sleep on it
really, it works. during the day I am ensconced at a desk or wandering furiously around the library, my mind a tangle of febrile ruminations, until the ferment of thoughts becomes an audible buzz & I collapse halfway up the stairs between the third and fourth floor of the South Wing of the library under a pile of eleven or so books, wondering exactly what treacherous falsehoods I am maintaining by calling myself a historian when I cannot even think my way through, e.g. the anthropological impulse of empire, or somesuch grand theme.
and then I sleep. and the next morning my mind is a mirrorlike pool of calm. oh, I think, knowledge gathering is what empire is all about. lumière!
I wondered about dreaming: perhaps those odd, flickering, disjointed mind-images that rise and submerge in our sleep are luminous by-products of a deeper process of neural reordering. as the process of oxidation produces fire, perhaps the process of brain-sorting is exothermic, or exotraumic (vis-a-vis "traum", germanic root of "dream", if you'll permit me to invent the word). (I wonder, relatedly, if there is a single word for "inventing a word for", and whether anyone has tried to invent it, in order that they can say they invented it with the word that they invented).
two parenthetical statements in a row! grammatically dubious sentences! concocting new words by flagrant violations of etymology! utter incoherence is clear indication that I require sleep. thesis has stolen all my eloquence & cognitive ability asdf;lksfjdaldf
-- I shall look at this post in the morning, compos mentis, in my calm, post-exotraumic state of mind, and be wholly mortified