A problogue

We live in a time defined by its uncertainties. Will our children have a safe world to live in, will tomorrow be better, will we ever solve what we fight: poverty, hunger, hatred and the like? Conversely, as the days tick by, the truly unknown continually shrinks. There are no more blank spots on the map, no sea monsters to live in them, and progressively fewer of those peculiar unanswered questions that once spawned everything from fairy-tales to frighten children, to religions to calm wavering hearts in the dark.

In one place though, we can at least believe that there be serpents. From our perspective, human thought appears limitless. We can at whim call up images of never-existing landscapes, and at the same time seek concrete answers to those same problems that make us frown and stir as we attempt sleep. It is because of this faculty that we file away our mysteries one at a time. It is because of this faculty that we are still hungry for yet another problem immediately after laying the last to rest.

In several senses, nowhere is thought better broadcast than in its written form. Spoken words can rise only as high as their speaker feels on a given day; pictures, paintings and other visual expressions while powerful, leave their viewers far short of the definitive authorial stance that text provides, and few mediums have the longevity or reproducibility that writing can easily attain. The task of writing though is not a perfect one.

Inevitably, readers find themselves thinking something slightly, or greatly, different from what authors originally intended. Sometimes we write even the most intriguing ideas in a form that displays none of their humor, wit, intrigue, and aptness that they originally contained. The process can even fall victim to something so simple as omission; an idea squirreled away in the head of a writer often makes sense, for he has access to those critical details that its interpretation requires, but on relation these are left out, and like them so is the reader.

Fortunately, like in most human undertakings practice can make us better written communicators. We can with patience overturn our procedural weaknesses and produce better and better prose. For this reason, and because I think that the writers invited to this blog have interesting things to say, there is a blog in the first place. We look forward to writing random stuff, and hope you will enjoy reading us.

-Tim W