The act of seeing with one’s own eyes

I stopped drinking coffee cold turkey yesterday. I didn’t feel bad, but I think my concentration suffered. I wrote two blog posts, both of them traditionally bloggy summaries of others’ work, and neither very accurate or pithy.

One of the ideas I had when starting this group blog was to combine the personalist philosophy with the personal; rather than commenting on news reported by others, I would write about my own firsthand experiences. Rather quickly this blog descended into traditional meta-news blogging as well. After all, another idea behind this blog was to have fun, and meta-news blogging is fun.

But a day like yesterday points up a problem with meta-news blogging. I might write a bad post about my own experiences, but I’m not likely to be inaccurate about them. Yesterday I blogged about two things I have no firsthand experience of, and so a mild deficit of reading comprehension led to both bad and inaccurate blogging. (I’ve been following the Cirignano stuff behind the scenes, but I wasn’t there for the original incident. I have zero firsthand knowledge of WoMag, and as mentioned yesterday it’s only moving further to the periphery of my awareness.)

Think not that I have learned my lesson: in the coming days, this space will feature several pieces that feature not only meta-news, but also meta-analysis. If this scares you, consult Allen Levine’s floating head for solace.

Post title taken from Stan Brakhage.

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