I still know what you're thinking

 

The first time, actually just last week, that I brought out one of my past blog posts that was written on exactly the same day, but in a different year, I went back to the first year of clerkmanifesto and shared the 11th birthday of one of my blogposts. But today, my second time in this venture of reposting, I decided to go back minimally, a mere two years, figuring that even my most engaged readers will have forgotten what I said two years ago as much as they, you, forgot what I said over a decade ago. And I mean this as no criticism of you. You should, for instance, see how many times I can read a book.

The answer to that is 17 times. 

Because of my capacity for forgetting, I can reread a book 16 times before I have to set it aside for the rest of my life. This means I start to get very careful about my rereading once I get to 13 or 14 read throughs. It all starts to get a little precious. But you? You will only be reading this for the second time so you are safe! You have so much enjoyable rereading of this post yet to come in your life!

When I decided to go back exactly two years I did not know what I would get, and I was slightly confused by this piece at first. Then I thought it was a pretty interesting idea about reading and writing and what is shared by the reader and writer. I think I might even change it a bit to make it clearer from the start.

I Know What You're Thinking

I know what you're thinking. Which is weird because it is my thought as well. This thought you are reading, these words, are in my mind just as they are also in yours.  I know what you're thinking because I am thinking and writing it for you.

But I don't know everything that you're thinking because while we can only really think one thing at a time, like we are thinking these words, we can also think with great speed. We can think faster and wider than words. We can think around the edges of things, and inside them as well. 

And so when we read, we think the thoughts of someone else, but our thinking is intoxicated and flooded and more elaborate than a through line of sentences. Our thoughts swirl around the narrations we think, like that line of narration is pouring off steam and light and smoke and spark, and it's running tendrils and weaving around and is surrounded by a whole forest. We may follow a path etched in words. But we're looking around and smelling and breathing and feeling the mist on our foreheads.

So I know what you're thinking, but you keep adding to it, all around it and inside it. You pack in the pauses. You put air into the slow places. You spin off in other directions.

I know what you're thinking, but I can't hold it. It flies out of my hands in every moment.

These are just the lines around its footprints.