In Private

It is necessary to write this because I have forgotten who I am. I can
look in the mirror, but that only reacquaints me with my image; it is
the same with photographs. I have spoken and sung into a tape
recorder, and have heard my voice. I have looked through all my
papers, and rediscovered my social history. I can remember all the
details of my personal life. But my private thoughts I cannot recall.

It is possible that I have never had any private thoughts. However, in
that case I do not know why I suddenly feel that I should have them.

Therefore I am writing to conjure my private thoughts, or at least to
establish why I feel they are missing.

It is also possible that I have had private thoughts before, and
written them down, and lost them. That would account both for their
absence and my familiarity with their existence. In this case I am
perhaps now beginning to reconstruct them. The first private thought,
it seems, would be the need for private thoughts.

That might explain this page of writing. But what would a second
private thought be?

I now realize that I have written this page before. That I have
written this page thousands of times, and thrown it away. That is why
it was not among my personal papers. I have had this one private
thought all my life -- that I have no private thoughts -- and written it
down time and again, hoping it would lead to another. But it never
does.