Aril 27, Post 21

I think I'll have to do an expository paper, after all. I struggled against it because I wanted the work to stand on its own; to need no explanation. I wanted to show, not tell. I also liked the fact that the format, with all its loose ends and non sequiturs, mirrored the postmodern era into which these texts led the world. I don't think I'm brave enough to live like this, though. I think that I need to mark out my space and square it off. I need to categorize my ideas, link them together, and show what I've learned. Otherwise I'm afraid that I haven't learned anything at all. I'm sure someone knows whether or not you can learn without having named it learning, but I don't know who, and I don't know their decision. So I think I'll have to take the easy way out and write some kind of an academic paper. (I do realize how ironic it is that the paper now seems like the easy way out whereas before I was worried that the blog format was a cheat. They are connected - both hinge on the fact that I learn from grouping thoughts - it's just that before I was focusing on the amount of work involved and now I'm concerned about the product.)

When it comes down to it, my struggle is really the struggle of becoming. I want so badly to finish things, which de Beauvoir says is the meaning of being human, but, at the same time I recognize that these endings are really just impositions I'm putting on the thoughts and experiences I've had. This project will only end when the paper is finished because the paper will be finished, but it will have been a superficial ending. Just how what's gone into this project or what goes into the characters' journals is only a superficial representation of the events, a selected story among the infinite possible representations, the paper I will write will only be one of the many I could on the subject and the many I would if the timeline were extended or reduced. But infinity is not something we ought to try to catch,  not is it something of which we should be afraid. Respectful, yes. Awe-struck, yes. But afraid, no. I was really touched reading de Beauvoir's existentialism because it was so full of hope, which is rare of the philosophy I have read. What's more is that it is a hope I can get behind, a hope I can have myself, because it's not founded in God or anything of that sort; it's founded on the individual and his/her interest in making something out of their situations. Perhaps that explains my desire to write an essay explaining what I've done with this project - perhaps I want to write to share. That doesn't feel like the reason, though. I want to write to figure it out. I feel like I've got all the pieces of a puzzle here but that I don't have an idea of what image they are supposed to created.

The fact of the matter is that there is no reason to get out of bed in the morning but that we can and do, and together, we make the action worth it. By sharing our works, we validate each other. I don't know if anyone is reading this, and it doesn't really matter; the blog format allowed me to write as if I were writing for someone instead of writing only for myself. My notes matter then, because they are shared. And that has made all the difference.