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Paul and I are glad you're here, to share thoughts about the story of evolution and the evolution of stories. This isn't a place for polished writing or final words. It's a place for thoughts in progress: questions, ideas you had before, in or after class, things you've heard or read or seen that you think others might find interesting. Think of it as a public conversation, a place to put things from your mind or brain that others might find useful and to find things from others (in our class and elsewhere) that you might find useful. And a place we can always go back to to see what we were thinking before and how our class conversations have affected that. We are looking forward to seeing where we go, and hoping you are too.

As always, you're free to write about whatever you're thinking about. This week we're reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. What does that poem add to the collective story we've been writing about the evolution of stories? Or to your own particular story on this topic?

I find myself particularly interested in thinking some more about the possibility of writing being "abstract," in the way we have watched the form of painting become more abstract over time. Do you think that writing, by its very nature, can NOT be non-representional? (Um...there is surely a simpler way to ask this question; how about:) must writing be representational?