What it's Like (to think about thinking)

Dear Colleague Across the Curriculum.

How To THINK about THINKING
(what’s it like?)



To think about thinking I have to have some
thing to think about, token content subject
object matter that lets thinking get into play,
say, because I can’t think of nothing no matter
how hard I try, but I CAN think of something
and then think it’s the something that is what-
it-is I’m thinking about when actually it’s the
thinking-about the something that I want to
think about and NOT the something, making
it almost impossible to remember that the plan
was: to think about the thinking and not the
something




—sort of like forgetting that the embodiment of
whatever is not what it embodies nor is the manifestation
anything but the manifestation and not what it manifests
for crying out loud.




It’s the same with
(maybe even more complicated)
trying to think about “collaborative genius”
or whatever terms represent a GROUP MIND
minding, some collective spirit, 2 or 3 or more
gathered together to come to terms, bunch of
blind wise men outing an elephant where what
COUNTS is not the token content subject-object
matter we are fooling with but HOW we FOOL
around together to work it out and not get stuck
in the problem that provides the basis for the
process, trees eclipsing forest, forest occluding
trees; face it: it’s always double binding and
vicious circling in manners of speaking, to spiral
all the way down to bedrock and a sense of deep
ecologic, you got a problem with that?



This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it --
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
Theodore Roethke

Thinking: how to. As opposed to what?
Some This? A That? Whatever! Put it
in play for crying out loud. We’ll get
good & better.

ouch ooo eeee hmmm 000 wheee
ahh, umm, damnit yes Yes
YES
(sounds
of two hands clapping,
maybe three or more)




xxxooo, Presbyter