recursing

it's helpful to go back and read earlier entries, things you've said before. especially the particularly earnest but maybe unwise things (unwise as in: "should i have said that out loud and in public?"). so going back helps because sometimes we let slip . . . things sneak out almost beyond our recognition, and this can be good (not always, but surely). and so going back. good. because often, (hyper)attention to audience concerns (a thing we teach and practice) can warp an idea beyond your earnest desire (the desire forming the compulsion to write) as well as your awareness of what you need to say (re: the reality of your sense of need, the reality of your hopes). and here now: not terrifically nuanced, but helpful as informal reflection. and it seems to me that this is something we don't often discuss with our students (and/or among ourselves). but maybe should. because instead, we say, "you should not say that in public. that is/was rhetorically unwise. what were you thinking?!" but then we disallow those moments, emergence, aporia . . . (which maybe only register as aporia upon reflection or "recursing," a new word i like a whole lot right now). and so much of it is about careering. not all, but. a lot.

maybe recursing is useful because of what it shows us about how our desires sometimes conflict with our aspirations, aspirations being ideas that are shaped by our sense of "how things should or might be" rather than how they are, how they align or conflict with how we think we can most effectively, joyfully operate in the world.

someone has probably written about this in a more sophisticated way. but i was just a minute ago recursing and found it especially useful.

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