[lit-ideas] Re: New Program in Psychoanalysis and Culture

John wrote
To waft is not to waver, but that does not rule out wafting between two propositions in any but a thoroughly regimented world locked in Weber's iron cage of rationality.
I think it does, insofar as 'I wafted between...' 'She wafted between...,' and so on are (what's a euphemism for 'ill-formed'?); for one does not waft, Weber or no Webster: one is wafted, o'er the waves most commonly, but by light airs and gentle breezes, too. She and I might, that is, be wafted, but we do not waft ourselves.
Wafting, floating, drifting, slithering from one proposition to another: the usual term is "brainstorming", suspending critical censorship and releasing the mind to follow associations where it will. Often to foolishness but sometimes to genuine insight.
Well, I don't know. Floating, drifting, and slithering don't strike my failing ear as synonyms, or even cousins. 'He slithered between a number of vague possibilities,' is a bit reptilian, but maybe that's what happens in old brain storming. 

Robert Paul,
wondering where summer went


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