“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
This particular post shall serve to mark the beginning of this blog. Though to be sure it is not itself the first post of the blog. We can stumble onto umpteen billion blogs on our way to some website that we meant to go to. Yet of all the blog joints in the world you had to walk into this one. Please know that I am glad you are here.
When I was much younger I chafed at the idea that people needed stories and frameworks to make sense of the world around them. Why not just accept facts and straight to the point assessments instead of making some song and dance stories to understand these phenomenon?
“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Well, I am not young(er) anymore. And whether I came to understand the value of stories in serving as a framework for human brain to categorize information for learning and future retrieval or whether I just got tired of fighting and gave in to the idea of the stories being necessary to convey a meaning, I can’t say.
I don’t remember the first story I read or loved. You’d think it is the sort of thing that parents would document in some journal somewhere (not a blog because blogs didn’t exist when I was born). Alas, my parents did not record it for posterity. The silver lining to this gray cloud: now that I have given into stories being a useful part of our lives, I can pretty much any story to be my first or otherwise influential in my life.
I have many favorite books and authors but on a proverbial desert island I could do just fine with a complete set of Douglas Adams’ books. If I were to only use his quotes for the next year or so I’d be able to easily find support for my moods and my blog. I once missed the chance to have tea with the man when he visited Penn State during my freshman year. It haunts me.
I am dedicating this blog to the writers, the teachers, the kindred spirits, and the words. There is a joy in knowing but there is also a joy in trying to know and failing, in trying to explain to another human what the thought in our head might be, only to find language limiting but the circumstance accommodating of both. In short there is a joy. Even if to the lesser trained eye that joy is “persistent in its absence”, this post coincides with unveiling of the site and opening us up to mutual ogling as we try to reach a higher level of unexplained but shared. I hope you look forward to it as do I. We will tell stories and try to make sense of the world around us through those stories and the morals they carry. Do stick around; I’ll endeavor to make it at least enjoyable if not outright useful for us. Somewhere along the way if we can quote master objectively, “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
There is always much to be said, some actually relevant. But for now I close with a raised glass and deferring to one more quote from master himself. “Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.“
— Douglas Adams