Strides

My morning (afternoon for most people) ritual has become somewhat mundane. I thread my way past the mountain of books in my work space, and then delete the ten or twenty spam comments on the various blog presences I have scattered about. I tell myself, as I close the entries, that there can’t be that many entries left open to attract crap. And yet, each morning it’s the same. Little strides. The latest round has been the promotion of chemicals that cause hair to grow. If they only knew; somehow, I don’t think I have problems in that area.

I haven’t been blogging much, mostly because I’m just caught up in processing too many things. I hope to litter this place back up with some quotes which I always scrounge to find. That might lend a disconnected air for a while. But I think part of my hesitation in blogging has been an overarching concern about coherence. I try my best each week to attain it, and usually fall short in one way or another. There have just been too many disparate things. It’s really weird going from Heidigger and Levinas to Vygotsky and Piaget, from Ricoeur and Richards to Aristotle and Wittgenstein, ad infinitum. Too much stuff. Each one lurking there like a mountain reminding me just how little I really understand.

And worst of all, there is the effortless way that people like Ricoeur and W.J.T. Mitchell glide along the ethereal heights, stepping on the tips of people’s thoughts like they were glacial peaks. Though sometimes it feels as if they are leaping from theory to theory, it’s more like a casual stride in which the pedestrian feels a total sense of control. I don’t have that. I look at these things and think to myself that they seem like golden strands begging to be woven, and yet my needles are broke.

I skip in the same groove, wishing I could catch my stride. But I can’t find it, and I keep falling down.