This is likely to be a somewhat odd post from the usual, but better that than nothing. I really need to stop starting my posts with these inane prefaces – you’d certainly get the idea that the post was odd just by reading it, without me having to tell you.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more frequently lately: I can’t be the only person who has this running internal monologue. Actually, I know I’m not. Other people write about theirs. While I’m not certain I’m different, I have noticed on occasion that some people’s monologues stop. They stop frequently.
In contrast, my “monologue” right now is telling me a bunch of things. It’s not really a monologue, but more like a polylogue. While I’m writing this, I have surface meta-thoughts about how this all relates to the wondrous technology described in some of Vernor Vinge’s books (like the one I read yesterday, in full, Marooned in Realtime), where devices exist that let you offload your biological memory to external storage and later quickly retrieve it, or any other stored knowledge. But those are thoughts on the surface web.
At the same time, I’ve got a seemingly disjointed undercurrent of impressions about getting another open source project started. (Something friends and I have been chatting about for a while.) And thoughts about breakfast. And thoughts about work. But these are not thoughts alone in themselves. They are all related to the primary thread of conversation with myself, spinning off that initial thought and wrapped in it, tangled together like a weave of twine with some strands thicker than others, but all in the same taught line.
What I’ve noticed is that other many people don’t seem to have woven strands. They have single strands. Some are thick, some are thin, and there are many of them. And most of the time, their minds hold only one strand – or less. I often find others staring off into space, at least temporarily threadless. I imagine the void as a zen state.
It amuses me to think that there are people who spend their whole lives trying to loosen the threads in their mind to the point where they have no running thread; no immediate thought current. They search for a zen that I see on the faces of common people going about their common days. While it might relax the mind to loosen the strands, and occasionally a good idea to relax in general, it seems to me like an incredible waste of vitality. We should be using our bio computers at 100% of our capacity 100% of the time, not striving for some nirvana in emptyheadedness.
I find myself longing for the weave. I want the strands intermingled. I need to know how they all interrelate and tie into one another. And I can’t stop it. I guess that’s the flowing downside: It’s difficult to put on the breaks. It has become, whether I’m built this way organically or have trained myself this way, difficult to stop weaving strands together, or even to stop the persistent monologue, whether one strand or many.
Some days it’s better than others. Today, a blessing and curse. Too many strands and too little time to act on them all and pull them together. That, and most other people look at this madness and call it scatterbrained or unfocused.
I keep thinking of “method to madness”. It’s like a mantra. This phrase had to originate somewhere. It had to come from someone whose plans were too unfathomably woven for anyone else around to grasp. I imagine that there are other polyloguing people out there. I imagine that they are doing well; doing good things for the world. I hope I am one of them.
