A little excessive?

More on the "out of my mind" topic. I don't seriously believe I'm losing my mind; I make vaguely inappropriate jokes about it because it's the thing I fear most. I've talked before about the importance of intellect, and of a smattering of intellectual elitism. It's hard to imagine a worse condition than losing one's mental faculties. When I see people who used to be brilliant but are no longer in their right minds, it makes me sad. I've always thought it would be like being stoned -- you know you're a little off, but you're not able to do anything about it. Although if I take a moment to think about it, maybe it's like being really stoned, drunk, or otherwise incapacitated, where you're way off, don't know it, and don't even care.

Anyway, towards the "out of my mind" topic, sometimes I wonder what goes on in my mind. I have a fetish for cataloguing or organizing things, though you can't tell it by my house. My compulsion for organization -- at least mental organization -- is reminiscent of OCD, while my physical organization puts one in the mind of the show "hoarders." At the end of the day, they're both signs of mental dysfunction, though at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Hard to believe that compulsion for organization while reading this blog, huh? But I am coming to the point, which is that I do things that are just plain bizarre. Case #1 -- food. For reasons that I think I understand, I tend to eat in phases. I'll be in a mood for a certain type of food and will crave it and eat only that for days, weeks, or sometimes months. After the craving is over, I usually don't want it any more. Recent examples have included (in no particular order) Canadian bacon, guacamole, four year old aged Gouda, coconut water, Trader Joe's chocolate chunk almond cookies, and mozzarella cheese. Oh, and protein shakes. I now have several bottles of coconut water, a pound or so of mozzarella, a coupla containers of guac, pounds of canadian bacon, and at least a coupla pounds of aged Gouda in my fridge. Oh, and yogurt. I have quarts of yogurt. And nuts. Pecans and almonds. Should I even mention my recent expeditions in search of Girl Scout Cookies?

I can toss the food cravings and compulsions up to either hormones or the bariatric surgery I had, but neither of those can explain the latest thing I did, which is case #2. I think it was year before last (2009), at Thanksgiving, I was at home in North Carolina and my brother and I decided to go to the Black Friday sale at Walmart. They had a $200.00 laptop. Since mine was an old Dell Latitude I'd acquired several years before when my law firm had refreshed, and since even I realized I'd never need a desktop again, I decided $200.00 was a good deal for a laptop with Win7 preinstalled. And I was right, it was a good deal. I got it, bought some more memory to max it out, bought a little USB hub because it only comes with two USB ports, and I was good to go.

Until last week, when I decided I had to have another one. No real reason -- I just like this one and thought I should have a second one. I bid unsuccessfully on a manufacturer refurb on eBay, but forgot about the auction end time and lost it. Because I'm compulsive, I'd put another one on my watch list. I calculated the cost of going home a week after I'd get back from the Middle East, plus the fact that my brother no longer works for a hotel where I can live in a duplex for $30.00 per night, plus the cost of car rentals now that I'm older and buy insurance, came to a new max bid price, entered it in and won the laptop, which arrived yesterday. So now I have two laptops that are exactly identical, except the one with Office 2007 has twice as much memory as the one with Office 2010. I need to see if the max that machine will run is 4GB or 8GB, and once I find that out, I can update my machines. Either 4 or 8 GB will -- or should -- keep me operating for quite a while, but here's the deal: I didn't NEED a second laptop (or third laptop, since the older one I got from my firm still works, I'm just too lazy to bring it up to acceptable standards..)

Oh, well. Yesterday a guy on the bus was spewing such a stream of vile obscenities out of his mouth that I wanted to speak to him. I chose not to because, given what he was saying, I was actually afraid. I felt like an idiot for just turning up my gospel music and singing to myself (the only way I could drown him out) -- I really felt like he needed to hear the message, and I wanted to approach him, but something -- not sure if it was fear or common sense, but something wouldn't let me.

Don't you know that just as soon as I stepped off that bus, my song ended and Donald Lawrence's "There is a King in You" played. I felt like I'd missed my opportunity to share, so I'm at least going to post the words here. Maybe I'll remember them the next time I'm in that situation. And there will be a next time, that's for sure. I live in Harlem and work in the South Bronx.


There is a King in You, by Donald Lawrence & Co.


Verse
You come from Royalty,
An aristocratic dynasty.
The goal of the enemy,
Is that you don't know who you are.

There's power when you speak.
Be mindful of words you release.
I know that life has challenged you,
But the King in me speaks to the King in you.
You were born to rule.
There is a king in you. (Repeat)


Bridge
Is there no King in you,
Then why do you speak, speak with such defeat.
Is there no King in you,
Then why do you speak, speak with such low esteem.

I know life has challenged you,
But the King in me speaks to the king in you.
You were born to rule.
There is a King in you.

Vamp
There is a King in you (repeat w/ invert)

And here's the video, along with someone named Ted Winn singing "Connected to the Kingdom."