At a particular conference–there were so many for the Professor–he asked this question of two men, one young, the other older, standing at the bar. He asked them: “Where are your thoughts?”
The older man attributed the question to too much drink. But as he observed the Professor closely, he noticed the contents of his glass was most likely water. He asked the Professor, “Is that water in your glass?”
The younger man attributed the question to a lecture he’d attended on attempts to measure different observable weights of emotion on the brain, a cause taken up by colleagues in neuropsychology at his University. Is fear, for example, more observable as a physical weight on the brain. Does a person who fears the dark weigh more when standing in a dimly lit room?
The younger man asked the Professor. “Are you referring to Dr. M’s lecture of the weight of the brain?”
“Not at all,” the Professor said. “And, no, I will probably have wine with dinner.”
Flowers in purple and yellow bunches were arranged on the counter. The Professor stroked the flowers with his fingers. “No,” he said, “I’m confounded by the whereabouts of thoughts not their weight. Thoughts about beauty, about pain, observations on soccer, contemplations of murder, or the internal voice calling out into the dark, the insideness versus outsideness of average or profound thoughts. In our science and our casual observation, we shape our understanding of cognition with metaphor.”
The older man took a sip of his drink and smiled at the Professor. He wanted to ask the Professor if he were in a contemplative mood (perhaps he was missing his family or suffering some form of nostalgia) but refrained from asking as he thought such questions might be rude. The younger man, while interested in the Professor’s conclusions on the matter, had the sudden need to walk down to the river outside the conference hall, stand on the bridge there, and think about his wife. He considered language he would need to excuse himself from the Professor so that he didn’t appear disinterested or indifferent.
The Professor, however, had grown silent; he appeared consumed by his thoughts. To both the older man and the younger man, he appeared to withdraw from them. He had a round face and aggressive green eyes. He had those eyes fixed on the flowers, which he stroked lightly with his fingers. Drifting, thought the older man and the younger man, inside or among or grasping something either common or uncommon, equations or love.
Just when the movement of the Professor’s fingers in the flowers was about turn awkward, a young woman appeared out of a group of other conference attendees, a woman with brown hair and narrow shoulders. She reminded the older man, for some reason, of rabbits. She approached the Professor and touched him lightly on the shoulder with a hand. The Professor shook himself free from his internal drift and turned to her and smiled. The young woman kissed the Professor on the cheek and showed him a box, a small box, which she opened for him. She whispered something in the Professor’s ear, which seem to strike him as either fantastic or unbelievable, as he quickly leaned and spoke quietly into the young woman’s ear. Then he put his arm around her shoulder and they departed the room, laughing together.
After a moment, the older man asked, “What do you suppose was in that box? And who was that woman?”
When he turned for a response, he found that the younger man had disappeared.
