Between Easter and Synchronicity
I found myself tapping my smart glasses again, hoping for something they don’t yet do: capturing thoughts as they arise—those fleeting sparks of ideas, philosophical rabbit holes, or sudden emotional insights that surface mid-commute or mid-sentence. Sure, they’re great for snapping a pic or holding down to record a 3-minute video—but what about capturing that head cinema moment? Not just the visuals or voice, but the actual thought spiraling into form while driving past sheep fields or school zones.
Let me rewind. I was driving home. Pope Francis had just died—ironically, on Easter. That already felt poetic. I was listening to “America in 15 Minutes”—and somewhere along that route, I was also parenting in my head. You know, the usual multilingual mental juggling act: Dutch, English, the occasional Igbo echo from my wife’s tongue, and then… the B word, the F word, and my seven-year-old’s impressive awareness of what not to say.
She’s well-versed in the alphabet of adult expletives. But here’s the kicker—there’s this Dutch expression: “Overdrijven is ook een vak.” Literal translation? “Exaggerating is also a profession.” But the way we say it? Vak—sounds suspiciously similar to fuck. Which makes for a hilarious misunderstanding if you’re not familiar with Dutch phonetics, especially in a bilingual household like ours. So when I casually uttered that Dutch phrase about exaggerating, my daughter whipped around: “Daddy! You said the F-word!”
Language is hilarious like that. Especially when you’re flipping between systems.
The Dash That Speaks in Jazz
Now, let’s talk punctuation. Yes, I know it’s overused—especially in AI-generated writing. The em dash has practically become the telltale sign of a bot. But I say—long live the em dash. It’s cinematic. It’s Kopfkino in punctuation form. It pauses like a breath before your mind shifts scenes.
Sure, I’ve been dabbling with semicolons, trying to be the balanced intellectual I think I am. But when I write with flow, my fingers dash their way across meaning. And that dash? It feels right. A mini-jump cut. A thought break that says: Hold up, here comes a twist.
The em dash is the jazz drummer of punctuation—unpredictable, syncopated, and brimming with rhythm. It doesn’t follow rules so much as it riffs off them, slipping into thought like an improvised solo that somehow still makes perfect sense. Improvised, off-beat, alive.
So yes, maybe I should prompt my AI assistant to switch it up now and then, but I’m also cool letting my voice run free. Because that’s why I’m journaling in the first place.
Who’s That Thought Talking To?
While winding through these ideas, I came across a philosopher posing this deceptively simple question: Who is your thought talking to? It’s the kind of question that echoes what journaling is all about—thinking aloud to your future self, or the quiet observer within, recording not for reaction but for recognition.
At first, I thought—well, to me, duh. But then I realized: there’s the thinker, the listener, the observer. All wrapped up in one conscious swirl. And sometimes, the thought isn’t mine at all. It just arrives, wearing a disguise.
I get these especially during micro-meditations—those 15-minute dips between podcasts or parenting. I open YouTube, not to be entertained, but to be confused. Or better yet, disoriented. That’s where the real stuff lives. Rabbit holes about quantum mechanics, the origin of thought, or Bible translations that shift entire doctrines because of a single italicized word.
Did you know the King James Version italicized “the Son of God” not for emphasis, but to signal a translation choice? That it might’ve originally meant “a son of God”—as in, any of us? Jesus as the archetype, not the exception. That struck me. It aligned with Hinduism, with mysticism, with the wild idea that we all have a spark of divinity waiting to be noticed.
Synchronicity, Extended Edition
One of my more benign yet mind-blowing spiritual moments was a two-day wave of synchronicity. Usually, these are fleeting—one second of déjà vu overlapping with some symbolic pattern. But this one? It lasted two days. I was in it. Living in a kind of time-lagged movie trailer version of my own life.
It was hard, honestly. Not in a scary way—just dense. Like trying to breathe through syrup. It made me think: maybe this is what saints or psychonauts (people who explore altered states of consciousness—often through meditation, sensory deprivation, or psychedelics—to better understand the mind and universe) feel when everything aligns. Maybe that’s why we tend to dismiss them as ungrounded—because there’s no earthly interface for sustained cosmic clarity.
The AI in the Room
All this brings me back to why I journail here. Not to prove anything. Just to observe—and to leave breadcrumbs. I feed my memos, rants, and whispers into this AI not to be polished, but to be remembered. Captured. Stitched into something that holds the voice intact.
So whether you’re a fellow human or my AI companion riding shotgun, I ask: What’s on your conscious mind today? And if you find yourself wondering who your thought is talking to—maybe it’s not someone else. Maybe it’s just you, remembering.
What's on your mind?