I love thinking in the shower. It�s one of those few oases of zen-like calm where I know I�m not going to have a �Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!� or a �Paul, buraya gel� bawled into my ear every few seconds. Well, in theory at least: My son occasionally starts banging on the door. Anyway, I�ve just showered, warm spring sunlight flowing through the window as warm water dripped over me, and I was thinking, first, of thinking in a shower: The times, the different places and circumstances under which I have thought in showers and what I have thought about. I remembered wallowing in a really hot bath somewhere in North Wales, formulating theories on Brecht; A creaky, limescaled shower in Izmir on a roasting hot morning, pondering the differences between Turkish and English; A tiny shower cubicle in Istanbul, circling through my mind the enormities of fatherhood on the day my son was born; And so on, and so forth. What else was on my mind this morning? Well, I had, and still do have, that really annoying David Beddingfield track (you know, the whispery, whingy one) running through my head. A deeply irritating song. Above that, I was thinking vaguely of the Gulf War, and then notions of evil, and what it is. I reflected that evil is, like good, a relative, subjective notion. From many points of view, I can be seen as a good person, but from the perspective of a devout Christian or Muslim my lifestyle will earn me a place in Hell, and consequently I must be evil. Strange, I don�t feel particularly wicked. Then I reflected that, from the viewpoint of religion at least, being good to people will not necessarily hand you a ticket to heaven. You have to embrace the entire philosophy too. However, God doesn�t philosophise, being omniscient, humans do. Ergo, to follow a particular religious philosophy is to stray into error, human thought being erroneous. QED.
Thinking about thinking, I thought about how my intellectual curiosity has dimmed somewhat over the last couple of years. My view of the world has narrowed, which is strange. Then I thought, well, hold on, isn�t it actually a case of the more learning, the more one becomes aware of one�s limitations and ignorance? Then I replayed in my mind an argument I once had with someone concerning this subject. I returned briefly to evil as I washed my legs, thinking that I had never met anyone that I would really classify as evil. However, I corrected myself as I brought to mind the image of someone who shall remain nameless, but who I considered to be about as evil as I could imagine. Following that, I tried thinking in French, just for practice, then in Turkish, ditto. The latter was far more successful than the former. As the water splashed over me, I let my mind wander vaguely, then I wondered at my own vagueness. I slightly amused myself at the link between �wander� and vague (from Latin, I believed � vagus (wander)), then I considered how I love to distract myself from my very real problems with anything that comes to mind, which led me to think about writing down that which you have just read.