My Thoughts

They are not very well mine. Because of the things that I have learned, and my spatio-historical memory, I remember often the space in which I have learned something, or at what time. It follows that when I tell somebody something that rubs up against that learning, like a bee being pollenated, that the traces of where the original learning become apparent. And then, although I may be telling this person something they do not know, I feel that I ought not be the one to tell them because the thought I'm having is unoriginal. It isn't very well mine.

Perhaps plagiarism demons from university and hunting to give credit has frozen this mental questioning of sources in my mind to the extent that when I explain something, I distinctly remember what I am saying isn't my own thought, but a paraphrase of another's. The argument may be made that their thought is not necessarily theirs either, which would null my should-not-be-speaking-this-as-my-thought feeling. But that would be the case, if I felt guilty, which I don't.

Rather, it's curious how unquestionable and eroded originality is. Being influenced means I no longer know where I begin and where another's thoughts began, because the wiring's all tangled... and even then, how could I declare that the current between two imaginary points is my own, when it can only survive by travelling, and it is part of a larger current. Ideas are electrical. So my thoughts are really just thoughts in the circuitry, identified through words but quickly dispersed, like clouds, because the next time I come to repeat this thought, it will have changed shape, otherwise re-membered - like the inchoate idea I had for this write.

I have no sole possession. It's all all.