I clean the leaves from my pond every so often. Usually I spend an hour or two, once a month to do this task. First I skim the net across the surface, and remove the floaters. They are bright and colorful. More leaves flip up from the bottom like memories floating in my mind. Yes, the pond is my mind. The leaves are my memories. Some are dark, and withered. Others are still crisp, and colorful, even though they have been sitting at the bottom of a pond for so long. I stir a corner of the pond to create a little whirlpool. The leaves dart up; first they return en masse, then just as quickly they spin back into the depths. I have to be quick with my net to capture them all. I know that I will never get all my memories back! Some are too faded and broken, some have sat at the bottom for too long, and others have lost their color. They all break up eventually, and become one with the mind. The surface of the water is like a passageway, like a conversation between people. The leaves hit the water, they float sometimes for 2 or 3 weeks before they start to sink, but they retain their color for a long time.
I remove a sopping netfull of leaves. The water sprays out of the bottom as I lift the net. The water has a dark tinge to it. It stays; the memories go. Some do not want to leave; they hop from the net as if to say, “I want to be here in your mind.”” I want to stay as one of your memories.” “I am worthy of your mind.” I collect them again, and throw them out. The wet leaves sit in piles around the edges of the pond. They do not want to be here. Out here they are one in a billion leaves; at least in my pond they are only one in a few thousand. Out in the open they will disintegrate fast. Once a memory, either bright or dark has been exposed to the masses, it will lose its greatness. Take a memory from history, write a book about it, make a movie about the book, expose it to the population, and no one will know it like its original owner did. No one will know the nuances of the leaf. They will say, “ There’s that leaf, did you see it?” They will not see the multitude of colors; the subtle shape of the edge of the leaf; the way it curls to one side, and floats on the surface, or twists around in the pond, in a whirlpool, spinning and diving. It’s just another leaf.
My pond is clean now, for another month or so. I got rid of most of the leaves. I scooped leaves from the bottom of the pond (remember this is my mind, it’s not too deep!), and I cleaned off the little fountain I built. I blew the leaves and debris off the deck surrounding my pond. The area waits for another load of memories. When is cleaning the pond finished?, the answer is never. It will fill up with memories again. They will break down again, and some will lose their color again. I will scoop them out again, and the mind will be relatively clean again.