bouncing baby blog

This is the first post of my first blog.

Now, I know this is hardly a remarkable accomplishment. I'm not vain enough to think that you should really care. But, a friend has challenged me to get over my overwrought self-consciousness and just try, so that is what I'm doing. I'm hoping that the future of this little experiment will justify either of us caring about it.

I thought I might begin with the title I've chosen, "Zettel". It is German (der zettel / pl. die zettel) for what we commonly call "a slip of paper" or a note. It also means ticket, chit or docket. I think of it as the kind of fragmentary bit, receipt and scribble that comes out of my pockets just before bed, or the kind of note-taking I do, which is usually a set of cryptic prompts for my ever-weaker memory. There's also a verb form, which is actually derived from zettel (as in: "Ich zettelte" and "wir zetteln"), but it means "to warp". I'm unable to find the etymology for that one, but am comfortable enough thinking that some of what I might do here will be warping, or just plain warped.

Of course, there is Wittgenstein's Zettel, which he never really wrote as such -- the book is a compilation of his notes, aphorisms and fragments that he dropped into various boxes, which were later organized and published by GEM Anscombe, a student of Wittgenstein's and gifted philosopher in her own right.

Naming my new blog Zettel is hardly a stroke of great originality. Were such things trademark-able, I might not even meet legal standards of 'confusing similarity' (though I've not found a blog with the same name). There's nothing in the title the least bit indicative of a theme or direction for future writing, or even a claim to a particular point of view.

That's perfect. In naming this Zettel, I mean to indicate just what kind of writing I will not do or even attempt. There's no encyclical in the offing. It is unlikely that the fragments that find their way here will even be consistent among themselves.

I'm finding that is not how this mind works these days. It is no longer powerful enough (if it ever was) to subsume its life in a systematic understanding -- nor, for that matter, to even attach itself to a particular and certain point-of-view. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "certitude is not certainty". In my middling age, I've learned the virtue of tolerating not only ambiguity, but even a fair amount of contradiction.

I'm anxious to see what I do in fact write. I really haven't a clue (which is part of the reason for my reticence even beginning). That's not to say that I won't, from time to time, encounter a fact, an idea or a person that you might be interested in. When I do, and as time allows, I'll post it here. Because writing clearly about something makes thinking clearly about it possible, this may be entirely for my own benefit.

For now, a title and a first post will do. We'll collect more zettel as time goes by.

rjk