Abstract: Just as I am now and as things are now around me, I can spontaneously generate thoughts about things distant and near in space and time, like Beijing, Cicero, the year of 2025, and the tree outside my window.  How am I able to do this?  What is involved in being able to throw “mental lassos” that connect thoughts with objects in this way?  I shall argue that, with a few exceptions, we can think about things only in a sense “indirectly”, via their properties.  This proposal belongs to the family of “descriptivist” theories that has been influential historically and has some contemporary proponents (e.g., Jackson 2010) but that is widely regarded to be false in contemporary philosophy of mind and language.  I will defend the present version of descriptivism against some influential objections deriving from Donnellan and Kripke.  I shall also present what I believe to be novel considerations in favour of the view, drawing on cases where thinking abilities are acquired.