Greetings!

Welcome to my blog!  I’m rather late to the world of blogging, but I’m a reticent writer.  My mouth can spew forth opinions and ideas pretty readily, but writing is a little scarier, a little less ethereal than spoken words.  What I write may remain much longer and be a little less forgivable than my impetuous words.  But, here it is: my blog. 

Why “Textures”?  I like the association in this word to both something very tactile as a fabric or anything that can be felt, as well as the root of the word that refers to something written.  Also, the etymology of texture reveals that this word used to refer to a process of weaving, not just fibers, but anything—the “composing of schemes, conspiracies, writings” states the OED.  I like that this word that is typically used as a noun can refer to a process, something that is dynamic.  There are many words that are both nouns and verbs—like love.  And I have a great preference for treating these words as verbs.  A verb is dynamic, not stagnant.  It’s difficult to describe love as a noun.  What is it?  A feeling?  A commitment? (gag)  But I can much more easily describe an action that represents love.  And in describing love this way it becomes specific.  I also like specifics over generalities.  Generalities lump things together without noticing distinctions, they make assumptions about whatever has been lumped.  But specific details allow for nuance and understanding that cannot be attained by a generalization.  To be specific requires more from us; we have to think more deeply, express more clearly.  Words have the ability to mean many things and in their multiplicity we express more than we imagine.

John Caputo is an author, professor, philosopher whose writing has had an impact on my life.  He talks about the difference between names and events in much the same way that I refer to nouns and verbs.  He states:

Names contain events and give them a kind of temporary shelter by housing them within a relatively stable nominal unity.  Events, on the other hand, are uncontainable, and they make names restless with promise and the future, with memory and the past, with the result that names contain what they cannot contain.  Names belong to natural languages and are historically constituted or constructed, whereas events are a little unnatural, eerie, ghostly things that haunt names and see to it that they never rest in peace.  Names can accumulate historical power and worldly prestige and have very powerful institutions erected in or under their name, getting themselves carved in stone, whereas the voice of events is ever soft and low and is liable to be dismissed, distorted, or ignored.  .  . The event is the open-ended promise contained within a name, but a promise that the name can neither contain nor deliver. (The Weakness of God, 2)

Verbs are the words that express actions/events; there is something a little more ethereal about them and less rigid.  Verbs give wiggle room to ideas.  Of course, I'm using nouns and every other part of speech all the time, but this preference tells you something about me.  This blog, then, is not about setting ideas in stone, so to speak, but rather expressing and exchanging ideas and on the more practical side, it gives me something creative to do in my spare time!