October 1999

Once in a while, quite infrequently, but often enough, an idea, that is to say, a thought, a thought of some interest, a thought of some interesting concern and deep import, a thought of brilliant impact, though indefinable, though indescribable, such a thought, as though it were a mere thought, no, more than that, a thought par excellence, yet only a thought of thought appears, manifests itself, reveals inself in the cranial, the semantic and philological regions of the brain--not in the corpus callosum, not in the stem, but somewhere deep within the brain-- such a thought, an idea, which reflects the whole of Platonic thought, with ideals existent in some external realm and mere reflections or projections of these ideals into our own world, which, it seems to me, is a good way of looking at the idea or thought in question, especially with regards to the way in which it comes about, which, if one should choose to look at it, is another interesting idea--how a thought generates, should it be chosen to generate by the person who is doing the thinking in respect to the overall schema of thought, why it generates, in what form it generates, and the like, but an idea of thought which shall not be dealt with at any length in this particular discourse-- as I was saying, an interesting idea, yet nonetheless tangential to the point at hand, which is precisely the thought of thinking of thought, and that once in a while such a thought will arise into the atmosphere from the locality engendered by such thought as may arise, such as the thought which is currently being worked out in my brain, which is a thought on thought and whether such a thought can be expressed at all coherently, cogently, and without any gross misuse of grammatical principles; which, plainly, requires a clever usage of punctuation, subordination, apposition, and many other ten-dollar words, words such that even Melissa the editor should have to scramble for a dictionary to decipher, should she so choose to do; words which can confuse, or delight; words which demonstrate a proper understanding of lexicographical nuance and idiolectical decisiveness; words which indeed serve little more than to confuse and obfuscate the point at hand, which is precisely that the point at hand is this thought of thought, this idea which seemingly floats in from the ether and engenders the thinker with that certain je ne sais quoi that only the thought of a thought of the true nature of thought that should more often be thought by those who think about thought, should they care to so think, which indeed is often a lacking in academic circles, choosing to not think on that which should be thought, which is precisely, to make a long story short, that which is not often thought, the thought of the thought of the thought of thinking if thought is thought or merely electrical charges surging between neurons and synapses, little ionic pumps in the brain, the central nervous system merely a series of chemical reactions, or if indeed there is more to it, and such a thought, should it be thought, may indeed find its fulfillment, its totality, its entirety and its completion in the acting of willing it to be in the thinking of if it is the thought that is thought of the thought that is thought, or merely the thinking of the thought of the thought that is willed.