Below are some fresh ideas that may help format this thing (blog and support group) prior to its existence. "You build it, and he/they will come." - that is the voice I hear, even if it was borrowed from the movie Field of Dreams.
If there is any worthwhile service that Jar has to offer, it probably should be rooted in the manner that I as a person tend to unfold naturally. I guess what I am saying is that all I have to offer is me. Me, whatever that is, is the "first idea" that Wallace Stevens talks about as being "the hermit in the poet's metaphors" in his poem Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.
Just as this blog and this support group is, as of this moment, a hermit, so is my essence the hermit within the idea of Jar. So, the work of properly formating Jar would require the work of identifying the way I naturally tend to unfold.
My best life-educated guess is that I engage with the world as a poet/philosopher. I struggle both to remain poetic (without analysis spoiling the poetry) and to remain rational (without poetry distorting the rationality). This apparent fact seems like a pathology (perhaps Schizotypal personality disorder?), but I choose to let it be my gift.
At the base of wherever and however the proposed supportive organization called Jar (or "Jars", as there is another organization on the web called JAR) unfolds, there is nothing more than this very simple gift of "poet/philosopher". If that has any interest or utility to your own unfolding, then such a support group may be helpful to you.
The other line of fresh thought involves some writing principles which Wallace Stevens shared in the poem mentioned above (Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction). Here are some lines that struck me as being worth going down yonder to ponder: ..."You must become an ignorant man again and see the sun again with an ignorant eye"... "The sun must bear no name, gold flourisher, but be in the difficulty of what it is to be."..."The first idea becomes the hermit in a poet's metaphors"..."The monastic man is an artist. The philosopher appoints man's place in music, say, today. But the priest desires. The philosopher desires. "
Can you "feel" these principles? Can you write the supreme fiction by using them? My other guess is that the writer is first and foremost a human being, and the human being is much like a solar flare constantly erupting from the face of the Universal "sun", and that our nature is more energy than matter. As a matter of fact, matter is an artifact of our energy-based, spiritual, nature. But that is only one poet/philosopher's guess. What is your guess? More importantly, what is the shape of your flare? Let your little light shine in Jar.
Thanks for strolling along this strange, but natural, path with me.
Darrell
