Occasion.
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
I started this blog, around two weeks ago, thinking I would write about.... Exactly. And it took me about two weeks of staring at my computer to figure out that there are about 37 pieces of me I could write about, of which about 35 are common to everyone and about four of which are interesting—and that is probably generous. Here is a list (which may or may not be 37 and in no particular order):
mother
late-life mother
career changer
backsliding poet
yogi (am I allowed to call myself that?)
compulsive organizer
runner
student
teacher
artist
commando (this is another story)
The challenge with starting a personal blog is that if you wait to figure out one thing to write about, you will simply never write. There is no one thing. There are always, as Whitman says, multitudes. And those multitudes intersect, contradict, explode, and trail off into nothing. That's kind of annoying—a poetic Rickroll—something interesting leads to another something interesting which takes you somewhere else that may or may not be interesting and it just never stops.
Perhaps this is why the epic old white guys like Whitman seem to have fallen out of vogue—they make us click to the next page and the next and the next. And we'd rather read something shorter, some tidbit to thumbs up or thumbs down or CTRL-C or respond to with an emoticon. Reading, particularly online reading, has become an exercise in voicing judgement rather than in hearing perspective. Whitman invites contribution but not opinion. Besides, by the time you get to where he's waiting in his "Song of Myself," you are so exhausted by his multitudes you are just glad you caught up.
My hope this blog (that really is an ugly word); rather, my purpose in this shared/personal, raw/crafted immediate archive is to capture my contradictions; to question my perspective. And, in doing so, create a song of myself. Which I will never choose to capitalize.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you
Honestly, I'd forgotten how much I missed Whitman until about an hour ago when I started with that top quotation. The only time I really studied Whitman was as an undergrad in an American lit class I did not particularly like with a professor that I did not think was particularly great, but, apparently, was. The 1855 version of this poem leaves off the final punctuation (thank you for teaching me that, American lit professor whose name I don't even remember). For a long time, it was believed to be intentional on the part of the poet, but now it is seen as a simple printing mistake. I much prefer the intentional, open-ended version.
Why the line is better without punctuation is so universally obvious that I cannot make it mundane with an explanation. But I'm glad he is still waiting.
