original

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Today I caught myself disliking the fact that I couldn't find an 'original thought' to think -- that I was reduced to picking out someone else's thought and then relying on it to create something 'original.' It struck me as a cheap date and weak ... what a wuss, letting someone else do the leg work and then, by sneaky implication,  claiming some sort of credit.

Today, for example, the idea that caught my attention was this:

Jan 10, 9:22 PM (ET)

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Hubble Space Telescope got its first peek at a mysterious giant green blob in outer space and found that it's strangely alive. The bizarre glowing blob is giving birth to new stars, some only a couple million years old, in remote areas of the universe where stars don't normally form. -- Complete article

A "green blob" and it was "mysterious." That's pretty nifty. But hitching my own star to this celestial mystery? It's like plagiarism somehow -- common enough but second-rate. It's like people who use wise texts to proclaim their spiritual interests and expertise ... ick.

But then I got to thinking about 'original thinking.' Is such a thing actually possible? One thing flows into the next into the next into the next: A toad stool and a Maserati are closer than kissing cousins so in one sense original thought is simply not possible. But assuming ownership based on someone else's hard work is strangely offensive. Lazy. Dead.

Dead and yet in the very expression of lazy thinking ... alive... and therefore, in spite of itself, original. For all the talk of "enlightenment" or "compassion," for example, there really is enlightenment and compassion. This is reliable and yet only a jackass would rely on it.

Oh well -- I have to go to the supermarket today. That should help to blow out my pipes -- doing something I have done a thousand times before ... for the first and most utterly original time.
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