And here I am, after just a few weeks, writing you again. It is Easter morning, and I am home alone, and I have serenaded myself with a playlist of Easter songs so affecting that my tears feel hot and urgent. I am thinking about failure, and I am also thinking about thinking. I am – specifically—thinking about my failure to think. Or to think correctly. To think clearly. To express what I have thought about. To be perceived as someone who has thought through a matter—to be regarded as a thinker. It is a vanity, yes. But it is one I have carried keenly. Let me explain.
While I will say that there's something poetic about an essay about a writer's failure as a thinker becoming itself a profound cause for introspection, I find myself asking questions about the reliability of "truth." Is "a truth" "a piece of thought?" If so, are we all thinkers? How well thought out does this truth have to be for it to be a valid "thought?" Wouldn't it be a problem if billions of people, because of their individual "truths," have thoughts? Will that be a problem? Is that why the world is in chaos?
I feel like I'm going off tangent, but I am working on my MA thesis, so I am questioning some of the "thoughts" I am trying to espouse. But I guess the beauty of literature is that we can all pretend that we have "thoughts" because of our ability to critically engage with texts. Or maybe that's enough for a thought?
For me, the pathway to beauty has always been towards love, so it’s interesting to think that you might be wanting to chart another course toward love and it is not beauty but thought, even though some might argue that beauty is a thought. I am thinking about this concerning the racialization process which some might say was some kind of un-beautifying of the other. This is definitely worth pondering especially as you noted, ‘what is it to be read.’ I am of the feeling that we are in some kind of edge of language era which might also be an edge of thought era. The people who are telling you that your writing is beautiful and whom you seem to be unconvinced by might also be demanding from you develop a discipline of beauty that is beyond language itself and arrives at thought that is true and pure —unpretentious love of the other in action. Thank you for taking us with you through these murky waters, we are many here.
This is an incredible piece!
While I will say that there's something poetic about an essay about a writer's failure as a thinker becoming itself a profound cause for introspection, I find myself asking questions about the reliability of "truth." Is "a truth" "a piece of thought?" If so, are we all thinkers? How well thought out does this truth have to be for it to be a valid "thought?" Wouldn't it be a problem if billions of people, because of their individual "truths," have thoughts? Will that be a problem? Is that why the world is in chaos?
I feel like I'm going off tangent, but I am working on my MA thesis, so I am questioning some of the "thoughts" I am trying to espouse. But I guess the beauty of literature is that we can all pretend that we have "thoughts" because of our ability to critically engage with texts. Or maybe that's enough for a thought?
For me, the pathway to beauty has always been towards love, so it’s interesting to think that you might be wanting to chart another course toward love and it is not beauty but thought, even though some might argue that beauty is a thought. I am thinking about this concerning the racialization process which some might say was some kind of un-beautifying of the other. This is definitely worth pondering especially as you noted, ‘what is it to be read.’ I am of the feeling that we are in some kind of edge of language era which might also be an edge of thought era. The people who are telling you that your writing is beautiful and whom you seem to be unconvinced by might also be demanding from you develop a discipline of beauty that is beyond language itself and arrives at thought that is true and pure —unpretentious love of the other in action. Thank you for taking us with you through these murky waters, we are many here.