Confusion over Walking Mornings

The posts so far on Walking Mornings indicate that most people like the essay but some people don't follow all of his thoughts. I suppose I'm a part of both groups of readers, because I too enjoyed the piece, but I didn't understand some of his main points. Like Lulu, I think his Joyce is a good writer, and his skills came out a lot more in this essay for me than in "Afternoon", but that could have been that I was so fascinated with the hypertext form of "Afternoon" that I didn't stop to appreciate how he wrote. Anyway, some of the points in Walking Mornings that made me sit back and think "Wow, that was good writing" also made me think "Wow, I don't understand what he's talking about, but I feel like I should."

Here are some examples of my confusion:

-"From what I can tell what I am in the midst of is not a disavowal but abnegation, a walking out but not walking away, looking for myself and after myself, simplifying in order to strip the landscape of at least what illusory presences I am responsible for" (88). Walking out but not walking away...hmm. I think I get it: He doesn't want to completely reject hypertexts or new media, but he wants to step away from them for the time being. But what's "looking for myself and after myself"? Part of me thinks I understood the issue he's working through with identity and "I", but part of me doesn't understand or see how this relates to new media.

-"We must persist in looking outward rather than turning back or away or turning our backs on" (92). I see how this connects to the Marshall McLuhan's quote how we "tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past" when we are faced with a new situation, but why does Joyce say we should resist turning our backs on (which McLuhan says we do) and turning our backs on (which isn't as natural); isn't that contradictory?

-Finally, and importantly: "Choosing not to choose" is the critical issue of the information age (84), and Joyce emphasizes this point on pages 95 and in his conclusion on page 98. I get the choice one has in deciding not to choose, but how why is this so critical to new media? Don't we always have a choice to not go along with new ideas/concepts? And why is "choosing not to exercise choice" impossible, as he says it is on page 98? I think this relates to the idea of "empty possibility", which is a really cool concept and phrase because it seems so contradictory, but (because of this contradiction) I don't completely understand it.

I think I walked away from Joyce's essay understanding less than he would have liked...