No More Essays

I have come to the conclusion that for me, limited as I am by both the quantity and quality of reading I have done over the years, my recent pursuit of thoughts about physics is essentially a philosophical endeavor.

Now, even though I have such a limited knowledge of science and math in general, I can safely state, in numerical terms, that my expectations for any sort of contribution to the field of theoretical (or for that matter, any variety of) physics would be very small, yet still non-zero.

Why? Why can't I just give up? What is it that fascinates me about the incredibly difficult concepts that seem to be embodied in that particular field? I have struggled, lately, to decide how I can best approach this feeling. It's a need of mine, really, to think about the most intensely difficult and challenging concepts available to me.

Obviously, one of the activities I can engage in to satisfy this urge is to read. More. Another strategy would be to seek the company of others who share this urge to think about incredibly complex subjects. Certainly thoughts of this type and on this scale are widespread among us; yet we rarely speak of them because we know not where they are going. And who can blame us?

The fact is, it's just plain boring to talk about big ideas with someone like me, can't even decide if space is real, let alone make a good set of picks in the weekly football pool. I see people's eyes glaze over and I can't blame them. So it's natural, I guess that these thoughts remained undiscussed. I know why. Who cares?

Well, I do. Furthermore, as a writer, my desire is do more than generate them; I wish to capture these thoughts, make something of them. Poetry perhaps? I don't know what I will do with them, but I do know that they'll come out and I've got to make use of the words.

Endless conversations over coffee and cigarettes do not for a coherent or memorable thought make. Though conversation is perhaps the ground in which these thoughts germinate, they take root in the linearity of words, and at the mercy of the writer.

Thus my goal as a writer will be to open a new line of inquiry for myself; open to the possible and restrained only by the impossible, which is to say, if readers here recall, not at all.

Practically speaking, this means, I believe, that it is time to split up this journal. For some reason, writing in the blog and seeing my words 'published' gives me a sense of satisfaction on which I can build to write again, so the journal has served this function better than I could have hoped.

However, for too long now I have mixed together personal news and family goings-on with these less interesting and more tedious introspective essays. I will continue to write these for my own sake, but by moving them to another journal, I can explore these ideas without cluttering up these pages.