In my first post in this blog, four and a half years ago[1], I presented the analogy of elusive, fish-like thoughts.

One of the corollaries of this, at least for me, is the phenomenon of multiple simultaneous fleeting thoughts that almost can’t be measured without collapsing them. Up until a conversation with K yesterday, I thought this never happened to anyone else.

For me, the first time I remember noticing this was when I was trying to write ideas into my journal. An idea would come to me, and as I was writing it, another would come to me. If I didn’t start writing the second one immediately, it would submerge, and have to be brought out again[2]. I soon learned to start writing the second (and sometimes third) one before I finished the first. Many of my journals have arrows between lines of text for this reason.

My conversation with K suggested that a verbal vs. writing dichotomy may be responsible. The experience was that as soon as thoughts were mentally converted to something that could be written down, they would disappear, almost collapsing in on themselves.

After much discussion, we worked out that taking the thoughts and setting them to audible or semi-audible words would not cause this collapse, leading to the verbal vs. writing dichotomy mentioned above.

Has anyone else experienced things like described above? Let me know in the comments above!

[1]Wow, time flies when vous êtes banane.

[2]I’m still afraid of losing these brief glimpses of insight. Luckily, I remembered the one I had today.