Having a photographic memory should be a wonderful attribute. However, imagine, if you will, this characteristic is solely activated upon an encounter with a horrific, shocking, or even just very unpleasant image. The afflicted person may bemoan the feature is not at all helpful with more constructive pursuits such as memorizing poetry or remembering where to go when she forgot to bring the map. Yet, the person is encumbered with terrible images stored in her brain.

For example, a long time ago a very scary movie was playing on cable with the most hideous, frightening looking vampire one could imagine. The face was blue with death and the hooked nose seemed to have its own sharp claw. Nowadays, vampires are romantic figures, a notion I simply cannot understand, whereas this THING was evil. The image of that horrible face is burned into my memory from just one look at the TV screen over thirty years ago. Another example of the impressionability of my mind is when I walked through the living room where my father in law was watching the movie, “The Jackal.” My eyes were drawn to the screen, as it seems is natural to do, just as Bruce Willis purposely fired a large gun of some sort and completely blew his assistant’s arm off at the shoulder.  The image of the man twirling, spewing blood in all directions and the mangled arm socket is etched in my memory. Even now, my heart races while thinking of this.

Perhaps it began when I was a small child. My mother and sister were collecting tarantulas for a science project in our front yard. They would pour a little gasoline in the hole, and out would crawl a large and very agitated spider. They scooped them up with a shovel and dropped a total ten or fifteen into a metal trash can. Curious little me put my little fingers on the edge of the can and stood on tiptoe to look inside. The mass of writhing, hairy horrors likely made me scream and surely cemented a strong case of arachnophobia which keeps the local exterminator with a regular customer.

The image of the girl’s leg sinking through the water at the beginning of “Jaws.” My foot turned toes backward after being pushed and while falling down some stairs in junior high. The dirt on the inside of my helmet shield after tumbling into a ditch with an upside down motorcycle.

What brings this issue to mind at this time is something which occurred recently at an outdoor event here in Central Texas. The temperature was 102 in the shade. The day dragged on. A woman from a radio station had conducted some interviews complete with headphones and sitting next to her equipment. She apparently overheated and felt faint, as she rushed to lie down on a bench. But, just as quickly, she rose straight upward and projectile vomited over the handrail. The sight of her stomach contents shooting from her mouth now joins the substantial amount of unpleasant images in my mind.

And I wonder why I have nightmares.

So, just as anyone who has witnessed something disturbing, I must pigeonhole these images and, remember what my mom would have said, “Just put it out of your mind, Elaine.”

I do try, Mama, I do try.

As a person who participates in regular sessions of yoga exercise and believes in the power of the universe and love, a gift of a desktop Zen Garden was recently bestowed upon me by a friend. This little box included a shallow wooden tray about four inches wide by ten inches long. The kit also included a bag of very fine sand, some small rocks, and a teeny tiny plastic rake.

After adding some colorful rocks and a souvenir shell turtle with glasses, I found moving the sand around with the teeny tiny rake was indeed soothing and rewarding. Some days the sand became as smooth as glass. Other times, it would drift against the sides of the box as if a strong, desert wind had blown through my office cubicle.  Often, strange designs appeared in the surface of the sand as though the shell turtle with glasses had hopped about across the sand under the cover of darkness. Coworkers would stop by to rake the sand and rearrange the rocks. Overall, the desktop Zen Garden was a big success in the office.

In a seemingly unrelated event, a new addition to my menagerie of pets at home came in the form of a nine week old kitten. Thus, for said kitten, being too small to protect himself outdoors in the Central Texas countryside with hawks, raccoons and coyotes ready to eat him, a cat litter box was placed into service. At first, cleaning the thoroughly disgusting tray of offal was a nose holding, sometimes gagging experience.  But the discovery of an exceptionally effective odor control, clumping cat litter made this task much less objectionable.

One morning, after scooping out the now thankfully unrecognizable excrement with the slotted spatula type instrument designed for such activity, I quite unintentionally proceeded to smooth and move the cat litter around the box. The grains sifted through the slots in the scoop easily and gracefully. The surface of the litter moved like a wave with the strokes of the scoop. I smiled. Yes, you read that right. I smiled while leaning over the cat box. It was surprisingly peaceful.

Therefore, no wonder indoor cats and odor controlling cat litter are so popular. They combine to make a very desirable pet situation.   Between the warm, soft fur, the gentle purring, and the unexpected pleasure of litter box stirring, a person most certainly can reach a state of Cat Box Zen.