How does one write?
– or more to the point how does one express something worthwhile?. Its a problem that has vexed me for my adult life. Why and how can some written words be so pertinent and full of wisdom , passion , power whilst others are an almost meaningless jumble of trash .
Education, intelligence have seemingly nothing to do with it – many a PHD thesis is pure gobbly gook whereas a book such as "Gone with the wind" is a masterpiece of childhood verbal memories put to paper by a one off author with no training whatsoever.
Its hard to commit to pen and paper when when one has read the luminaries that precede myself, full of eloquence and sometime wisdom and knowledge that one does not posses. Is there anything worthwhile that I can contribute , anything to be said that can leave a mark or roll an untouched stone.
Perhaps if there is a fear in me it’s the fear of not been able to say or contribute anything worthwhile and merely to add to the mass of indigestible trash that one already has to wade through whilst seeking some tasty literary morsels.
Fear , Genius , what is worth reading and what is not , can only be appraised individually justly put in the old saying one persons heaven is another's hell. My fears are different from yours, my idea of what is worth reading is almost certainly different , my idea of Genius (and a fool) , my idea of living even.
So when one writes one writes for himself, to validate his world view, to meet ones own criteria .That others may scoff , degenerate or laugh is only relevant if one needs to justify ones thoughts to the World – and sell it for its ideas or money . But if in writing one fails ones own standards that is different – and just as if living fails ones own standards than it is no longer worth while.
To travel to explore is perhaps to validate others experiences but more often than not it is to find knew ones outside the scope of what is known – and here what is known by the individual is just as important as what is known by the world. Usually once an individual makes his discovery – some thing that is new and original to the discoverer he will find that this discovery has been made before -often countless times and even in the far past. Than ones world becomes post validated. Tom Longstaff noted it well in mountaineering and I quote him "Despite all this I believe that only the guide-less climber can distill the true essence of pleasure from mountaineering. To the guide-less climber every new peak is in reality a first ascent" and has all the savor of the unknown.
On occasion some purely original thought (although all thought seems to originate from prior insights) occurs and than one sees the World in a new light. Original thought is often begun by denial of the orthodox,even by taking the opposite view point. If the sun goes around the earth lets consider the idea that the earth goes around the sun would say Galileo !! From the extreme opposite of conventional ( wisdom) it becomes possible to realize if there is another way of looking at reality, perhaps validate or find faults in a new world view.
Our World view, the world we believe exists consists of a series of observations by our selves and others that we congeal into existence every moment after birth.There are harsh realities such as 1+1 = 2 and dropping a big stone on ones foot will hurt that lead us to believe our reality is concrete so we believe multiple theory’s lectured to us as ardently as the few facts that really define us.
But most theory is purely theory and as one wanders around the World the words of the physicist who expounded “the universe is not queerer than we imagine but queerer than we can imagine “ becomes the most pertinent.