When In (Self-)Doubt

Recently, my relationship to this 'blog has been a nice little microcosm of the rest of my life. I've got so much to do that I can't quite get a handle on how I'm going to do all of it. Its not that its actually more than I can get done, its just that its more than I can visualize getting done. I make to-do lists that are so long I can't even marginally memorize them. I can't picture them and the tasks they enumerate. So, with characteristic authenticity, I don't do anything. I just ignore all of it and try not to feel my building anxiety.

Likewise, I've had so much to write about, I couldn't picture myself sitting down to write any of it. So, I didn't. Simple as that.

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Pure knowledge is never enough to move us because it does not take hold of us in our entirety. In every act, there is an act of faith Maurice Blondel, Action (1893)

If the above is true, then the mimetic character of narration, of story-telling is more adequate to the task of persuasion than argument-as-pure-knowing. Our encounter with it might be a receptive act of faith. After all, Coleridge's "suspension of disbelief" is just a double-negative for "faith." The faith we can exercise in the reception of a narrative, I suspect, is a similar faith exercised when we enact our own narration through agency. The stories we hear/see shapes the sorts of stories we can tell through our mimesis(1).

Story telling grips our whole person. It moves our whole selves.

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"You think I can maybe call you sometime soon?"

"Will you have coffee with me?"

"We're going to The Pill tonight and I was hoping I'd see you there."

"I promise I'm not normally flaky."

I just can't help but give her a second chance. My friends must think I'm an idiot.

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No, really, I'm glad I put up a bit here, but now I really must get back to work. I'll try not to let my perfectionism keep me from you, though.

Promise. Godspeed.

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(California) Dream Girl?