It Wasn't Me

I am thinking about the movement of the mind.

When I am alone and without distraction, my mind produces an object for its own attention.  My first impulse is to call this object a thought, but that is too singular, too steady-state.  Better would be to call it a thought-complex.

I am alone, the room is quiet, and some thought-complex fills my mind.  Here it is.  Now, what do I do with it?  It is dynamic.  It contains tensions within itself.  It wants to change, so it does.  I now see a new face of the object--this is how it happens.

I am interested in something that happens often enough, at least to me, that I'm a bit surprised that I've never read about it.  I should think this is a common experience, and yet it is strange--if you think about it.

I am often amused by what my mind does.  My mind entertains me ...

(There seem to be two basic ways this can happen--either the thought-complex moves in a surprisingly bizarre/humorous manner, or it transforms, in a seemingly prosaic fashion, into some ridiculous new result.)

... the mind surprises itself: the thief uses his left hand to pick his right pocket.

[this is why I love writing fiction]

And to actually make it exciting, the thief had to pretend that he didn't know if there was anything in the pocket in the first place.

I am obsessive also, for better and for worse, and maybe not everyone is like that.  I can run a phrase or a thought or a melody through my mind over and over, for hours or even days--I'll keep working at it until I get it right, which means I'll keep working at it until I discover what right is.  But this condition of self-ignorance, which is required if the mind is to surprise itself--the unexpected irruption of an old memory: a smile long forgotten.  If I did not expect it, then how, or why, did I retrieve it?

The mind contains many voices: I am only one of us.

I am playing with this idea, and I have no idea what shape it will be in when I finally put it down.  And yet, there is nothing else at work here besides my own mind.  My mind cannot predict what my mind will do.

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Of course it's impossible to actually talk about this.  Or I could say that I will only ever be able to talk about this, but I will never be able to say it.

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Could I force it--just to prove myself wrong, for the hell of it--and compel my mind to move along a preconceived track?  I really don't think so.  Maybe.

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After hours of solitude, some ridiculous thought made me laugh, and the sound of my laugh made me think.  I hadn't spoken all day.  The sound came out of nowhere, somewhere around dinnertime.

It broke the spell, and cast another.  This.

So, if the mind is simultaneously both the comedian and the audience, then what is the joke? . . . this is the way to the construction of a Holy Trinity.

I read something like that somewhere.

So went Saturday afternoon.  It was bright and cold outside.