“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
— Ernest Hemingway
If writing is akin to bleeding, then what if I fear to see my blood? How do I show what I fear to see myself. I talk a lot about facing up to my fears yet this one, looking at the events in my life both the painful and inspiring may be a difficult one. Oh listing the highlights of my life is easy enough, yet looking at them enough to make them real, reliving them in a way that will set me free, seems ever so much harder. Chatting with you the way I do is kind of a halfway step. Maybe that’s it. Maybe now that I’ve reached halfway, i can go halfway again and be even closer, then half of that and eventually I may have reached true written communication, faced my fears and exorcised a demon or two along the way..
Zeno’s Paradox
In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise’s starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.
–Nick Huggett
…or maybe not. I feel determined tho that I can face this. What blocks to communication do you face?
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-size
Illumination by G A Rosenberg
Honeycombed Tree Maze by G A Rosenberg
The thing about the metaphor about Achilles and the Tortoise is that it can never be replicated in real life. It is a paradox about infinity, and infinity is something that makes scientists very nervous.
We exist within infinity, and it seems as if we are forever going toward infinity and never able to reach it…
But here is the beauty of the entire thing that is often missed –
In real life, Achilles catches up to the Tortoise and surpasses it with one giant leap. What this reveals to us is that reality is actually SET UP to make the “jump” into infinity, and thereby, capture something in its entirity, very easily. What cannot be done in theory can be done in reality.
Within this context – it is possible to make a perfect work. Writing might be evolving, skills may be slowly being Mastered… but it is possible, for one who is completely open to the Universe… to be flawless.
Like the true story of the famous Greek (?) sculptor who created a work so astonishingly perfect it terrified him, so he struck down on his masterpiece with his chisel, putting a chip on its perfection, so that it could be more… human?
🙂
Thank you. That is what I was trying to say with my joke but said much clearer than I was being.
Hey its me Rebecca. This is awesome 😉
I love that quote by Hemingway.