On the name and purpose of this blog.

"Vimes felt he was building a bridge of matchsticks over a yawning abyss, and now he could feel the chilly winds below him." -Terry Pratchett, in "Night Watch", p 29.

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To "speak one's mind" is not the simple or easy affair that our common use of the phrase would have us believe.  What is called "speaking our minds" usually amounts to either our passions taking temporary control of our tongue away from our reason, or else our reason parroting the last thing it heard from someone else to which it was persuaded.  Very rarely do we partake in the whole sense of the phrase: articulating what is in our minds in order to give form to the shapeless, subtle perceptions embedded in our conscious and unconscious self.

To accomplish this, one must first know oneself, a task which brings up the realization of how little one knows about the self, or if the "self" is something that is real enough to be known.  This gap of knowledge is the abyss.  The task of speaking, also, brings one up against the limitations of language, the cliches and assumptions that riddle our everyday conversation, and the fundamentally uncommunicative nature of neologisms.  This is the set of matchsticks with which we must construct a traversable passage between our interiors and the world.

For this reason, we owe a debt to the poets, whether they write in verse or prose.  They give us phrases containing insight, blueprints of successful constructions, which we take as ready models for our own use.  For instance, I have taken the quote above out of its context to introduce my point, both of this post, and of all posts to come.

Up until now, I have not had much of a social media presence.  I lurked in the contributions of others, rarely contributing so much as a comment myself.  Miscommunication seemed universal, and the transmission of wisdom a rarity.  Any truly deep or interesting thought was likely to get lost or buried in the drama, and that which was elevated as such seemed hollow and unworthy.

For this reason, I confess I held much of the people who produced this stuff in contempt, unless I personally found them entertaining.  That was the judgment of an immature mind, a university undergraduate that really did have more important things to do than hang out on the Internet, even though that's what I spent most of my time doing.

Since then, I've come to find voices from whom I have received wisdom, as well as an understanding of how difficult a thing that is to transmit.  Slowly, I have shed my contempt for the masses, for I now realize that the vapid things they say are only incomplete bridges, not truly reflective of the whole of their mindscape.

At least, so I believe.  I act upon this assumption now, more because the contempt I held was rotting my soul than any confrontation with the facts as such.  To let go of this contempt made me realize how much of it was directed towards myself, how my struggle to articulate my thoughts made me devalue what even failed attempts could contribute.  I thought it a courtesy to be quiet, never once considering it a dereliction of duty.

But the abyss has yawned long enough, and in this current moment (in the midst of a viral pandemic with governmental-enforced isolation), I fear if I do not make a bridge over it, that abyss is going to swallow me.  So, I will take what matchsticks my reading and education has given me, and start building.  The contents of this online journal will be personal, not aiming at a wide audience, but facing the public and shareable with friends.  I want to know that I could be listened to by the interested; I do not demand to be heard by the indifferent.