why we do what we do
Oct. 29th, 2006 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magicicadathis is the second professor i have had emphasize the idea of READING, really digging into a text and finding everything in it. as a break and an augment to a paper which i am writing, i found this gem from William Carlos Williams on why he writes. this explanation is as good as any for why i am majoring in such a ridiculously impractical field:
"The inner security...is something which occurred once when I was about twenty, a sudden resignation to existence, a despair - if you wish to call it that, but a despair which made everything a unit and at the same time a part of myself. I suppose it might be called a sort of nameless religious experience. I resigned. I gave up. I decided that there was nothing else in life for me but to work...I won't follow causes. I can't. The reason is that it seems so much more important to me that I am. Where shall one go? What shall one do? Things have no names for me and places no significance. As a reward for this anonymity I feel as much a part of things as trees and stones. Heaven seems frankly impossible. I am damned as I succeed. I have no particular hope save to repair, to rescue, to complete..." -Williams Carlos Williams
the primary objection which i would have to this is the statement that "places [have] no significance." they do for me. i am hopelessly dependent on living in my house with my family. different seasons have more power on my writing ability than anything that i can do myself.
"The inner security...is something which occurred once when I was about twenty, a sudden resignation to existence, a despair - if you wish to call it that, but a despair which made everything a unit and at the same time a part of myself. I suppose it might be called a sort of nameless religious experience. I resigned. I gave up. I decided that there was nothing else in life for me but to work...I won't follow causes. I can't. The reason is that it seems so much more important to me that I am. Where shall one go? What shall one do? Things have no names for me and places no significance. As a reward for this anonymity I feel as much a part of things as trees and stones. Heaven seems frankly impossible. I am damned as I succeed. I have no particular hope save to repair, to rescue, to complete..." -Williams Carlos Williams
the primary objection which i would have to this is the statement that "places [have] no significance." they do for me. i am hopelessly dependent on living in my house with my family. different seasons have more power on my writing ability than anything that i can do myself.