Why I Need a Thought Box.

Do you know a wizard called Dumbledore? No, not personally, but have you ever heard about his awesome office at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Yeah, Fawkes the phoenix is super cool, but what I like better is a certain shallow stone basin.

Everyone who is as much of a Harry Potter nerd as I am already knows what I'm talking about. This basin is called a Pensieve.

Dumbledore is a very old wizard. He's a hundred and fifty years old and he's had his share of life problems. There must be a lot of thoughts in his head, right? Memories, observations, ideas... It sometimes feels a bit too crowded in there.

Suppose Dumbledore was the one who replied to those Write To Mary Sue letters in Witch Weekly (I doubt the Daily Prophet would have such a column). Suppose he got a letter about what to do with a head too full of thoughts, memories and ideas. His reply would go something like this:

"I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."

This fragment of the book made me infinitely jealous. If I was to get three magical objects from the Harry Potter world, I'd pick a wand, a racing broom and a Pensieve. I know, I know, a box from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes would probably be a lot cooler, but the home in my head needs a bit of... (searches for the best word)... "spring cleaning".

You see, my mind... It's a 19th century Polish country home. If you know what one looks like, type "dworek szlachecki" into Google images and look through the results. It's a whitewashed building with a large front porch on four columns. There is a massive double front door and the five windows that look out over the front yard are symmetrically placed: two on each side of the door and three on the upper floor. There are red flowers in window boxes and the wooden shutters match the front door.

"But Adrielne," you are probably thinking now. "You must be crazy! You have a house in your head, imagined with both a construction blueprint and decoration details!"

I have something that will stop your odd looks and laughter. My Polish country home helps me ace tests. You know how study counselors tell you to imagine a chest of drawers or a file cabinet and to put each piece of information in the right place? Well, I do that, only on a larger scale. I have entire rooms dedicated to certain things.

It would all be wonderful and fine, if not for the people that live in the house.

Yes, that means I have voices in my head. Not the insane sort of voices, more like the... Different sides of me voices. There's Henry, Francesca, George and Muse. They all have very unique personalities and appearance.

Henry, my Inner Editor. If you would imagine a British 50-year-old man with greying hair, wearing tweed pants and a matching jacket over his vest and well-ironed white collared shirt, sitting in a worn, brown piqued leather armchair in a study, furnished with cherry wood bookshelves (full of old volumes, of course) and a heavy desk near the fireplace in the corner; the man is sitting with one knee on top of the other, brown socks with the checker pattern we all know and love on the ankle protruding from between the end of his brown pant leg and his black shoes... Well, that would be him. He even has the proper accent!

There's also Muse, who drops in from time to time and makes a mess. She doesn't have a name because she never stays long enough to introduce herself. She's a bit ghostlike - a beautiful, woman with long, chestnut-colored hair and in an ankle-length flowing, flowery summer dress, sailing through my country house slow enough for me to notice, but too fast to notice the details. She has piercing blue eyes and a smile that suggests she knows just how confused I get when she drops by. She is the main reason for all the chaos in my work (and the cause of Henry's grey hair).

I'm not even going to start on Francesca and George - the first so unbelievably girly that she makes me want to strangle her (which is difficult, seeing as I am not represented in my head and none of the others would agree to kill her for me) and the second... Well, take a troublemaker and a playboy and put them together.

You might think I'm insane by now and I apologize for raining on you with unsuspected information, but I personally think it's better to explain some odd things first before plunging into a rant about how Henry misplaced his glasses again and found out that Francesca used them for one of her "creative arts" projects... Not that that's ever happened, mind you... But George has that odd gleam in his eye now. I probably shouldn't have given him the idea...