Four Posts from 2025 Worth a Look

Hi all –

When I started blogging, I found "round-up" posts useful. I advertised to readers my recent creations; I reminded myself of what I wrote.

What's below is different. A number of times on this blog I have made the effort to say something more. I am not sure I have been terribly successful; I possess a lot of overwrought and muddled thoughts. I do think it is worth revisiting some of them to see if I have changed.

I have to remind myself that clarity is not always a virtue. It is very easy to be clear and say absolutely nothing. If I need new ideas, if motivation requires a different object, then I need to learn to appreciate mess (Marie Kondo reference intentional).

Thank you all for reading. Hoping this is of use to you, happy to hear if you get anything out of this exercise.

The Opening of Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Message

Rereading "The Opening of Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Message," from January of 2025, I am struck by the attention I give to the problem of political consciousness. I talk about how we collect the stories of others: there's a way to do this which asks questions, another which reinforces myths. I see the epistolary form, a letter, as having enormous power if used correctly. You're not just addressing someone, you're addressing their awareness. The "small and particular" you detail matters immensely.

You may hear vagueness, but I know I'm not being vague. Consider the problem which rankles every organizer. You've got people who are all talk and will waste your time. They'll boast about how right they are and frame their inaction as bold contrarianism. It is easy to focus on these sorts of people, just as for many of us it is easy to focus on those doing harm, wondering if they can be redirected with the right words.

This is a waste of attention and energy; we're distracting ourselves. Those who are doing the work need everything we can give them. Everything includes an understanding of how political consciousness develops. The general ideas about sincerely asking questions and addressing actual people are about the power of witness. A writer discovers something about their own voice while listening to another. In like manner, one can see how some learn courage on the spot, how they open themselves to inspiration.

Toward the end of this post, I say "the enterprise of learning together... is true citizenship." I want to believe this connects my past work, where I meditate on the Socratic circle/city of philosophers, with my more current concern about authenticity and belonging.

Carol Snow, "Tour"

Carol Snow's "Tour" is an exquisite little poem which calls forth entire worlds of spirituality. What if someone took the time to observe every fallen detail as sacred? What would that say?

I know how distant I am from these questions. I spent the day fighting with the bank while knowing others were fighting for survival. I don't know if there is time or space for sacred gestures, no matter how gentle. And there are those who have given up on any patience or kindness, preferring the comfort of preemptive violence. My musings on this poem start from a point anterior to our current crisis. What about the absolute unreality in which we are awash? "I had forgotten how powerful advertising is: glossy images lighted supernaturally, speech in even tones with no mistakes or hesitation, everyone with bright, perfect skin." I feel there's a not-so-sly dehumanization in brushing out every blemish. The poor and sick are not welcome in some churches, let alone the halls of Congress.

Wisława Szymborska, "Vermeer"

A year ago, I spent some time with The Milkmaid by Vermeer and Szymborska's ekphrasis of it. Why hasn't the world earned the world's end, according to her? "Szymborska appeals to the intensity of our efforts. That we would take our time to carefully pour, that we would invest our mental energy in making sure one line is drawn properly or one word strikes with impact. This justifies us."

I don't know what to think about that at this moment. In my commentary, I touch on how devoted racists are to racism. They'll spend time which could be used to cure cancer not just to propagandize, but find small, strange ways to discriminate. They aim to do maximum damage with microscopic movements; their terribleness has brought them almost unchallengeable power.

But something I see more and more of as I get older, too. Intense, misdirected, massive clumsiness. I think this can justify us–I'm certainly getting more out of journals where I did anything but "writing" or "scholarship," despite my best attempts–but it can also break us. I don't know. The intensity of effort in The Milkmaid coincides with a calmness that I would like in my own life. Is there a tension that needs to be addressed?

Kay Ryan, "New Rooms"

Again, thank you so much for listening to me for this long. I don't know how you do it. Kay Ryan's "New Rooms" is a funny little puzzle, daring us to solve it. We'll mentally adapt to a place by imagining another interior within it. Which is fine until you realize the windows you imagine and the new place itself refuse to line up! The poem tempts you to think about those times the windows do sort of line up, or other objects join the problem. What if the window you see lines up with a painting in the actual room? What are you thinking is the truth? What if the representation is better than peeking outside?

The temptation is to try to infer a more precise comment about logic from this poem. Maybe it is possible to get one, but what I found most of value was the self-created inconvenience of struggling to adapt. "Truth is inconvenient that way: it doesn't let you assume you're being seen or valued." The truth lies in that mismatch of imagined and actual rooms; you can't see or be seen. The mismatch, we'd like to say, is our lack of adaptation to reality, our inability to work with what we actually have. I'd rather say the mismatch itself is the truth and the only truth. I'm currently reading a paper by Thomas Sheehan on Heidegger where Sheehan holds that for Heidegger, questions of being are questions of meaning, full stop. It's an attractive position, but I wonder if I have thought about it another way and reached a different conclusion.