Especially to Rachel, Lorraine, and Veronica.
On the last few postings:
After four days of watching and listening to the news, I didn't do what
I would have done first in any other situation of grief: sent a simple
expression of love. Perhaps because I feel that we are all victims here?
Perhaps because I've been thinking about Arnold's 1853 Preface, in which he
excludes "Empedocles" on the grounds that the suffering finds no vent in
action? Perhaps because "Humankind cannot bear much reality"? Perhaps
because of my assumption (and it wasn't even conscious enough to be called
an "assumption"!) that I can say pretty well anything that I'm trying to
think about and work out and seek help with on the CASLL list. I admit to
an embarrassingly unexamined idea of our community here--the points made
about the dangers of a listserve were instructive ones for me. I did go to
the first Inkshed conference in 1984, and have known most of the "posters"
on this list for almost that long. It's not so much that I assume I'm
talking to like-minded people as that I assume that I'm talking to people
who will argue, call me on something, agree, forgive me for saying really
stupid things, tell me I'm being an asshole, push the range of my thinking
and feeling, and so forth.
So, it's a gross error about audience, of the kind that I address with
my students from day one. Whoops, and thanks.
Kenna
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