I Am a Strange Loop

Hofstadter, Carol Ann Brush: being Doug; bon mots by; dubious transportability of deepest pointers inside; dying of brain tumor; eye-to-eye with Doug re children; gaze similar to Doug’s; as Indian-dinner giver; interiority of, survival of; love for Prokofiev first violin concerto; memorial service for; memories belonging to, copied inside Doug; personal losses of, as felt by Doug; physical suffering of, shared by Doug; as sharable pattern; soul-shards, survival of, in Doug; thinking with Doug’s brain; thought of in present tense after death; videotapes, as disorienting; washing dishes and replaying dinner party with Doug

Hofstadter, Daniel; as catalyst to soul merger of parents; internalizing friends’ mannerisms; spotting reverberant parking lot from air; wearing nose-mounted TV camera

Hofstadter, Douglas: arranging memorial service; assuming Gödel is a male; baffled by Bartók; befriending Nagel family; being on both Mars and Venus; being Carol; belief in logic as key to human mind; column in Scientific American; compiling own index; confusing own memories with those of a friend; consciousness cone of; contradictions in head; copycatting many people; counterfactual versions of; deprived of geometry; different person as time passes; disavowing “meta” motto; driven by form; eating chicken and fish; enraptured by Elvis; exploring number theory; eye-to-eye with Carol re children; fainting in physiology lab; fascination with Gödel; fascination with minds and brains; fascination with self-reference; fear of videotapes of Carol; feeling Carol’s losses; feeling physical suffering of wife; feeling self behind Carol’s eyes; first hearing Chopin; gaze similar to that of Carol; grappling with Carol’s death; growing by accretion; hesitant to close video loop; hitting abstraction ceiling; horsies-and-doggies style; hypothetically buckling under intense pressures of grief; imagining soul as wisp; intoxicated with Bach fugues; intrigued by three threes; jilted; linking own brain with zombie’s; looking at daughter Monica “for Carol”, for “Old-Doug”, for “Old-Carol”; losing faith in logic as key to human mind; love for Chopin and Bach; love for Prokofiev first violin concerto; as meat-eater; mini-samaritanism of; musical taste; as naïve as young careenium; physics background; picking at hangnail; playing piano; programming computer to write sentences; pronoun choices by; rambling on a bit too long; reacting to mother’s grief; reification of, in own and others’ brains; repudiating Parfit’s ideas; running; sadness increasing with age; savoring falafel eaten by sister; seeing sister’s expressions on own face; seeing souls as swirls of haze; sharing wife’s joys; shattered by Carol’s death; shooting elephants and rhinos with gusto; sitting on own lap; slipping back and forth between “classical” and “modern” views of soul; smiling like Hopalong Cassidy; souledness cone of; as specialist in thinking about thinking; speculating about soul mergers; studying languages; swallowing Chinese Room whole; taunted by advanced tomes on logic; teaching symbolic logic to sixth-graders; thrilled by two twos; throwing switches to tamper with own identity; troubled by readings about brains; troubles with mathematics; true to long-term beliefs; vegetarian leanings; vegetarianism oscillations; washing dishes and replaying dinner party with Carol; watching football on TV; wondering what it would be like; work in cognitive science; working for United Farm Workers; writing first dialogue

Hofstadter, Laura; eating falafel; expressions of, on brother’s face; reacting to photo of father; as sixth-grade student of symbolic logic; vegetarian leanings of

Hofstadter, Molly

Hofstadter, Monica; as catalyst to soul merger of parents; internalizing friends’ mannerisms; third birthday of; wearing nose-mounted TV camera

Hofstadter, Nancy; as All-Wise One to young son Douggie; “being” her husband, with an accent; called by son late at night; giving son Well-Tempered Clavier for sixteenth birthday; grieving over husband; model of her husband; putting on Chopin étude for son; savoring photos of her husband; seeking answers re daughter Molly

Hofstadter, Oliver; in kennel; movements controlled by joystick; webcam mounted on head of

Hofstadter, Robert; photo of; possibly living in brain of his son; seeking answers re daughter Molly

Hofstadter’s Law

hog, fully reductionistic view of

Holden Caulfield: personal gemma of; symbol for, inside brain of J. D. Salinger

hole in PM

Holiday, Billie

“holons”

honking in traffic jam

Hopalong Cassidy smile, tested out on classmates

hopes and aspirations of sunflowers

hopes and dreams, sharable as similar patterns in different brains

Horney, Karen

horse, limping and being beaten

horsies-and-doggies style of writing

Houdini, Harry

“How real is X?”

human beings as representationally universal machines

human condition; as belief in a myth; naïve view of; tied to coarse-grainedness of human perception; trapped in a quandary