I am going to speak in a more personal manner, directly to you, for a second. Yes you.
I’m aware that this blog has a lot of readers, and I’m not sure why this is so.
Most of the feedback I get about my blog writing is that it’s
(1) impossibly dense,
(2) mildly crazy, or
(3) laced with objectionable ideas (about either science or spirituality, depending on who you are—I seem to offend in both directions).
So… I’m not sure why you come here. Is it the effort to piece together the story behind writer? The hopes of catching some oblique community gossip? The thrill of a new vocab word?
I write about a small subculture in an easily recognizable location, I and the subjects of my writing (myself included) are not terribly difficult to identify.
I feel comfortable with this. I’m a trusting person and this has brought well-intentioned and generous people into my life. It is trust others, as much as strategy, that has brought me into the good life that I have.
But because I am candid here about my feelings and some of the thoughts I’m working through, as the readership grows I do worry that what I reveal here could do harm. Is this crazy? Well, the worry comes up.
There’s a lot I don’t discuss—specifics of asana, teacher-student relationship, my intimate yoga-person friendships. I’m trying to embed some modesty into an inherently public kind of writing. By keeping some things quiet I feel more freedom to talk openly about others.
Maybe this effort to protect the more sensitive aspects of this practice is actually keeping me from revealing good parts of myself and the most interesting aspects of my experience. Stuff that it would be good to work over in a journal.
No point to be made here. But I felt like giving you a little flicker of the self-awareness that this whole wonderous but also edgy and strange form of self-expression creates in me. Most of you are not at all comfortable with the whole concept of writing a weblog, and see it as a slightly discomforting thing.
But it’s not like that. It’s like this.
You are welcome here, but I am going to try to stop thinking about you and what you might think about me.
Yours as ever, (0v0)
18 Comments
it’s a perspective thing, one that i think you have revolved. in my perspective at least, it’s not that i think your writing/thinking is too dense for me. it’s that i’m too dense to appreciate what you are writing. a very different thing.
i think, in all honesty, that i killed the curiosity portion of my brain in med school. all the massive pumping of info, then immediately dumping it after a test to repump with another boatload of minutia, test after test, year after year. there’s just no willingness left after that to ponder things.
i’m all <a href=“http://www.joelneuenhaus.com/blog3/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/homer-simpson-brain-1024.jpg”>homer-like</a> now.
as the saying goes, it’s not you, it’s me
Hey man. Let me re-link your brain.
We’re complements in terms of our tastes for abstraction, or, um, density. You say homer-like; I’d give you homeric…
I like watching your mind unraveling.
Like it. Like it a lot.
got into yoga a year ago. curiosity’s got me looking for blogs that have something to do with it. i don’t find your writing 1, 2, or 3.
also, have you tried putting the spirulina in apple juice? i think it tastes pretty good that way. or at least, pretty good for pond scum.
As you know, I’m all about the thrill of new vocabulary. Yes to how wonderfully strange participating in the blogosphere is. Yes to keeping some stuff quiet while other stuff is written. You know, of course, that the choices are yours (unless this is a sly re-take on the “blog is in control” piece from before).
You’re not your words or your thoughts or your blog.
That makes it a little easier, no?
Or you can look at it as art. Again, not you. Or you can look at it as a game. Or concept asana. Finding the seat of notions.
Whatever. It’s fun, though, and I like to watch you play.
Mmmm, I agree with lots of the above. I don’t always comment when you write about philosophy because I don’t always understand it, but as Okrgr said, that’s not you – it’s definitely me! And I love to watch your thoughts unfold. It’s brilliant.
This is your space and you get to be exactly who you want.
I like your blog because your thinking process it completely different from mine. Since mine is pretty much like many-many other people’s, that makes yours unique. You are creative and intelligent. It is always a challenge to get through your posts, but that is a good thing, no?
Believe me, this is the LAST place I go for new vocabulary words. The words that show up here — especially those that are found in some of the comments — worry me a little bit. Especially when they have three suffixes tacked onto them. Okay, when they have three or more suffixes, plus a prefix or two, that actually SCARES me.
But don’t worry about being too transparent. I fretted about this for a bit but then realized that most people don’t bother to see too deeply into the stuff that we dangle in front of their eyes. You’re totally safe putting all your stuff out under our noses.
There’s a huge difference between writing that just happens to be complex/dense organically and writers that intentionally manufacture obtuse writing out of arrogance or as a means to impress others.
Your writing comes across as sincere and you always make a point. It’s not your fault that you’re a smarty-pants!
I’m with Carl, though. Them big words and fancy French philosophers scare the dickens out of me!
(But I like the crazy.)
I’m here strictly for the vocabulary.
i like your blog because i like you. i may not understand your writing always because i’m not sociologically trained, but just feel you might have a reason to be composing what you’re composing. i have a degree in philosophy, but philosophy is a different mental discipline than sociology.
hugs
arturo
Wow, I’m just now reading these incredibly sweet comments. Thanks you— all of you.
Post-lapsarian. Scary enough?
That’s a favorite of Patrick, who also brought us autodefenestration.
What is the word for the irrational consumption of pond scum? (Will try the apple juice and banana approaches, though would so much rather someone just take this cup from me.)
Sometimes when the writer/ audience/ spectator /influence thing (a new version of what “real” writers once went through, in the preinternetarian age after they first got published and reviewed?) really gets in my head I consider turning this into a pure wordplay blog.
Talk about unraveling (Susan) /unfolding (Anna) /playing (Karen). Uh oh.
Pondscumb.
Dude (can I call you dude?), preinternetarian has SEVEN syllables; how do you carry around words that heavy?? Yee-haw!
I almost blushed at my above-cited penchant for big words; I forget about it, because I live with myself, you know?
And remember (as I long ago directed you to, anyway), Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. Go go, wikipedia!
badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger
(pfew – I finally feel like I can contribute!)
I think you threw an extra syllable into “preinternetarian” just for fun. Show off! Seems like it could just as easily be “preinternetian” (pronounced nee-shun, not net-ee-an—of course.).
Ok Mister Efficient, my darling.
But you’re right. Your version of the word sounds like an exhibit at the MJT for sure.
I did the same non-efficient thing the other day when I named Patrick’s ultimate ashtanga blogger posture. He takes the lotus position, with some mudra in the left hand and holding up Debord’s Society of the Spectacle in the right. The posture is called spectaculotus and every ashtangi needs a photo of herself in it right next to the photo she snapped of herself with Guruji at the last AYRI World Tour.
Just to raise all the necessary questions.
I called it spectaculotus instead of simply spectaclotus because somehow the latter sounded medical and invasive.
Oh, and the whole buffalo thing blows my mind.
Not to badger badger badger badger badger, but I recommend wrapping your head around that craziness. Damn!
We’re getting closer and closer to my entering a period of indiscriminate wordplay…