Why?

You don’t understand the humiliation of it– to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable– that somebody is watching… —The Player, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard

I blogged at Consimworld for years, but it’s not a good forum for opinion, and I didn’t have control of the archive. I take a lot of notes about the books I read, and I review the movies I see and the art I encounter. I refer to my notes a lot, and public note taking and the feedback I get from other people transforms this private meditation into a collaboration. I learn more about things that are important to me when I post my thoughts. Sometimes I learn what is important.

Thank you for reading this. I hope you will comment here or email your thoughts and insights. I’m not sure how this will develop, moving from a forum I moderated loosely over to this archive-and-broadcast service. I intend to post short comments here about the news and articles I read, as well as the very occasional essay I am able to write. In the past, topics have been politics, history, games, art, sports, movies, novels, and poetry.

I stumbled upon this ‘write it down and review it later’ process. A few years ago, I wrote down some thoughts on the American Revolutionary War. Then over a couple of years I read about twenty books on the subject. When I looked back at my initial thoughts, I was staring at a man with an opinion before he had learned anything. Usually when I look back on things, it’s through the prism of everything that has happened since. Taking notes preserves past me. Notes are a bridge from now to the future, one I can walk back over from the future whenever I want. Public notes invite other people to form the future side of that bridge. Maybe a bridge from your now to your future will be valuable because of something you read here. I hope so.