I was having a talk with my friend Zachary. He’s 5 years old. We were talking about tails and how it would be cool to have a tail so you could hang in a tree and eat a snack. It all started with our snack of bananas. Suddenly a thought popped in my head like a little thought balloon with Monkey King written on it. But, that was it. I remembered that I had read a story about the Monkey King and that he was a mythical and magical character out of Chinese Folklore that had zany and outlandish adventures, but that was all. I could remember no details or particulars. It was as if my mind randomly pulled the Monkey King file from some dusty old file cabinet in a dark corner of my brain and showed it to me. (I don’t know why: probably the talk of bananas and tails) But when I opened it up all that was there was a sky blue sticky note saying: “This is something about a mythical and magical character who has zany and outlandish adventures,” and another one in another color, maybe bright yellow, saying: “See Chinese Folklore.”

I have no idea why my mind works this way, but it often happens. My mind leaves me hollow shells of ideas without the nut inside. Maybe a tiny worm has burrowed in and eaten it up. However it happens, the idea just sits there with Monkey King carved on its hard brown shell, and when you hungrily open it up there is nothing to eat.

Of course this means I have to go back and fill that empty file with some scribbled notes and diagrams and maybe a few neatly typed pages on the Monkey King. The only way to keep those worms away is to do some serious thinking and writing notes. So I feel it is only fair to warn you that some ideas about the Monkey King will drift in and out of these pages in the near future. It’s just the way my mind works, dusty files, sticky notes, empty nutshells and tiny worms. Its a real mess up there sometimes.