Gibran goes weblogging

Last autumn I wrote a post on Buddhist blogging. Today I turn to Gibran:

   “You talk when you cease to be at peace
with your thoughts;
   And when you can no longer dwell in the
solitude of your heart you live in your lips,
and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
   And in much of your talking, thinking
is half murdered.
   For thought is a bird of space, that in a
cage of words may indeed unfold its wings
but cannot fly.”

Today, a colleague told me that she was thinking about starting a weblog but was uncertain about what to write on it. She asked me, what do you write? – All sorts of things: politics, about my research, travel notes and some completely irrelevant “personal” stuff. Not very enlightening perhaps.

Today was also the day of the long awaited seminar on the viability of a European public sphere. The seminar went okay, had a strange experience of absence though, like if I already was on the other side of the Atlantic in my mind. Often during these seminars I feel so unintelligent or rather ignorant about so many things. There are so many books which I should have read, so much history I should know, so many theoretical concept which I only partially command.

So I stay silent.