Loose Threads
There's nowhere to keep the words once
he's read them, so he just lets them fall
to wherever it is thoughts go when you've
finished using them, and continues reading.
He's managed to convince himself that on some
level, he understands them; that somewhere, beneath
language, the argument is unfolding in his mind.
It isn't. Not really. He's followed little details
perhaps, clutched blindly to a single thread of
reasoning and felt his way along. But he can't see
the web in its entirety. His mind is out of
focus, so it latches on to out-of-focus things -
the vague outlines and blurred edges of
the world at 2AM, when reason is
asleep: the way the patterns in the wood
change shape, the distant cries of drunken students
mingling with faulty car alarms. The undefined
sections of the night. Little details. Like loose
threads in a tapestry that he's scared to pull on
in case it falls apart.
There's nowhere to keep the words once
he's read them, so he just lets them fall
to wherever it is thoughts go when you've
finished using them, and continues reading.
He's managed to convince himself that on some
level, he understands them; that somewhere, beneath
language, the argument is unfolding in his mind.
It isn't. Not really. He's followed little details
perhaps, clutched blindly to a single thread of
reasoning and felt his way along. But he can't see
the web in its entirety. His mind is out of
focus, so it latches on to out-of-focus things -
the vague outlines and blurred edges of
the world at 2AM, when reason is
asleep: the way the patterns in the wood
change shape, the distant cries of drunken students
mingling with faulty car alarms. The undefined
sections of the night. Little details. Like loose
threads in a tapestry that he's scared to pull on
in case it falls apart.