XXIV.
When I write or say "I think this" or "I feel
that" it is not actually true
at all, because I describe my thoughts which have already
happened.
It is not that I think this now but that I am writing or saying in
words
about a sensation in my mind. And if I write about it, like I do
now,
the sensations have already gone. I am writing a memory. The
memory
might be a millisecond old, if I can write so fast, but it's still a
memory.
I can describe my actions as I do them - I open the book, I turn the
page,
I read the words "only the heart remained untouched by the fire",
but
between the eyes reading and the mind sensing some type of change
occurs
which is impossible to trace.
Of course, you can trace the chemical and
electrical changes by plugging in
to your own computer but whatever readout you choose dependent on
the
institution you use, it isn't what you're thinking at all, just a
representation of it.
Me, I like audio paralleling, but you have to learn the phonic
language they use
to understand their representation. Still, it sounds nice.
Anyway, what comes first, thinking or feeling? Do
I think about something
because I have emotional investment, or do I feel about something
because
I have been taught to think that way, and how was I taught to think
and feel?
I can't remember. Between these two times, between thinking and
feeling there
is a confusion for me, and I like to concentrate on the narrow space
there,
hanging suspended for as long as possible, a tightrope walk in my
mind with
nothing on either side.
I write about thinking in words, but I do not
think in words. I know some people
have solved this through again using words as a fence, their most
practical use.
Thinking, they say, and master tells me about them, is anything you
do with language,
everything else is just consciousness. So, if you are just conscious
but do not marshall
or organize your thoughts and feelings with words or other symbols,
you are not
thinking? It sounds convenient and plausible to me, but I still think
I am thinking
without words at the time. It's true that if I don't use some sort of
arrangement
method when thinking, I cannot remember what I was thinking from one
minute
to the next, but I do remember that I was thinking. Maybe this is why
I have a bad
memory and I am not so partial to reading.
In order to escape from a bad memory and to write
more truthfully about my
thinking and feelings, I have to write about my future past. I have
to write myself
as I go before I am. I don't know whether this makes any sense to
other people
because I am limited to using words which can only give one readout
of my thinking
so it is not going to be complete. I need to use analogies which are
the only way to
admit that all languages (even mathematics which some people say is
also a language)
are analogy anyway.
But, what I mean is that instead of trying to
catch up with my thinkings by
describing them in analogy language, I should speak and write before
thinking
what I shall be or do, and in that way, become my thinking.
Or, I suppose I have been dancing too much, which has no analogy
-
that's because it is fun-da-mental.