0) What Is, Going on Here
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I communicate. Therefore, I is.
Like most mammals finding themselves alive for the first time, I cried the moment I began to survive. Why I was so immediately eager to scream, I cannot say. I certainly didn’t know at the time. A cry behind closed eyes just came into being. I was speaking, but also hearing. I did not know the difference.
Today, I often find myself excited to fly my mind through communicative loops, to be caught in hopeless hoops expressing the inexpressible when I’m only in need of sleep. I need reason, but know there isn’t any. I know only I know nothing, but how would I know that? Speechless with so much to say. Speaking complete nothing all day.
This must be how we feel first finding our voices. But when did I first use it to ask, “What is going on here?” Did these questions make me nervous? Did they scrape self-expression out of me like pumpkin seeds one bloody handful at a time? Were they also empowering, for better and worse?
I suppose I’ll never know if the best question is one unanswered, or one with no answer at all.
Ten years ago, Aaron Schwartz asked this question in a journal entry he never could have guessed I’d read.
“I don’t consider this writing, I consider this thinking. I like sharing my thoughts and I like hearing yours and I like practicing expressing ideas, but fundamentally this blog is not for you, it’s for me. I hope that you enjoy it anyway.”
I'd feel usually including this passage, because telling someone you’re communicating with that you don’t care if they’re enjoying themselves or not instinctively feels like a bad idea. But my message now may well resemble my first; all I aim to express is what is, going on here.
Who am I to tell you anything anyway?