On Purposive Reading

Ian Miller — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 02:23:29 +0000

Getting a foothold in the universe of blogging, I have discovered that the antithesis of “composing” one’s life, is probably the “composting” of meaning — which occurs through random accumulation, however initially purposive the intellectual pursuit.

Several concrete examples winked at me as bell weathers of this concept. The first was Slate’s summary of news stories during a given day. It reminded me of Wall Street pundits’ post-hoc analysis of why a given market was worth 7% more or less today than the day before: the answer…… “of course we know.” Right.

Then on to Wordsmith, where I visited 5 words related to fish. Fish.

And the meaning IS?

That’s just it: I don’t believe there is meaning in the accumulation. Unless it comes with the reader who’s doing it. In which case, it is meaning a priori, extended onto the heap, rather than the composting itself. Otherwise, an element reaches out from the pile and says, “think about this”: but this, of course, is the same thing: the matching of a priori meaning with a found dimension in the external world.

Fishing for words or meaning? I’ll be on the beach tomorrow.

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On Purposive Reading