An Ode to Boredom

An Ode to Untamed Imagination

Photo by Miriam Clifford

The world is loud.

Louder than it was when I was a child. I wish some days my kids could experience that world for one day — a time when I would imagine myself in music videos as I sat in the back of my parents’ Nissan Pathfinder bored out of my mind.

I made up songs. I was the star of a music video as I watched the rain beating down on the window. I got lost in my own music.

I got lost in my thoughts. I got lost . . .

Paying attention to the sound of the rain. Filling my mind with different tunes. Keeping an eye out for Volkswagen Beetles so I could punch my sister’s arm.

Watching the clouds and turning them into dragons and superheros.

Photo by Billy Huynh on Unsplash

Maybe I was bored out of my mind, or maybe I was bored into it.

A time when your mind gets lost just sitting in nothingness.

A time for creating something beautifully strange in the recesses of your mind because you have nothing else to do.

Yet, I do prefer the present.

I am not one to jump into nostalgia with reckless abandon. I watched my grandmother die of nostalgia for Cuba. Her favorite song etched in my mind,

“Nunca podre morirme, mi corazon no lo tengo aqui….deje mi vida. . .mi amor…Deje enterado mi corazon“

“I can never die. My heart is not here, I left my heart buried in Cuba.”

She just stopped singing, and it broke my heart to see her so sad.

No, I am not talking about nostalgia. I don’t like getting lost in it too long.

I’m talking about a feeling that seems difficult to access -

Wild, untameable imagination.

Exploring the corners of my mind; listening to it without interruption.

Let me return one day to that experience. And sit in boredom.

Let it fill me with unease and then create something extraordinary, or nothing at all.

How do I do that?

Return to boredom.

Shut off the noises for a day, a week, a month, a year?

Get lost in conversation.

Listen to the sound of the subway tracks.

Meet people’s eyes.

Is it even possible?

I miss listening to the rain.

Dancing in it.

Can I go there still?

Teach me how.

Does it still exist?

Or is it a memory?