29 February 2016

Postcard Project Revisited

As I pass fifty postcards posted, and probably closer to a hundred made and mailed, I must call myself into question: What am I doing here?

If I am trying to share with a wider audience, then I am failing. As far as I can tell, I have about ten faithful readers. (This is a good exercise for sublimating the fragility of my ego.) I am not above self-promotion, but neither am I very interested in it. I have been putting off a few ideas to widen my audience, in fact. When I do fret about it, internally or externally, I am immediately aware of the pathetic sound of dross. It is similar to me of the feeling I get when I attempt to synthesize the sublime into some sort of linear coherence.
Which does lead me to what I am doing here: I am synthesizing my sublime -- transcendent and despairing -- into a parceled, non-linear coherence. Reviewing my cards is like watching the arc of my philosophical/spiritual/artistic development in a statistical scatter graph in many dimensions. This was not at all my intention when I began, or even when I began formalizing and sharing. Here is an explanation of my original intent.
I can see now, that I am creating an historic documentation of an informal world view as it examines itself and develops. The form itself is of course feeding back to that development. Its not that I think in the 4.5 x 6 inch boundary, but that I am engaged in a one sided conversation without feedback or reference that would normally be of no more significance than the thoughts that whirl around in my head and fade out of memory. Regardless of the limitations and looseness and loneliness of my form, the structure of writing and the vulnerability of sharing creates responsibilities to both internal veracity and posterity. This is all a lot to say about so flippant a "project", but I take it seriously (but not too self-seriously, I hope):
I have gotten to the point where, on a variety of subjects, I could reference a postcard that would at least begin a conversation on my perspective. I am often tempted to do that,or to tack the link to some specific card onto an online conversation. I have also gotten to the point where I feel that anyone who would take the time to read each and every postcard as part of a larger tangentially connected whole, would have a pretty good sense of the person they are engaging, that is me.

So, taking this project -- that has become a project, that has grown legs enough to have essentially taken over my blog, that has ushered along and matured a perspective to make the more static ideas of my novel fall into question, taking this project as it is -- not seriously, but engaging it, I move forward with the intent of mass and momentum:


I will self promote while hopefully barring my ego from the process. 

I am constantly curious about serious, educated and well developed philosophical ideas as well as ideas in science, the arts,religion and literature. I have no interest in specializing in any of these; I enjoy remaining a dilettante, in fact I feel it is a helpful tool for a writer, but I would like to cultivate a type of feedback that could be transformative to the development of my perspective.

I will be more formal about my postings, aiming for one each Monday afternoon. If you enjoy catching my postcards, that gives you something to look forward to. 

I will continue to make, write and send postcards

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