Saturday, May 6, 2006

From the Archives: May 6, 2002 - Age 26

Something I’ve been thinking about:

What, exactly, is a thought? What is it made of? If you could hold one, what would it feel like? A little shock from a synapse? And—what sort of space does a thought occupy? When I think it, does it dissipate, or does it float about in some microscopic form, hanging about my body until it drifts away to take up space elsewhere?

I imagine that thoughts are lighter than air, that the size of a thought is so small—I mean, we can’t see thoughts and we can’t see air. I see them on the paper but this is just the physical representation of that thought. The original thought, where is it? It must be true that thoughts are stored in the brain, otherwise we wouldn’t recall memory. So the space it takes up is finite in some way. Perhaps that is why it is so hard to remember—thoughts are so minute and numerous that they are difficult to file away—it is like trying to sort and make sense of a beach full of sand, grain by grain.

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