I Am Not Sherlock Holmes.

I was talking with a friend the other evening when she made a comment about the darkness. I looked at her and replied with:

"I like the darkness. In fact, I prefer it over a well lit room."

"You actually like the dark? Why? Are you not afraid of the dark?"

"It is not the dark that scares me, in fact, I find that in complete darkness I am at peace. I am not saying that I am not afraid. There is much that scares me. But the darkness does not. What scares me is what might be IN the darkness."

"You didn’t asnwer why you like the darkness. I don’t believe that you are at peace in the darkness."

"I am. I find that I am at peace in the darkness. The reason for this is simple really. My mind never stops moving. I am constantly processing information from my surroundings all the time. When I go to the movie, if I see a light that is not from the movie, I look to see what it is. If someone walks by me, I look at them to see who they are. What they look like. How they walk. When I drive, I see people walking along the sidewalk, between cars, people that are going to cross before a crosswalk. I am kind of like Sherlock Holmes."

"Sherlock Holmes?"

I noticed her eyebrow twitch a little as she said this. A breif look of doubt float in front of her eyes.

"Yes. Sherlock Holmes sees everything, I do not make the claim that I see everything. I see more than what the normal person sees though. For instance, I noticed you twitch slightly just now when I said this. I noticed that you fought back the urge to roll your eyes at me."

We talked for a little while longer, every now and then she would ask me if I notcied something, most times I would point out more than she had noticed.

After I had gone home and sat in the darkness, it occured to me that I have read the original Sherlock Holmes stories and he often did things to make his mind slow down. To distract him from his surroundings.

~You know my methods, Watson.~
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1893
The Crooked Man
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle