That's what I call my half hour swim every morning - wet meditation. In season, that is, when classes are running, I go over my Icelandic numbers; other times I plan menus and grocery lists, going over the contents of my fridge, checking out leftovers I must use. Sometimes, as this morning, I begin with the next section of an essay I'm working on, the introduction to my book. But then I lose focus and move around. I surprised myself this morning with the range of my thinking, not that it was inspiring or profound, but that it covered so much geographical territory, all within the limits of an outdoor pool, I mean, not even a lake.

This is a nice, non-theatening use of inner dialogue, semi-directed but wide-ranging. The late writer and my friend, W.O (Bill) Mitchell (1914-1998), used to assign writing students an exercise he called "free-fall". The purpose was to unleash hidden thoughts and unexpressed ideas and give them free rein, see what's lurking there in the sub-conscious. Some people found seeds of a story, or maybe a character in a story, or maybe fewer inhibitions. That's a positive negative, isn't it? The idea is not to think, just to write. That's not quite what I do when I write my daily blog though it must read like it at times. The trouble with the inner dialogue is that it's so layered, so tangential. Inchoate.

I think so. Cogito ergo sum.