Transition for a new year

Twenty years and more ago, I began a log, called "Sculptor's Notes," written out by hand (imagine that!), in pen, on lined paper, in a 3-ring looseleaf binder. The log began with pages of quotes meticulously copied out from books, the first one from Henry Moore, as quoted in Henry Read's The Art of Sculpture: "This is what the sculptor must do. He must strive continually to think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness. He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head--he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if he were holding it completely enclosed within the hollow of his hand. He mentally visualizes a complex form from all around itself; he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like; he identifies himself with its center of gravity, its mass, its weight; he realizes its volume, as the space that the shape displaces in the air."

Following these pages of quotations, I began my "Miscellaneous Reflections." The first entry, which opens with the remark that D.H. Lawrence (the subject of my Master's Thesis at Virginia Tech in 1985) "rails against anthropomorphism." This entry is not dated. My first dated entry is from November 11th, 1990: "I am sketching from Dega (Dega by Himself); a wonderful experience! Visual quotation, I would call it. Not slavish imitation, however, but attentive analysis of Dega's interpretation of the world. His roughest sketches become treasures of revelation."

Over time, I filled that looseleaf binder with my reflections, commentary, and, much less often than earlier, quotations. I began a second loose-leaf binder; filled that one, too, with hand-written entries, regularly dated, now. The subject of these entries expanded, even as my handwriting grew larger, and I must say, "messier," to include personal matters, confessional at times, and, almost for historical purposes, mention of "topical" events, "the business of the day." I filled this second binder, as well, and began a third, by this time not only dating the entries, but noting the time of writing, and "elapsed time," even, if the entries required a couple of pages to complete.

My "Occasional Journal," as I came to refer to it, became a kind of refuge for me. The sitting down to it, in the early morning, with a hot cup of coffee beside me, and then beginning a new entry, enabled me to establish a feeling of order, of constructing, or carving out, from the flow of daily experience, a meaningful narrative, or at least a denotation of important episodes in that narrative. Was I simply being self-indulgent? This question troubled me from time to time. I wondered whether I was attempting to build up some kind of absurd archive, which, after my death, would be opened, and preserved, as the lasting tribute to my life on earth. Fine for Wittegenstein, maybe, or Winston Churchill, but for my small life? Oh, fool! I thought. Who cares! Ozymandias, in lower-case!

However, I have decided that, small or not, I am myself a"lens"--the only lens--available to me for observing, registering, comprehending, and taking joy in  "life," not in the abstract, and through the actuality of my unique experience of living, as a human being, on Planet Earth, at this time in history. Writing about my experiences is therefore, as I see it, a "bearing witness," from the perspective of that which is "me," to the life through which I move. If I don't write down what I have known, and experienced, no one else will do it for me; that small skein of woven color which is my life will be missing from the great, grand, terrible, and exquisite tapestry of the human experience.

Ah, well. Whatever. So now, on the first day of the new year, 2012, I begin, with trepidation and anticipation, the transition of Sculptor's Notes to this online blog, A Long Arc.

Like a folded boat, this wordy blog
I release upon the cybersea,
And wait to see who will write back to me.