccated Ideas, are long since gone, but the structure of the topic and some of its flavor remain. I am left with dried apple thoughts rather than fresh apple thoughts. The crunch is gone but some of the sweetness remains. 

Sometimes I read something, see something, or experience something that opens a mother lode of inklings hidden in a back channel of my mind. When that happens, I am flooded with many impressions at once. This abundance must be harvested and stored for later use  or it will  return to the mental loam. At another time (if this is not too silly) it might be fun to analyze which ideas I dry hanging up, which I pickle, which I salt, and which I freeze. 

Sometimes, based on damning evidence, I wonder how humans can call themselves an advanced species. But when I think about our ability to store our experiences as memories, to use scraps of concepts to build mental gardens, walls, bridges and abodes, I reluctantly grant us some credit. Sometimes it is a lot of fun to be a human.