The Principle

There are certain thoughts which one can merely think and they will never be the same. These thoughts are all around us like nourishing banana clusters. There are a finite number of these thoughts. Think them all and you will be as wise as the four winds or the three flavors (sweet, salty, salty-sweet) or those two guys in the back. However, each of us has a unique order – with slight variation permitted – in which we must think these thought or risk schizoid embolism. The stakes are high indeed. But without thinking any of these thoughts you risk collapse into the merest carnality: rampant sex without attachment, lust without devotion, having more pie without thinking about your one fat leg. The process of this principle is additionally complicated by the fact that the mark of many, but not all, of these thoughts is that it will be forgotten almost as soon as it’s thought. This is all made even more complicated by the existence of the “flouters” or “octogenarians” or “malamutes” whose role it is to try to rename the thoughts as hokum base and banal – never you worry about that mallet they’ll implore you. One may ask: if the very thinking of the thought will render me changed-forever how come I’ll forget it once I’ve thought it? But there is no simple answer to that question; no simpler anyway than to a question like how many plums is all of them plums? But the question serves to point up yet another danger: simply thinking one of the thoughts then forgetting it then thinking it again. Subsequent repetitions of the same thought will not have the same effect though there will be a slight yet gratifying tingle which for some is all the vindication they need. Those types find a life spent do-see-do-ing through the same thought rewarding. These people may set up huge temples to coax others to do their little fever dance but in the end they will meet violent ends as the axis on which they spin crumbles under the toiling mass of their bottom-heavy convictions heaving like a bag pipe even just walking down to the corner. One may think this terrain unnavigable, this game intractable, but this should not counsel resignation which would be met with foul language and insinuation about the city of your birth. Indeed, the road is long and not really even a road as much as a parkway or thoroughfare but perhaps I’ve already said too much; though I will conclude by noting that if you should ever have the thought why all these flowing robes? why so much pepper? you’re doing it wrong.