A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far
The above line from Adrienne Rich’s poem Integrity has affirmed my actions and life choices for quite a few years now. I like the concept of patience required in a get-it-now society with the frustrated impatience needed to break down barriers to get to accomplishments. Wild patience — that pretty much sums up my daily life.
Wild patience also involves being able to switch hats on a regular basis — professor, mentor, editor, colleague, author — along with other more long-term roles as friend, wife or mother. Wild patience is a mantra to move through many roles, running to gain ground when we can, conserving energy for the next rush when we can’t.
I have resisted writing a blog, maybe partly out of a fear of commitment (would it be like a Twitter page that is never updated) and partly out of a disbelief that anyone would really care what I think about in the shower. Words in articles are finessed and polished, vetted by others, and read in a different time and context than when written. Words in a blog are more immediate. I pause with fingers on the keys to form the next sentence, typing into the small white square the thoughts that I have just formed. John Dewey, you know, thought that knowledge was never static or fully formed; that the act of knowing changed the knowledge, so that what we thought we knew is now different. All we can say is that we are about to have known. Maybe the same is true for blog-truths, that the act of writing changes what I write and what you read. My thoughts come out of the ends of my fingers tapping on the keys based on the stream of consciousness that right now exists. You are reading this on the stream of consciousness that is your mind.
We don’t really know what blogs are in a societal context. We don’t know the degree to which they are read or quoted, whether they are the inspired revelations of the truly exceptional minds that we are privileged to share, or whether they are just random trivia from arrogant pseudo-intellectuals. Regardless of where in the continuum I fall, here I am, poised at the edge of blogland, foisting my random thoughts on an unsuspecting world.
I welcome comments, criticisms, suggestions, and advice. A wild patience truly has taken me this far. I am curious to learn what you think what has taken you so far.
Gail Dickinson
September 8, 2009
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