Page 71
By Jack Joseph Smith
Recognition
I think anyone who expects abstract thinking
to bring them a normal condition
Is not doing it in the first place
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A small philosophical refusal: abstract thinking will not deliver anyone into normality.
The page rejects the fantasy that thought can cure estrangement. 'Recognition' here is not enlightenment but the blunt realization that intellectual distance may clarify experience without making it socially livable.
'Recognition': expecting abstract thinking to produce a normal condition means you're not doing it.
The poem is a small logical trap. It's not a condemnation of abstract thinking; it's a reminder that the genuine version can't be asked to deliver the comforts of its absence. 'In the first place' is the page's legal register — you haven't started yet if you still want the old weather.