Well, HAPPY-HAPPY 2022! May the year treat you magically. May you giggle loads like a healthy six year old. May you be brave and true and have less to complain about despite COVID! 

No! No! No! I disagree that it’s too late to send Happy New Year wishes in February. 

There are already big changes in my life this year. An adventure has begun in pursuit of another adventure. I am dreaming again, albeit with less enthusiasm. With much of the mundane I am somewhere between disenchantment and a stupor. In other words, one of my biggest nightmares is upon me. The interesting thing is that it is interesting! 

But let’s talk about the blog. I have some not so new ideas for this place: Musings, will replace Opinions. Why? Well, have you not noticed that the word, opinion, is having a really difficult time? I get the feeling it’s being severely snubbed lately. So what if opinions are sometimes uncultured, egoistic, simple, absolute rubbish, hurtful to others? Don’t opinions more often than not expose a speaker? Aren’t they an acceptable form of confessing publicly that one is absolutely bonkers or perhaps brilliant or something of a psychopath or just simply from an entirely different sphere? Is it not a most civilized incivility that permits others an insight into the state of an individual? And if one is being shamed for “having an opinion,” isn’t it like saying we really have no curiosity about others? Or that we are limited in our own perspectives? And isn’t that somewhat dangerous for human beings capable of establishing heaven and hell with a word or the dismissal of a word?  Tell me, should we be able to speak our minds openly? In order words, is it useful to know where other minds are roaming? Don’t you want heads up on the ripe moment to buy a car and drive yourself off into the Middle of NoWhere, or better yet dig an early grave, give yourself a fantastic funeral and say farewell to sunshine, rain, and your one hundred and one cats? Of course, opinions test patience and tolerance. Two things so many of us need to charge-up on. And let’s not forget that words have consequences. The words we pour out alter our world and the entire world and they either reward or punish us.  

So if I had a backbone, which I don’t have, I’d champion opinion––I see no reason to censor it as it is a law of its own which enforces itself. If only to keep going on and on about how there are just too many ridiculous opinions out there––ridiculous opinions are only ridiculous if known. When unknown, terrifying! Of course, it is an entirely different thing when others are out there to deceive: knowing wrong and presenting it as right is not an opinion, it is fraud. 

So I will go on and backstab opinion, despite my conviction that it is sexy! I’ll abandon it in its days of need and go with a word that I feel won’t make you wince when I voice my opinions: Musings! 

What else, you’ve noticed Paragraphs? I dedicated more posts to it at the end of last year. I plan to keep it going on here. But what are Paragraphs? Words, lines, quotes––call it what you please––that I come across in my readings that I find fascinating either because I don’t understand them or can’t explain them or wish to study them further, or simply because I want to highlight them. Like these lines from Goethe’s Faustº: 

Faust:	Who, my dear, 
Can say, I believe in God? 
Ask any priest or learned scholar  
And what you get by way of answer Sounds like mockery of a fool. 
Margarete:	So you don’t believe in God.  
Faust:	Don’t misunderstand me, lovely girl. 
Who dares name him, 
Dares affirm him,  Dares say he believes? 
	Who, feeling doubt, 
Ventures to say right out,  
I don’t believe? 
The All-embracing,  
All-sustaining, 
Sustains and embraces 
Himself and you and me. 
Overhead the great sky arches, 
Firm lies the earth beneath our feet, 
And the friendly shining stars, don’t they 
Mount aloft eternally? 
Don’t my eyes, seeking your eyes, meet? 
And all that is, doesn’t it weigh On your mind and heart, 
In eternal secrecy working, 
Visibly, invisibly, about you?–– 
Fill heart with it to overflowing 
In an ecstasy of blissful feelings Which then call what you would: 
Happiness! Heart! Love! Call it God!––
I know no name for it, nor look 
For one. Feeling is all, 
Names noise and smoke 
Dimming the heavenly fire. (Faust 3141-68)

I might pair them with other paragraphs from other authors if I feel there is a connection or a  conversation or just for juxtaposition. Like for the above verse, what do you think of these words from Saint Augustine’s  Confessionsº º: 

Surely this beauty should be self-evident to all who are of sound mind. Then why does it not  speak to everyone in the same way? Animals both small and large see it, but they cannot put a question about it. In them reason does not sit in judgement upon the deliverances of the senses. But human beings can put a question so that ‘the invisible things of God are understood and seen through the things which are made’ (Rom. 1:20). Yet by love of created things they are subdued by them, and being thus made subject become incapable of exercising judgement. Moreover, created things do not answer those who question them if power to judge is lost. There is no alteration in the voice which is their beauty. If one person sees while another sees and questions, it is not that they appear one way to the first and another way to the second. It is rather that the created order speaks to all, but is understood by those who hear its outward voice and compare it with the truth within themselves. Truth says to me: ‘Your God is not earth or heaven or any physical body.’ The nature of that kind of being says this. They see it: nature is a physical mass, less in the part than in the whole. In that respect, my soul,  I tell you that you are already superior. For you animate the mass of your body and provide it with life, since no body is capable of doing that for another body. But your God is for you the life of your life. 

(Confessions X.vi.10)

 I don’t plan to write my own thoughts on these paragraphs. Despite my love of opinions, I feel there are too many sources telling us how we should think and interpret things. It is really more rewarding when one can just sit with a quality paragraph and explore it for oneself: allow it to connect with one’s concept of things and one’s experiences. This is what I want to provide with Paragraphs. An opportunity to meet a text and converse with it privately in your own way at your own pace.   

The YouTube thing, well, it’s killing me softly, but I am sticking to it. It is such a horrifying experience to listen to myself and notice all the grammatical errors I make in free speech. It is horrifying and I want to not upload any video. But this is for self-improvement and widening of my comfort zone so the self-torture, I feel, is necessary. May it end well. 

I’ll also try to contribute more under Encounters as well as Observations. This Presently, will serve as a general update/diary post, as it always has. 

Yes, please be sure to share your opinions with me this year. I promise I will try and remember to judge you as fairly as I possibly can––and if you’re feeling sensitive, just watch me err so ever incredibly often in my videos to be reassured that I have reached no height from which to look down upon another.  

Cheers to 2022!
Argh, I feel so tired already. . .

—

J. A. Odartey  

º    Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Shorter 4th ed., Gen. ed. Martin Puchner. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton, 2019. 438. Print. 

º º Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford UP, 2009. Print.