Consilience: Navigating the Margins In An Amphibious Vehicle: Professor John R Stilgoe

Professor John R Stilgoe

History of North American Seacoasts:

Discovery Period to the Present

December 12, 2006

Ruth Silver

I’ve written a blog for a term paper. Unconventional? Yes, but perfectly justifiable. This course is about the fringes – what happens between Davey Jones’s locker and terra firma. The space flanked by security and danger, where the mold starts to grow when the yeast and oxygen get cozy. I’ve been obsessive about exploring that ephemeral edge, struggling to grow-up and impress while maintaining a firm position on the periphery. I’m pretty sure that juxtaposition has been the catalyst responsible for the crazy shit that happens to me. This term paper and blog will be an ongoing, dynamic account of my adventures as a Lady Pirate striving for Consilience: Navigating the Margins in an Amphibious Vehicle.

I read about blogs, blogging, bloggers and the like. Fascinating stuff – you could easily get lost for days in the muck. But I’m at the GSD. I have no time to get lost so I took a step back and asked myself, why am I interested in blogs? And I realized I was actually interested in blogging; the act of creating an intimate document for the sole purpose of sharing it freely with anyone. Even the thought of divulging my secret thoughts and wishes to strangers is delicious, it tickles my inner voyeur. My ultimate fantasy is that one day; I will become a cult icon replete with fans, maybe even a fansite…. I digress. Rather than write about blogs I have written a blog. Using the proper jargon, I’ve become an “escribitionist” for my term paper.[1]

Blogs reek of marginality both because they are the progeny of, and because they could only exist drifting in, a landscape where the rules have yet to be made and are far from being enforced. Actually, you see it on TV. Deadwood is the story of the western expansion of the United States fueled by gold. A landscape in which there was no law until rapid growth necessitated the allying of enemies for common, self-interested goals. The internet is the contemporary gold rush; a new landscape without rules. But before we know it, the rules developed to protect the self-interests of the powerful will be here. Most tools that disseminate and doscument information are already insidious as hell. Did I just write the “Matrix”? Inevitably that’s what spending too much time on the web will do to you. I should get out for a walk, I hear they’re magic. What I’ve discovered in blogging is that it’s not as easy as you’d think to be truly, 100% self-expressive. You can be as candid as possible but ultimately in any blog there are still layers upon layers of filtration.

I hope you find my blog entertaining and maybe even enlightening. I recommend checking it out online, blogs read much better in their natural habitat. Oh and by the way, I don’t know anything about television but this might be a good fact to impress a class with; I suspect Dougie Howser was the first blogger.

[1] A blog is anything the author’s heart desires, but it is always a virtual, dynamic, self-publication. RJS