Occasionally, I will be directed back to one thing or another that I wrote here in the distant past. Usually this will happen when I see that one or another anonymous visitor to the blog has been looking at multiple entries. This in turn will pique my interest and I will take a look at what has been of interest to the reader.
This leads to a number of curious discoveries. The first is that I will most often have no recollection of writing the pieces in question. The second is that they will seem rather more well written and more intellectually energetic than most of what I write nowadays. The third is that in many if not most cases the feelings and ideas expressed seem distinctly at variance with the feelings and ideas I have in the present time--or perhaps variance is the wrong word, perhaps self-assured would be more accurate. The person who wrote these things, the me of some 10 and 12 years ago, seems much more willing to engage, to interpret, analyze and conclude, whereas what I do know now is that I don't know, or, as Plato put it, I know that I know nothing.
I note also a lively interaction with peripheral material, a mustering of pertinent sources and elements, an ability to organize, which has now altogether flown from my mind's fingers, God rest its soul--although, to some extent, this is a measure of my present inability to comfortably read without getting a headache. It's difficult to effectively bring ideas together when they keep falling off the page, or rather the screen.
I note that I was younger. I note that I was healthy. I note that I was able.
The years that separate us from our own past often end up making an odd duck of what once seemed to be of both immediate and lasting importance. We find, looking back, that the rug had somewhere along the way been pulled out from under us. What seemed to be of lasting importance was really only of situational and temporary significance.
It strikes me, lastly, that it may be that there are some things--some beliefs, ideas, dispositions--that have simply become comfortable and secure and require no further inner debate. My first reader, after all, has always been me, and there are some things about which I no longer require convincing.
This leads to a number of curious discoveries. The first is that I will most often have no recollection of writing the pieces in question. The second is that they will seem rather more well written and more intellectually energetic than most of what I write nowadays. The third is that in many if not most cases the feelings and ideas expressed seem distinctly at variance with the feelings and ideas I have in the present time--or perhaps variance is the wrong word, perhaps self-assured would be more accurate. The person who wrote these things, the me of some 10 and 12 years ago, seems much more willing to engage, to interpret, analyze and conclude, whereas what I do know now is that I don't know, or, as Plato put it, I know that I know nothing.
I note also a lively interaction with peripheral material, a mustering of pertinent sources and elements, an ability to organize, which has now altogether flown from my mind's fingers, God rest its soul--although, to some extent, this is a measure of my present inability to comfortably read without getting a headache. It's difficult to effectively bring ideas together when they keep falling off the page, or rather the screen.
I note that I was younger. I note that I was healthy. I note that I was able.
The years that separate us from our own past often end up making an odd duck of what once seemed to be of both immediate and lasting importance. We find, looking back, that the rug had somewhere along the way been pulled out from under us. What seemed to be of lasting importance was really only of situational and temporary significance.
It strikes me, lastly, that it may be that there are some things--some beliefs, ideas, dispositions--that have simply become comfortable and secure and require no further inner debate. My first reader, after all, has always been me, and there are some things about which I no longer require convincing.
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