Last time I was asking about finding a trail that would wind between the extremes of nihilism and fundamentalism. There is a sort of allergy or sensitivity, a proclivity, a readiness that comes from asking certain questions repeatedly. In Zen today, my teacher talked about this very issue. How do you go for things without pushing for *that* particular goal? In Christianity, they talk about God moving in mysterious ways, and though it's too often spoken as a weak salve against tragedy, I think it could also be a way to acknowledge that it's very hard to let go of our intentionality.
This is connected to teaching and writing in at least three ways. First of all, a course is a creation, a composition, and you have to be able to develop it with an eye toward some *general* goal, but you also can't have a narrow notch for the course to fall into, not if you're trying to experiment. Secondly, writers certainly know that the hardest thing to learn is not how to control the writing, but how to trust that there is a process of meaning-making that will, by impulsion and molecular *frisson*, push the work into a new place so that new ideas fall into a resonance with other ideas. This trust--is it faith?--is tested by every blank, austere page and the cheap satisfactions of images and storylines that chicken out before they actually risk. Third, with writing in particular, people tend to assume that quality is *either* a matter of following the rules of grammar and the conventions of topic *or* a matter of abandoning the rules in an ecstacy of inspiration and a cloud of incense.
I want to argue for the practical politics of the middle way.
I want to talk about politics as creation, but done in public.
Following the rules versus making the rules is my Big Life Theme of the moment.
More later.
David
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