The Complexity and Connectedness of Thoughts

One of the ambiguities that arises in The Mezzanine is how to count thoughts; this is discussed fairly briefly but it is important to the book as a whole. At one point, Howie wants to characterize how often he will think certain thoughts over a year long period, but then he abandons a chart he creates to model the "periodicity" of his various thoughts because he realizes that thoughts cannot be so neatly sectioned off from one another. In fact, it is almost impossible to discover where one thought begins and another ends.

This illustrates a point made implicitly throughout the book, that even the most ordinary, repetitive and trivial thoughts occur within an incredibly complex context of related ideas, concepts, events, experiences, reasons, beliefs, desires, arguments, and emotions. Thoughts melt into one another, fluctuate, change, create new ties, and lose other ones...