This Blog is an Essay

I'm going to try this.

Our world is ambiguous, paradoxical, and large. It is difficult to represent the world because of this and because we are part of the world. It's not possible for us to step away from our world, look it over slowly and methodically, nod our heads and say, "OK. Got it."

It's impossible for us to represent anything correctly or completely.

Ironically, we naturally want to organize things and use methods. But we probably can't do so well, and we certainly can't do so perfectly. And it causes vertigo when we think that our world is represented through us incompletely and experienced by us incompletely and it changes incessantly as time flings it along while we try to change with it and that although each of us has personal subjectivities that come to us through unreliable eyes, we are each part of the same general place and represent the same general thing; we look at the world through a rippling reflective pool while others look at the world in us through an old, foggy mirror; and through all this ridiculous lack of wholeness we putter along and try to say one thing or the other is completely certain or that something is simple and another is simply unexplainable; and most of the time we forget all this and forget to think. Vaguely, I want to laugh.

But I won't say it's all pointless, because then there would be nothing to do, and life would be boring or depressing. When we do think and consciously try to represent something, we are doing something admirable. When we put it in writing, we are creating an essay.

"Essay" has received a bad connotation by now, probably due to all the time writing has had to develop. Naturally, some things have been tainted over time. Essays have been assigned and not been completed as true assays, people have been inauthentic and mindless and passionless, and "essay" has become synonymous with torture in the western world.

"Blog" takes away these rough associations and allows us to start over and look at short writing attempts from a different perspective. It is an instant publication with rapid feedback, and it allows us to more easily remain collaborative when we think; it is the new-essay. That said, I could also call it newfangled. I'm scared of the big Internet with its readers that trespass onto my page and read my words and can immediately criticize them negatively. It's hard to think... umm... "successfully" when typing on a screen than it is when writing words with pen and paper. There's an urge to be lacking in discretion. There are so many blogs by so many people. Average blogs lack worth. Who would seriously look at a blog and an ancient manuscript with equal consideration? In short, blogging is overwhelming.

I think that if we can do a bit of writing and a bit of blogging, and represent our thoughts authentically, then we can avoid some of our problems and begin to come closer to a better representation of the world.

But articulation is so hard...