To be a thing is to be nonsensical

Awareness of ourselves as another "nonhuman" entity has to do with our knowledge, now including logical proofs, that even our thoughts and logical systems evade us. Despite our intentions, they have a life of their own, which means, despite our fantasies that they are totally coherent, they are in fact fragile, like lifeforms. To be a logical system is to be able to speak nonsense because to be a thing is to be nonsensical. Ecognosis has to do with allowing for this nonsensical, pestiferous dimension of things. A thought, a lizard, a spoon veer from themselves. To be a thing is to be a deviation. A thing, a thought, a sentence are per-ver-se. An en-vir-onment is not a closed circle but a veering loop. A thing is in a loop with itself: a thing and a thing-pattern, asymmetrical, which is why there can be patterns at all – which is why there can be replication. Which is why there can be organic chemicals, lifeforms, and sentences about patterns.

Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology (Columbia University Press, 2016) p.96