Thoughts

A thought is like a drug trip. In the midst of it, everything seems so meaningful and interrelated. Later, one awakes with a headache and remembers, with a confused sense of nostalgia and disillusionment, the excitement of the thought, the impression it gave of largeness, of drawing together many different themes. The worst thing to do at a moment like this is to cling to the thought’s past glory and clarity, to take, as it were, the hair of the dog. In this way, one can soon become thoroughly addicted. Some thoughts are so delightful that people can’t get enough. Soon an epidemic gets underway, everyone I meet is high as a kite on some thought, knowing smiles frosted on their lips.

That’s why I call these things crumbs: so I don’t forget how far they all are from being a loaf.

Still, there’s no good reason throw away a thought in disgust the moment one recovers from it. One only does this out of embarrassment, so as not to be reminded what a little, incomplete thing one was enthralled by. Much better to keep old thoughts around as reminders. And because, after all, it is a little flake of the truth.