2001-12-16 - 9:22 p.m.

Stop the bombing... now.

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Oh, man! I can write about whatever I want! This is so true! This is what you must keep in mind. Don�t think of it as, oh, me, this blank page, as blank as the last, taunting me eternally. Think of it as, oh, this page, what an uncluttered landscape to make my little sandcastles in, to build them up, just for fun, and then see them smash to the ground, let the waves splash over them until the grains dribble back into the ocean. Nothing lasts, nothing will last, so why worry about the future? The future, if you take it out far enough, ends in nothing no matter what you do. Make the page look up at you and say, yes, what can I do for you? Make the world serve you, do not always simply serve the world! Be what you want to be, and it will be good!

I must be allowed to be myself. But which is the real you and which is what the world makes you? Why can it never stop coming back to the question of who am I, am I anything in particular, is anybody anything in particular? Or are we just the collected residue of our past experiences? So much residue, so much to wash off, so many repressions to uplift, so far to become a child again.

But I just let myself go off and I see that I have created a paragraph, completely unexpectedly, just sat in my chair to see what happens and out comes this paragraph, like a child digging in the sand. Oh, but I�m a child digging in the sand for an audience, if anyone will have me. Yes, I wonder if playing alone is ever any fun. If life alone, or art unobserved, have merit.

But they tell me I should be publishing my words, promoting myself, wielding my influence. I suppose they are right. Better to touch the world than merely my friends; better to raise mountains than sancastles. But even the tallest mountain will one day drift into the sea. No matter what I do, one day all this will be forgotten.

Perhaps I have a duty � perhaps I can come up with something to share with the world. But if I believe one thing and influence the world to believe it, and then I learn a bit more and change my mind, what will I have accomplished? How can I shout my message to the world if I do not believe the message myself? Better to convince myself, hone the message, and then take it to the world. Or is the the quality that matters? If so, there exist today more words than one person could ever read in a lifetime, all of which are likely better than those I produce. How could I presume to ask for a stranger�s attention?

I raise these concerns only to brush them away. Yes, I will attempt wider publication. Yes, I (sometimes) believe I have valuable things to say. It is a matter of matching words to venue and audience, of shaping them to suit a given crowd, finding a suitable home in the shrinking column-space in the world of periodicals (print or electronic), without undue compromise.

But publication must be undertaken not because it will benefit me, but because it will benefit the world. And in that case, it is not whether or not my words reach the world that matters, but rather whether those words have value. And if they lose value on the way to their audience, then perhaps the end does not justify the means.

I cannot help my low expectations. I cannot help but feel I have no responsibility to the world except to be happy and to do more good than harm. I cannot help but think that focusing on the product, in today�s world of millions of competing products, is infinitely more important that the promotion of the product. If it is truly good, then it will reach an audience with some nudging eventually. If not, then I will not make myself crazy trying to publish things when I could be spending that time being happy or trying to make something worth publishing.

But yes, I�ll see if anybody else wants to hear what I have to say, I guess.

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