In Defense of Patriarchy

That title's misleading. I don't actually have anything good to say about patriarchy; I just have the word "patriarchy" on my mind at the moment. It's one of those words that has a pleasing sound to me and a combination of letters that are aesthetically tasteful. None of this has anything to do with the actual meaning of the word. I'm equally as fond of matriarchy. In fact, words with "arch" in them are just awesome. Archetype is another good one!

If you're wondering, some of the other words I appreciate aesthetically are elite, philosophical, cadence, millennium, and most especially abyssal. Abyssal is just awesome, in fact. It's got that sweet, sinister hard consonant "s" sound, along with a classy execution of the "y" in place of a vowel. Delicious. Oh, that's another word I like. Delicious. And sometimes deciduous. Both are great.

Why am I talking about words? Well, that's a good question! That I just asked myself. Because really, even though I know this is written for the public space, I'm writing to myself, in a monologue. Unless it's a dialogue. With myself?

I have a lot on my mind at the moment and sadly, very little of it is conducive towards reflection on "the craft." At the moment, for no particular reason, I'm thinking about zombies, whether or not tonight should be pizza night, if "witchcraft" sounds like it could be a type of cheese, and whether or not the teleological argument in favor of God's existence is compelling or retarded. I started out hating it, but now I'm not so certain. The teleological argument, I mean. I mean, it makes a lot more sense than other arguments I've been learning about, but, I don't know; there was just something about the modal ontological argument that was just so evil and sexy, after I figured out what it actually meant.

I will be totally honest. This collection of random, nonsensical thought matter is something that I'd usually write in a word document, or a private blog post. You aren't normally supposed to see this part of the mental process; it'd be like seeing your dad putting on the fake beard to go play Santa Claus. You're seeing the strings that hold up the whole show, the seams in the great facade. This is the intractable and moist truth that it's not always art and angelic choirs when we sit down to do this writing thing.

Sometimes, you're thinking about Kraft Brand Witch Cheese. Or whatever. And that's not even a thing, not really, it's just one of the random little thoughts that you have in between the usual stuff, the "where am I going to go to lunch" stuff and the "hmm, should I go to the bathroom now or can I hold it?" Which is, incidentally, why I think it would totally suck to be a mind reader. I mean, aside from the fact that you'd know exactly what every single person thought of you (that can't be good for the ego!), you'd be subject to all the little "Director's Cuts" of our mental processes. Which would be horrible, because, I don't know about you, but my brain is very much a maelstrom of oddities and half-remembered song lyrics.

Oh! Maelstrom. One of my very favorite words. I can't believe I didn't think of that one sooner. Seriously, say it out loud, right now. "Mail-strum."

It's sort of like a whirlpool, if you're wondering what it actually means. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a cool short story about it once, too.

The Commonplace Enemy

As an individual who considers himself to be an armchair philosopher (a term that I have may have just made up), I consider the base and lowly commonplace to rank among the very darkest blights that plague our modern existence. Worse, by far, than popped collars and people who talk in the theater.

The commonplace is insidious because it so effectively denies one the opportunity to engage the mind on anything approaching an intellectual scale. A person believes something, because everybody around him seems to believe it, and because he believes it, he decides that it must be true, because if it wasn't true, he wouldn't believe it. Right?

Which is why we still think things like it's aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly (even though they do) and that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Well, some of us believe that, at any rate.

I remember when I was a little bit younger and the current President at the time, one George W. Bush, had just had a speech about how stem cell research was done. Over. Canned. Totally not allowed. Because it was all about protecting the babies, see? Who doesn't love babies?

This led to an argument with a particular aunt (who believes that bees can't fly and the earth is a thousand years old and that stem cells are harvested cold from the bones of the stillborn) about clones.

Particular Aunt: "I'm glad that Our Leader banned stem cell research. Now we don't have to worry about the clones taking over."

Me: "The clones?"

PA: "Yes, child, the clones! Don't you know that's why they kill all the babies, so that they can learn how to make clones!"

Me: "Uh, I'm pretty sure that's not what stem cell research is about, or even how they get the stem cells. And even if they were trying to clone people, what's the big deal? They'd basically just be identical twins. A clone wouldn't have the same personality as you, since they wouldn't have had all the experiences that made you who you are."

PA: "Clones don't have souls! The Bible says so, Matthew!"

Me: "Really? Which book?"

PA: "..."

It's tempting, I know... it's so very tempting to call such a person ignorant and exult in their stupidity. Except that, elitism aside, these thoughts that pervade the social consciousness are very much a disease, allowing a person to have opinions without actually understanding, or even knowing, what the question was supposed to be!

The truth is that a person who argues the commonplace isn't truly stupid, because a commonplace isn't the same thing as a genuine lack of knowledge. I think most people are cognizant of situations in which they don't actually know what's going on (although pride may force them to act otherwise). But a commonplace is a little bit of knowledge, and there's nothing more dangerous than a person with a bit of knowledge, because it generally gives them all the feelings of being right with little, or maybe even none, of the actual rationality and thought that would go into truly being right.

Put more succinctly: stupid people aren't dangerous. We know they're stupid, so we keep them at a safe distance from the sharp and pointy objects, so they're not a danger to themselves or others.

We don't make the same distinction for the person with a tiny bit of knowledge. Nor are any of us immune from falling under its lazy spell. "All the trappings of an expert who knows what he's talking about... none of the work!"

Like I said. Dangerous.

Why Intent Is Everything

I really enjoy philosophy, as you may know.

There is a particular thought experiment involving utilitarianism that I was introduced to a few years ago that's been kicking around in my brain this afternoon, since my discussion group decided (for whatever reason) to spend the entire class talking about it, even though we're not even on utilitarianism. But whatever. Thought experiments are fun, and, as I said, I've heard this case before and had a lot of time to formulate my arguments.

There are two scenarios, each one a slight variation of the other (although those variations actually introduce a pretty significant implication, as you'll see in a moment).

Imagine that you're standing on a bridge over a railroad track. There is a very large man standing next to you. As you look down, you notice that, a ways down the track from your position, there are five people tied to the track. And there's a train coming; in a few short moments, it will pass under your bridge and then proceed to plow right into the helpless victims. This, of course, will kill them all. For the purposes of this argument, however, you know that the large man standing next to you is massive enough that, should you push him from the bridge onto the track, it would be enough to slow the train and save the five people. The large man, however, will die as a result. The question, then, is whether or not you are morally obligated to push the man onto the track.

In the second scenario, you are standing at an intersection of the railroad track, where it splits off in two directions. On one track, there are five people tied to it, while the other track has only a single helpless victim tied to the rails. Once again, there is a train hurtling towards you. The track is currently set to plow through the five people, but, once again, you can intervene if you so chose, as there's a switch-box beside you. If you flip the switch, it will change the course of the train so that it only kills the one person. Again, what is the morally correct course of action?

My own personal thoughts vary between these cases. In the first instance, I would not push the large man onto the track, even though to do so would mean saving five people. The reason for this is that, yes, while I would be saving people, I would also be deliberately choosing to kill the large man, as his death would be the direct and intended result of my actions. I would very much be violating his right to life as a self-aware individual. Even though people would die through my inaction, it would not be murder in that I did not choose directly to kill them. Rather, their deaths would be an admittedly horrible, but unintended consequence.

In the second case, I would choose to throw the switch and divert the train onto the track with the one victim. The reason for this is because my expressed intention is to save people, which is what I am doing when I flip the switch. As a result of my actions, the one person will die, but it is not my expressed desire to kill him, as it would have been had I pushed the large man off the bridge.

To sum it up, in the first case: I decide to murder the large man. As a result, more people are saved.

In the second case, I decide to save as many people as I can. As a result, one person still dies.

Do you agree with my thinking about why intention is, at least in these cases, more important that the actual actions that occurred? I'm interested to hear any thoughts on this little experiment.

Changing Minds

I don't pretend to know the secrets of the universe. or, really, the secrets of anything. But I have learned one thing, over the years, of how to persuade. How to change another person's mind, for better or for worse. How to win them over to my way of thinking.

No, there's no particular trick or social engineering game at work. It doesn't always work, either. What's weird is that, prior to all this recent talk on rhetoric and its true nature, I would have called what I do "diplomacy" rather than argument. Even if diplomacy implies that I'm trying to talk somebody into disarming their nuclear missiles, rather than trying to get them to give up meat. Not that I would do the latter. I'm not out to evangelize.

Where was I? Oh, yes, my secret trick.

The problem with argument and with debate, I've found, is... well, hold on, let me qualify what I mean. I don't think that there is a problem with either concept; what's problematic, what's broken is the way we regard both things. It's our perception that's damaged, that needs to be fixed.

When we try to argue our point against another person's, and I see this all of the time in political discussions of any kind, the problem seems to stem for the fact that people like labels. They like to be Republican. Or Democrat. Or Socialist. Or Nihilist. Whatever.

Labels are corrosively convenient. Slap a label and you know what to say in any argument! You don't need to take the time to figure out exactly why you hate the gays, or why you think babies don't qualify as people (yeah, it happens on all sides). You just form an identity and you run with it, and apply the label to all beliefs.

Which means that when somebody criticizes one of your ideas, because you started at the top with the big "I am a ____" declaration, you feel like you're the one being attacked. This wouldn't happen if you'd taken the time to reason out each point and considered it to a satisfactory conclusion, and that's just the truth, plain and simple. In one scenario, a person who argues a point with you basically is saying: "I disagree with your opinion on this issue." In the other, the same person is saying, "I disagree with you and everything that you believe in, and you're stupid."

I'm a vegetarian. You can imagine the implications about what that means about who I am as a person and how I might react to certain issues. And the reality is that some of those assumptions are probably wrong, because the initial reaction is to equate a vegetarian to a set of pre-determined beliefs without considering all possible outcomes.

When I was first introduced to vegetarianism, I wasn't initially enthusiastic. After all, animals are delicious. And not every point that somebody made about why vegetarianism is a good idea resonated with me. For example, I'm not particularly vocal about animal rights. While I do think that factory farming is an abomination, and I think that we do have some obligation to reduce suffering in the world, there are more pressing problems that I consider "more important," especially since they more directly relate to my own species. So, the activist who told me that eating meat is morally equivalent to racism didn't really endear me to the idea.

What turned me onto the idea of abstaining from meat was the philosophical considerations, how food defined our species for thousands of years. It literally shaped the entire course of our development throughout history. It is a critical aspect of who we are, and yet, most of us don't think about what we eat, except in the "oh, this probably has too many calories, I shouldn't" way. And that was an interesting point to me, the fact that we engage in a form of self-deception when it comes to eating meat, and it was from that point that I eventually came to adopt my current way of thinking.

My point is that I came to the label of vegetarian from an idea. And even though I will call myself a vegetarian, I don't think it defines me as a person, even if other people are quick to make that assumption. And this means that when somebody attacks vegetarianism, I don't feel like I'm being personally attacked, even in some cases when they're deliberately trying to attack me. My entire identity and self-worth doesn't hinge on this one idea that I feel has applications to my life.

Maybe if more people started thinking that way, we could move away from the age of screaming matches and hurt feelings. Except for the fact that, as we've all come to agree, such theatrics "put butts in the seats," to use a sports cliche. So, maybe we need to change more than just our thinking, but I still hold to the belief that changing how we relate to our ideas wouldn't be a bad place to start.

More Thoughts on Politics

Yesterday, I complained about how irritated I was with the general state of political discussion, how the insipid stupidity of the pundit commentary has soured the entire arena. After viewing the President's speech, however, I've begun to change my views somewhat both on the nature of political discourse, and what I feel the problem is with the general nature of rhetoric in this area.

It was refreshing to see that rhetoric has not devolved into a screaming match, that oration can still be considered alive in today's political arena. This, I feel, is a positive thing, because there's something enjoyable about well-woven rhetoric. Now, certainly one could argue that such is the point of an inspirational speech, which means that if you feel good or inspired after listening to it, then the speaker (the President, in this case) has "got you." Or something.

I would argue that there is a profound difference between this rhetoric and the raging exhibited by the common pundit. For one thing, I feel that the rhetoric, regardless of your political affiliation, can be appreciated by anyone who considers him or herself to be a student of language and communication, which, as English students, we all should be. You don't have to agree with the President to see the skill he puts into his oration, because there is skill, there, and whether or not you subscribe to an "us vs. them" mentality, it should be possible to admire the opponent on the opposite side. I have a little bit of experience in debate, and it was always a nice moment when you could say to an opponent, "you know, I disagree with you, but you conveyed your point well enough."

I think the reason that this higher level of discussion does not filter down to the masses is because ranting and raging have a much lower common denominator. Good rhetoric is difficult. It takes still to craft and it requires intelligence on behalf of the audience to really "get it." Compare that to screaming matches on any cable news show, or column, or blog, and tell me which rhetoric serves an actual purpose.

"You know what’s really frightening? You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it’s true. You’ve got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote."

Or:

"And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future."

There's nothing beneficial in the ranting. It's just verbal garbage, meant to whip its audience into a frenzy because that's what gets attention. Because it's passive to absorb; you read it, you agree with it, or you disagree with it, and either way, no critical thinking has gone into forming your opinion. Because such language does not require you to think for yourself, it only asks that you pay attention, because if you go that far, the speaker already has achieved the goal. It's parasitic.

Such things are an abuse of what it means to wield language; this is recklessness and idiocy on a scale so great that I consider it criminal. Language was an art, once. It still can be.

A Very Brief Return to Politics

I stopped blogging about politics a while ago, although I'm not sure quite as to the reason. Perhaps it was because I stopped being a teenager and thus, the allure of getting into verbal fistfights proved to be less intellectually invigorating than it used to be. I'll admit it, I used to really look forward to getting in a scrap with some troglodyte about a political issue that really had nothing to do with me. And wouldn't you know, I used to think I could change people's minds with it, too. It just seemed logical to me, at that age, that there was some perfect argument hanging out there in the void of space that I could one day wield even a fragment of its potent rhetoric against my enemies and smite their tiny brains in righteous fury.

Actually, that still sounds pretty cool and if I ever do find out what that argument is, I do not think I will hesitate to make with the smiting.

I think the change really started after I heard some witty, applicable anecdote that compared arguing politics to trying to change a light-bulb with a shotgun. Or something.

The point is, I lost my taste for the sport, if, indeed, there ever was a moment that even tangentially resembled sport. That is not to say that I do not enjoy politics, however! To be honest, I consider the political game to be the most interesting one in town, the "game of thrones" if you will (a title of one of my favorite books by George R.R. Martin, incidentally).

So maybe it's not the sport that I lost a taste for, but how sullied and dirty the act has become. I'm not saying the old days were better, because I do very much believe in progress and subscribe to the belief that we're getting better as a species overall in many respects. And pundits have always been loud and stupid and abrasive, which is fine, because that's really what their jobs are: to say the loudest, stupidest, most abrasive thing they can imagine, because they get paid by being noticed, and nothing attracts attention faster than a loud idiot.

And I still vote, and every so often, I tune in to get a sense of the political scene. But every time, every single time I start to think, you know, maybe I should go back to having strong opinions and speaking my mind, I read something from one of the prominent political commentators:

Slavery built the south. I'm not saying we should bring it back, I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

And it's like, Jesus H. Christ, that's who people are listening to? There are people in this country who agree with that? Maybe I was wrong about there being a perfect argument to destroy my opponents through the power of its sheer eloquence. Maybe the answer is to be so stupid that there is literally no possible retort, no insult that could begin to convey all the ways in which the man who said such a thing as the above quote is a moron, and the people who like him are morons.

It's the classic Clown Impasse of comedy: how do you make fun of a clown? Tease him because he has a red nose and you can fit a lot of clowns in a tiny car?

Writing When You Don't Feel It

We've all been there; we have to write something, either because something is due soon, or because we want very much to be writers, and we all know that the way to be a writer is to write. In a perfect world, the muse would be there to layer us with inspiration at every turn, and every word would be as spun gold, poetic in its majesty. The transition from thought to prose would be musical in its clean, beautiful harmony, and all the writer would really need to do is marvel at how elegantly his or her thoughts are wrought.

It's never like that.

Instead, for every one time where it feels like music and joy to sit down at write, there's always a moment where you feel the pressure of a deadline, internal or external, and you realize that you just don't feel like saying anything. You don't have anything that is your own to say. But you can't just say nothing, because, well, that's just not what writers do. That's what other people do. People who don't write. People who only say "yeah, I got this idea for a novel, wish I had the time to write it out" for years and years and years.

Then there's the fear that maybe you were just a one-hit wonder. That one good thing you wrote, that you really, really liked, maybe that was all you had in you. The composition that made you think maybe you could try your hand at this writing thing beyond just "doing it for school." But when it comes time to produce the "next big thing," you feel yourself despair when you realize that your new work isn't as good as your last one. It's not as easy as the last one. You start to wonder if that was the only masterpiece you'll ever manage, that all you had to say was drawn out to quickly, too early, and your career is over before it began.

Fortunately, in my experience, at least, any of those anxieties have yet to be proven true. Because even if it never feels any easier, even if it seems to get harder and harder, the reality will manifest itself when you look back on what you've done, years later, and you have the dubious pleasure of being able to scoff at what you once thought was a masterpiece. You get better at your craft, little by little, and the work improves along with you, so slowly you cannot see it in anything but the longest perspectives.

It reminds me of an anecdote that I keep close to my heart. It was something I pulled out of a manifesto on the joy and terror artists face when they attempt to paint, although, shamefully, the name of the artist who wrote it escapes my memory.

A young musician approaches the master and says in despair, "I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can create with my fingers." With a gentle smile, the master replies, "What makes you think that feeling ever changes?"

Night Sounds

One of the things that's taken me a long time to get used to is how different the world sounds at night here in my apartment complex compared to when I lived with my parents, on a typical suburban neighborhood.

There's always some strange voice or conversation being heard somewhere, it seems. Often times, I find myself wondering about my fellow apartment dwellers, because it's a never-ending source of... well, not quite amusement, but certainly interest that I've lived in the same unit for over a year now, and yet I know nothing about the vast majority of the people around me.

Perhaps it's a result of the more transient nature of this community. There was an entire family in the unit below mine, with kids and everything, that just up and left the other day. It was a little surprising, to say that least; I was always used to the kids leaving all their annoying little toys out on the sidewalk. I can't say that I miss it, in fact, but it did strike me as odd, to know that those people are gone.

For some reason, whenever I hear the voices of my neighbors outside my window at night, it creates within me a profound, venomous feeling of disdain for them. You might argue that, well, of course I'd feel annoyed, after all, it's just indecent of folks to make that level of noise after a certain hour. And I imagine that, were I trying to sleep, I would say that's true. But I'm not here trying to sleep, am I? Not yet, at least.

It's very strange, the feeling that the sound creates within me. I don't generally consider myself to be a particularly angry individual, far more of the "live and let live" attitude. I generally find I'm patient and tolerant that vast majority of the time, until night falls, and then, patience becomes a very strange form of hatred. It's as though the night has stripped away whatever layer of human connection I might have felt for my fellow apartment dwellers, so that when I hear their antics, my reptile-instinct brain is repulsed by why it considers to be the braying of inferior mules.

It actually wouldn't surprise me, to hear that the source of my irritation is wholly rooted in some vestigial aspect of the brain untouched by our evolution as a species. Because there's no other explanation for why it bothers me so much. It's not like it's keeping me up, because I'm not trying to sleep. It's not because I routinely hate the business of others. It's just the sound of voices, the way it carries, that sets me teeth on edges, makes me feel tense and irritated and yes, sometimes furious. That's always the worst part, to be honest, to have this unfocused anger provoked by a nebulous tormentor (an unseen voice) with no possibility of either explaining or resolving it.

Sometimes, I wonder if this just indicates some latent form of psychosis buried within my brain, and I suppose there's really nothing that could rule out that possibility except for my fond wishes to the contrary.

Momentum in Writing

One of my co-workers invited me to a screening at "The Loft" this evening for the movie Serenity. Given that it's one of my favorite movies, I said yes. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to the Loft (I haven't, prior to this showing) but it's a little bit different from your normal theater experience. For one thing, there's a whole lot of "other stuff" that goes into the show, aside from just the movie, like a costume contest and a raffle. Initially I didn't mind, because, hey, whatever, it's an event, might be interesting.

Let me just say that if I didn't absolutely love Serenity and I mean, really, really love Serenity, I would have gotten up and walked out of the theater, which, incidentally, is why I'm writing about the experience on my writer's blog.
As I said, before the movie began, there was a costume contest and a raffle for some prizes. Proceeds went to charity, so okay, fine, whatever. The problem, however, is that while the event got off to a great start, the raffle went on far too long. It was unorganized, incoherent, and I swear I'm not exaggerating, they must have given away forty prizes.

The reason I'm talking about it is because the entire experience showed me how important it is for you to always have a grasp of momentum and how it affects your audience. As I said, the show started off well and going into the raffle, there was a lot of energy in the crowd. Had they kept it down to a short five or ten minutes, I don't think there would have been a problem. But it wasn't short and as we watched the same three people trudge up to the stage again and again to claim another poster, I began to reflect on just how important it is to know your audience's momentum. People were calling out to "start the damn movie" by the end of it, something I've never before witnessed.

As writers, we often run the risk of getting lost in doing something that we feel is important that, in reality, is detrimental to the momentum of the composition. One of the things that I constantly talk about both in my reflections and in my peer critiques is cadence, which I feel is one of, perhaps even the, most important aspects of good writing. However, cadence often refers more to the feel of your prose, the voice inherent to it; there's an almost musical connotation when we discuss cadence.

Momentum, on the other hand, is literally how interested your reader is at any given time. As you can imagine, it's critical to understand and develop a good pace to maintain momentum throughout your work. You don't want to have a great start get bogged down by meaningless details that are only important to you; you'll lose your reader before he or she makes it to the end.

Momentum is a tricky concept, because different people are going to react differently to your pace. Some will enjoy a quick leap at the beginning, while others prefer a build-up, a sort of gentle acceleration. Regardless of reader preference, however, one thing that's true in all cases is that any time you ignore momentum, any time you write in complete disregard to how the momentum is going, you run the risk of losing your reader. The peril of this situation was illustrated quite clearly as I saw people getting up and leaving the theater before the movie had even started, and I think that most of the ones who stayed, liked me, only did so because we knew the ending (the movie, in this case) was going to be enjoyable. That's problematic for one's writing, because chances are, the reader doesn't have the same guarantee that the ending will be worth slogging through, and if there's no promise of a pay-off, there's very little change you'll manage to get anybody to read your composition through to its conclusion.

In other words, momentum in writing is like gravity. It's the law and you have to obey it.

Criticism is Hard

I'm never quite sure how to give people a critique of their writing, especially when it's the first time. Usually by the second or so peer review, one has a sense of the overall "tone" of the class's critiquing culture, be it savage or saintly. I always find it best to operate within the limits of the general atmosphere, because you never want to stick out as "that one guy who gives totally harsh comments and seems to hate everything by everybody."

I find it hard to write the first critique because I'm never quite sure what the balance is supposed to be. How much praise do you write in comparison to how many suggestions you make for improvement? I can't judge by my own scale, because I'm somewhat strange when it comes to this balance; don't get me wrong, I do love to hear people tell me that they enjoyed something and it's always nice to know when something is working, but at the same time, the really interesting part to me is finding out why the broken parts were broken. That's what I want to know. It's why I'm here in the first place. But I know that not everybody shares my love for a good evisceration, so I always feel like I have to be careful, at least in the beginning.

The other problem I often have is how exactly do I phrase my suggestions? The assignment description for the recent critique, to write as though I were a literary agent, was actually one of the most helpful guidelines I've ever been given in this regard. It always seems like, in previous semesters, I'm left trying to figure out "who" I'm supposed to be in this critique. Do I pretend I'm the teacher? Best friend? Arrogant undergraduate?

I'm not quite sure why I have so many neurotic tendencies when it comes to writing comments about other people's work. After all, it's not like I find myself with nothing to say, or that I'm even shy about saying it. I suppose it comes from a deeper truth within myself, the knowledge and solidarity I feel when I consider the comments I've received throughout my life that have helped or hurt me as a writer. Because there's always that one person who manages to slice you, somewhere along the way in a way that didn't help your work, didn't help you in any way, really, and only manages to show up when your self-doubt is telling you to throw in the towel.

I don't ever want to be that guy, to anybody. I'll be the critic, sure. The icy-scythed editor, okay. The free spirit creative soul touchy-feely type, definitely. I don't ever want to be the guy who, however well-intended the comment might have been, makes that one lasting cut.

Words have a power all their own, regardless of the intention of the person who wielded them. It's an important lesson, I think.

Inspiration

In retrospect, I should have taken a major that sounds boring.

No, I don't mean that I wish my major was boring; I'm actually quite glad that the opposite is true. The problem with being a Creative Writing major is that whenever the "classic small talk" gets deployed in a conversation, the moment somebody asks you what your major is, he or she then would like to know what you write, which is, in itself, always frustrating as you try to sound impressive and writerly as you describe your work as "speculative fiction that explores the human condition in a non-fiction space." Which, of course, doesn't make any sense.

But I don't even mind when people ask me what I like to write. It's always the follow-up question to that question that really gets me, albeit assuming I've been able to keep the person's interest for that long. "So, where do you get your ideas from?" At this point, you can either lie and make up some elaborate falsification about how you and your muse are best buddies, or you can cop to the fact that you have absolutely no idea, and even if you did, nobody really wants to know what this aspect of the creative process looks like.

Sometimes, you're standing in the shower and you think of something that you'd like to write about. This usually means that by the time you've finished showering and gotten dry enough to employ keyboard or pencil/paper effectively, you probably can't remember what the idea was, even if you sang it aloud every step of the way from your shower to your desk. I guess one solution to this problem would be to bolt right for the keyboard mid-shower, or perhaps take the keyboard with you into the shower. Let me know how that works for you.

Sometimes, you get an idea while listening to music, which sounds very poetic and artistic on the surface. The problem with music ideas is that, when you actually sit down to try and write it out, the only way to write out the idea in exactly the right way you need to listen to the same piece of music on repeat over, and over, and over, and by the time you're done, you'll probably have the same regard for that song as you would for a piece of gum you've been chewing for six hours.

Sometimes, I get ideas while arguing with people that I think are stupid. I'm never quite sure if I should cite them when I write the idea out. After all, I don't want to mar the credibility of my work by appealing to the authority of a stupid person, do I?

The worst part? The other day, I finally figured out exactly what I could say when a person asks me where I get my ideas from. It came to me while I was in the shower, listening to my favorite song that just happens to have stupid lyrics. As you can imagine, by the time I dried myself off and made it to my computer, I had another song stuck in my head, and couldn't remember what I wanted to write about.

Which, incidentally, is why I decided to write what you're reading right now.

The Death of Productivity

It started as a suspicion. It has since become full blown paranoia, a delusional ranting that, centuries hence, will either prove me brilliant or insane, depending on the whims of history. My theory, which I will share with you, is this: somewhere along the line, recently, in fact, the progress of technology experienced a sudden, jarring shift away from its original intention, which was to facilitate human achievement. Everything we've ever invented, at least in theory, was meant to better our lives in some way. Now, of course, you can argue that there are many inventions that were either worthless, or just scams, to which I would reply that the people inventing them were either dumb, or knew what they were doing and deciding that conning people was achievement enough.

So why do I think that's changed?

The main culprit: Television on DVD, and its even more insidious counsin, Television via Netflix Instant Queue.

If you're not familiar with why this is a problem, let me elaborate. Take something as addicting as television. We've all watched it at some point. Most of us fall into one of three camps: addicts, fair-weathers, or deniers. The addicts are the folks that love television, have all their favorite shows, and even more impressively, can tell you what time slot they're on, week to week, which is amazing to me when it seems network time slots are shuffled more often than a deck of cards.

The fair-weathers are the middle of the road group, the normal people, which I suspect most of us would identify with. We have some shows we like, and we'll even watch them from time to time, but the idea of television as a hobby is strange to us. We can't imagine having a lifestyle that would be conducive to making it in front of the television at a predetermined time each week. Typically, for us, there's a lot of times that there's "nothing on." As you can determine from my language, I identify with this group.

The deniers, of course, are the people who threw the television out of the second story window. They may or may not have electricity in their homes. We won't be talking about them today. If you're one of them, and you're reading this, enjoy the feeling of superiority as you contemplate what to do with all of your free time.

At any rate, for us fair-weathers, there were always a number of fail-safes installed into the television experience to prevent us from making the dangerous slide into addict territory. Typically, the annoying omnipresence of commercials was a big one, since you can essentially figure out of every hour watched, how many minutes were absolutely wasted, which is not to say that watching a show is productive in the first place, but you get my point. The other fail-safe was the implacable nature of the cable network. Your show comes on when the network says it comes on, you get to watch the show the network wants you to watch, and you get to watch as much of that show as the network says you can. If you want to catch another episode? Too bad! Wait till tomorrow, or hope there's a marathon on. Maybe back-to-back episodes, if you're lucky. For many of us, given the choice between doing anything else and watching television meant the choice was largely predetermined.

This brings me back to the twin evils of television on DVD and Netflix Instant Queue.

Take your favorite show. Your very favorite. Doesn't even matter if it's been canceled in its first season. Now imagine that you can watch any episode, whenever you want, as many times as you want, for as long or as short as you want. South Park at three A.M.? Done! Law & Order at noon? No problem.

But there's still a fail-safe there, to keep you from completely destroying yourself watching television for days on end. You'd have to actually go out and buy the dvd collections, right? And typically, they're expensive, often in the neighborhood from 30 to as much as 80 dollars a pop. So you're pretty much limited only to shows you've already watched, so maybe you can enjoy showing them to friends, or just having them to catch an episode here or there that you might have missed.

Enter the Netflix Instane Queue.

This spigot of life-destroying toxicity strips away every fail-safe we've ever created. There are no commercials. You watch what you want when you want, for as long as you want, and now, you don't even have to leave home! And it costs the same whether you use it once or one hundred times a month! You cannot even begin to comprehend its addictive evil, until long after the tendrils have coiled around your eyes, pulled you in close, and gently soothed away your doubts with the tender promise of "just one more episode."

At one time in our history, we knew that "just one more" only held the truly addicted. Because most of us would rather get up and do something than watch infomercials, even if that meant going to sleep.

That safety net is gone.

If you can take away anything from this, it would be to enjoy your free time while it's still yours. Because one day, you may wake up, dazed and confused, illuminated only by the warm, red glow of the Netflix home page, a remote in your hand, and one thousand text messages from your friends, family, teachers, co-workers and the state department, asking you if you have in fact, died and are in need of proper burial.

And the worst part of all? You won't even know whether or not you should say no.

How to Reduce the Risk of Serious Injury

There's a warning label on my keyboard. Contrary to what you might expect, it does not provide any helpful hints that one might require while interacting with a computer. "Warning: Prolonged use may kill your social life. "Be advised: all keys are the Any Key." "Note: u is a letter, not a word." I think any of these warnings, posted in a visible location such as the lower right corner of my keyboard, would do wonders for the condition of the human race.

Instead, I get a helpful alert that I should read my Safety and Comfort Guide to reduce my risk of serious injury.

Now, on one level, I can understand this warning. Carpal tunnel is a very serious problem that I'm sure I'll suffer someday. When that dark future comes, unless technology has given me super-cool robot wrists capable of 500 wpm, I will lament my foolish youth, when I typed away and blithely ignored the danger around me.

On another level, I cannot possibly imagine a serious injury that could befall me while using this keyboard. Perhaps I simply lack the necessary vision to consider all the ways in which my normal, every day objects might turn into horrible death-traps, Final Destination style.

At any rate, this useful warning has made me think of other fascinating advice I've seen over the years on various pieces of equipment. Some of this information has been more useful to me, but most of it just frightens me with its mere implication, because whenever you see a posted warning, you have to imagine some poor bastard who injured himself in the first place which prompted the response from concerned manufacturers.

Did you know you're not to attempt to stop a chainsaw with your hands? I had no idea.

I also saw a warning for some superglue that told me "do not apply directly to face." Unfortunately, I read this warning a few minutes too late; my palm and my forehead had already become one with each other.

I can only imagine the warnings that most come with fun things like wood chippers and power lawn-mowers. "Do not attempt to to reenact that one scene in Fargo." "Not for use on gravel." I do not deny the usefulness of these observations, and yet, I cannot help but wonder how many people actually need them. The implication that there might be hordes of individuals roaming the streets, grabbing live chainsaws and playing with wood chippers, is, well, quite alarming. At the very least, I'm glad that I live in a state where we don't have much in the way of yard equipment. You have to be really determined around these parts to have some sort of tragic lawnmower accident. I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that... well, you have to work at it. Which shows... dedication, I guess.

Cats are Weird

I sat down with every intention of writing a serious and emotional post this evening. Something that might illuminate the life a little, or perhaps penetrate one of the deeper mysteries of the universe. You know, a modest and reasonable goal for a five-hundred word space.

And then, well, my cat decided to jump into my lap.

This isn't a random or rare thing. Any pet owner, and more precisely, any cat owner, will tell you that your beloved pet will oscillate, much as a corner fan might, between loving you dearly and not really caring about whether you're alive or dead. Well, maybe it's not that way with dogs; they always seem happy to see you. But with cats, well... sometimes, your cat will pounce on you, lick your arm with her sandpaper tongue, walk across your keyboard as you try to type, anything at all to get your attention. Other times, your attempt to sit next to her on your bed (it's not like the cat paid for it, after all) and you'll be greeted with bored indifference, at best.

So it always amuses me whenever my cat decides that now is "pay attention to me" time, because it never fails that "petting time" and "I have to do work now" time are, in fact, the exact same time. It could be that our schedules simply coincide in this unusual manner, that we're simply encountering an overlap, one that calls for a careful and intense consideration of our individual priorities.

It could be that.

Or, and I find this more likely, I think that any time I'm looking at something that is not my cat for any length of time (read, more than five seconds) my cat begins to feel jealous and has to insert herself into the equation. The fact that I'm aware of her mind games and yet continue to fall for them only shows how foolish and illusory my perception is that my humanity marks me as the apex species around here.

As to why I put up with these gross encroachments on my working time, well, that's a question I ask myself whenever my attempt to say "not now, kitty," is met with a stern swat of the paws. I mean, really, aside from being adorable, what has my cat ever done for me?

Well, there was that one time I was watching her as she perched on the windowsill. Maybe your cat is different, I don't know, but mine absolutely loves to sit on the window and watch birds, like it's a version of television for cats, or something. Well, one time, she's sitting there, all alert and attentive, and a bird flew by the window; a split-second later, there's the loud thunk of my precious little pet colliding with the solid glass. Yes, indeed, she tried to pounce on the bird.

What really amuses me is the fact that she was probably fast enough that had there been no window there, she would have caught it. Which, of course, leads to the more morbidly amusing image of my cat riding a bird all the way down to the earth and pavement outside my window.

Because, you see, I live on the second floor, not the first.

On Bears

I really like to hike. I love the mountains, I love being in the outdoors, in the woods or out in the desert. I love the feeling of being outside, I love the weight of a bunch of gear strapped to my back and a trail beneath my feet.

However, despite how much I love the solitude and how much I wish to maintain that aura of the rugged, independent explorer ready to handle any obstacle nature throws in my path, I do have a dark, shameful secretly.

I am absolutely terrified of bears.

Now, perhaps I should be clear; I'm terrified of the idea of bears. The truth is, of course, that anybody would be distressed to come face to face with an angry grizzly. That's not a question of phobia or courage. Unless you're insane, you have to respect that in a close-quarters situation, bears win. However, the same is true of many things. I would be afraid of lava if I was standing above a volcano about to erupt, but I don't consider myself to have some sort of lava-phobia, just a healthy respect for the potentially destructive nature inherently implied by magma.

Bears, though. I am forever caught between two conflicting thoughts about this concern, which always seems to strike me when I'm out on some remote mountain path, typically when I'm cooking, or sleeping, or getting up in the middle of the night to answer a call of nature. The thought usually starts with something like, "man, it would really suck to meet a bear right now," which usually provokes that sort of mild hysteria humor as it implies that there exists a time in a person's life when bear meeting would be an acceptable or even preferable occurrence?

Usually, I try to console myself by thinking of various statistics, like how out of the past hundred years, more people get killed by tuna fish than by bears, or something. There's all kinds of useful statistics out there to make you feel better. I mean, if you really think about it in the right statistical perspective, I represent a far greater danger to myself than a bear does, given that I'm far more likely to die via suicide than by bear mauling.

There's a problem with playing the statistical reassurance game, and that's the fact that a "low probability" of being eaten by a bear is not the same thing as "there is zero chance you will be eaten by a bear." The mind can imagine being the really unlikely guy that has his number come up that day, because, after all, it has to happen to somebody at some point.

The other thing that fuels my (largely) irrational concern about bears is the fact the perception of helpless should a bear decide to, in the lexicon of today's youth, "get all up in your grill." I mean, you can try to scare a bear off, or play dead, or try to outrun your hiking partner, since you won't outrun the bear. But every tip seems to carry with it a caveat that "well, it might just make the bear eat you more," so that really, the best solution anyway has is to just shrug. Hell, I even read a warning tip that, should you use bear mace, be sure to only spray it directly at the bear, as, rather than act like a bear repellent, it actually smells like the ursine equivalent of nachos.

Well, that's reassuring.

So, while I don't let this fear of bears keep me from doing what I enjoy, there's always a small, nervous little part inside my reptile brain that's convinced I'm going to die whenever I go outside. I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that I really don't want to get eaten. Perhaps it's morbid to consider all your options for a demise, but to me, being food for something just seems like a really ignominious ending. I'd much rather prefer something less in the "gutwrenching, visceral horror" category and more in the... hmm. I'll have to get back to you on what the other category should be.

Material for another blog post, perhaps.

Belief

We all believe in something.

There is no greater fundamental truth than that, I think. It is more than an instinct, more than something that is "wired" into our brains. Believing in things is essential to our state of being; it's innate to our very essence as sentient beings. We believe, not because we want to or or because we need to, but because we are incapable of doing anything else.

It's always been one of my private amusements that, despite how scientific and how rational we are in today's modern world, we have blinded ourselves into thinking that we have evolved beyond the need to believe. We see studies about how the need for religion is some kind of brain chemical, or something, and we smile smugly, thinking that we have come so far beyond the primitive ways of our ancestors as they looked up into the night sky and saw gods among the stars.

We do not realize that science requires belief. Do you disagree with me? Consider the scientific method, which is at the core of every science, regardless of discipline. You make a hypothesis. You test it. You draw a conclusion from the empirical data you collect. And repeat the process, adding to our knowledge of the world as you go. Do you want to know why something works the way it does, or how it works? Test it scientifically. You don't need to have faith when you have facts.

But one thing that always amuses and interests me is that one must have faith that the scientific method itself works. You must believe that it works, because scientifically, there's no way to test whether or not it does, because if the method does not work, the entire endeavor is flawed. I could go into a long, hypothetical example to prove what I mean by that, but we've all seen the Matrix, so we can imagine how the world as we perceive it might actually be a lie, or illusion, or simulation, and thus any conclusions we would draw about the world using observation of that world would be erroneous.

I don't mean to say that science is wrong. I do, in fact, think it is most probable and logical that science works, that the scientific method works. But I do recognize that I am choosing to believe in it, that it is not simply a "given truth." Just as we scoff at the primitive beliefs of mankind thousands of years ago, so, too, will our descendants look at us in thousands of years and say something like: "Can you imagine that people in the twenty-first century used to believe that human minds were controlled by egos and self-esteems? What nonsense!" Because they will have newer beliefs that are all their own, be they scientific or otherwise.

We all have to believe in something. Even the self-defeating nihilists among us have something that they believe in. We always will believe in something, no matter how advanced we become or how far into barbarism we retreat, because it's simply impossible for us to do anything else.

Thoughts on the Nature of the Internet

I wonder what the ratio of "content-to-crap" there is on the Internet. Think about all of the material that's ever been posted online, in the public realm of cyberspace. How much of it is actually useful to us? How much of it is just pointless blather?

We put so much of ourselves online these days, in Twitter, in Facebook/Myspace, and so on. This is certainly not a new thing; I can remember quite clearly the vanity websites of the Nineties, although such things have not permeated the mainstream culture the way today's modes have. Why do we put so much of ourselves online, when many of us have very little to say? (For the record, I consider myself guilty of this sin much of the time, though hopefully not all the time).

I'm going to go with pure narcissism as the fuel for about fifty percent of the Internet's content, at the very least. Seriously, stop and think about it for a moment. Think about everything that you've placed on the Internet, all of the content that you've created. Not content that you've consumed, not things you've perused or enjoyed, but things that you've actually inserted into the greater series of tubes that is the Intertron. How much of it are pictures of you or the people around you? How much of your written material is dialogue about your life, shared with your friends? Perhaps I should ask this question a different; of everything that you've ever put up online, public or private, for whatever reason, how much of it is not about you?

This is not to imply that such a perspective is wrong. The reality is that this thing we call the Internet is a tool for facilitating communication between people. It's not a repository for artistic endeavor, any more than my phone is meant to be. But it never fails to amuse me (and I'm just as guilty of this as any individual, as I said) that so much of our social cyber-construction is built to carve little niches of ourselves, to put as much or as little of ourselves out there in the digital world.

If you think about it, we're all vying for a little quasi-immortality (a phrase, incidentally, that amuses as much as "most unique"). Long after you've moved on, there are relics of your history floating around on the Internet, buried just below the surface, waiting to be unearthed with a little digging. These bits of data, these pieces left in the wake of your interest long after you've moved on will remain forever, as long as there exists a server to hold them. And it's always interesting to see how your little relics and artifacts can reappear, sometimes when you don't even expect it (and sometimes that's not a good thing).

Childhood Memory Revisted

I think I was seven when my dad brought home the Super Nintendo video game system.

It was an important moment for me, especially at that young age, because I had no idea how important playing games would become to me (well, as important as any hobby can be.) I hadn't really played games before that, except for bits and pieces here and there. I was already well on my way to being a complete nerd though, blissfully unaware of the social stigmas associated with introspection and a preference for books over ball games.

I gave sports the customary try. I wasn't too bad at them, actually. Certainly not gifted; there was never talk of a sports scholarship in my future (as has become the case with my younger brother). I just didn't really see the appeal. There were books to read. Things to imagine. Thoughts to be, well, thought.

This, of course, means that an important avenue of the whole "father-son" bonding experience was never really explored. My dad and I didn't go out and throw a baseball around; if we ever did, I certainly don't remember it. It simply wasn't something I wanted to do, and for better or worse, he left me to my own devices. This suited both of us very well.

However, I mentioned the Nintendo game system earlier. It would, inevitably, become a fixture for a younger me, a trait that probably won't reserve itself in this modern age of ever-fancier electronic toys. But this story isn't about video games, but one of those moments that pass through your notice as fleetingly as a dream, a moment that wouldn't become important to me until many years later, as I thought back to my childhood and wondered if I missed it.

When Dad brought home the Nintendo, he had two games along with him. One was for the kids, my brother and me, a Super Mario game. Bright, colorful, cartoony; from the moment we turned it on, it was an instant favorite. But there was also another game that Dad had with him, and though he'll never admit it, I know that he picked it up for himself. Perhaps this sounds selfish; I personally consider it endearing. It was a game based on the movie Jurassic Park. Your character was trapped on an island filled with hungry dinosaurs and you had to explore the world, completing a series of tasks before you could hope to escape with nothing but your wits, a rocket launcher, and a cool, electric-death-ray guy thingy to protect you from the ravenous hordes. It was, and still is, an extremely challenging game. I've never beaten it.

So, anyway, we had these two games, and whenever Dad could get a moment when we weren't playing around with the console, he'd sneak into the den and fire up his game. At first, I would get annoyed in the typical, childhood fashion. I wanted to play, it was my turn (even though I'd just finished playing) and Dad was being selfish. But after a while, I stopped complaining and started watching him play. I remember the dinosaurs being extremely scary, especially the Tyrannosaurus Rex, who would tear through the jungle, causing the screen to shake as it charged towards my dad's on-screen character, chasing him down until it inevitably devoured him and he'd had to start the game over.

For some reason, though, even though the Tyrannosaurus always won, it made it less scary when it was my dad there playing.

In addition to watching my dad play, I also found myself watching how he played. Since the game was a huge island, filled with jungles and caves and various buildings, there were a lot of hidden areas to explore. So my dad always played with a notebook and pen next to him, taking detailed notes about various important items and things needed to complete the game.

Time passed, as it tends to do, and eventually, Dad lost interest in the Jurassic Park game and it would eventually become a forgotten relic, tucked into a corner of the entertainment center alongside the VHS tapes and other such things.

Several years had passed. Newer, shinier video game systems had come out, and I was old enough that watching my dad play a game was no longer cool. In fact, this was an age when parents themselves were not cool. Teenage years, of course.

One day, while I was bored, I remember digging out the old, forgotten Super Nintendo and the copy of Jurassic Park. I remembered watching Dad struggle to get through it. In my teenage arrogance, I decided that my game playing skills were more than honed to beat this thing and I set about to the task of doing what my father could not, which I believe is a recurring trope in literature, if I'm not mistaken.

I gave up after about an hour, frustrated. Goddamn game was hard. As I was sitting there, looking at the game in disgust, I saw the old yellow notebook with my dad's carefully detailed notes, locations, maps... the guide he had written for himself to get through the game. I started to read, picking up tips, pointers, and even notes about which weapons were most effective against which dinosaurs.

I played the game again, my father's notes on the ground beside me, and though I would never actually get around to beating the game, for the next few days, I felt this sense of connection, a bond, of sorts. I remember feeling moments of gratitude as I found helpful hints when I found myself stuck, and I remember feeling myself swell with pride as I overcame a few puzzles that had stymied my father.

It sounds silly now, to make so much out of a silly video game. But if the games we play are, sometimes, a reflection of the world around us, how often do we wish that we could find, especially as we begin to take our own first steps in adulthood, how often do we long for a helpful notebook from our parents to guide us along the way?

I never realized how much the memory of watching my dad play that game, and using his notes years later to try and beat the same game myself, until I almost lost him. I was sitting in the hospital waiting room, trying to figure out whatever it is people do in waiting rooms, aside from wait.

We may never have had games of catch in the backyard the way my dad and my brother did. In fact, I was often in my own world for long stretches of my childhood, and I find myself wondering now if it makes my dad sad, that he didn't get a chance to do those things with me.

But the truth is, we did have those moments, him and I, but we had them in a way that was meaningful to me. And to this day, although it's not the most impressive story I can tell about my life growing up, it remains one of my fondest memories of time I spent with my father, even if all we were doing back then was playing a video game.

Computer Thoughts

There is something pleasurably narcissistic about reflecting things that are irrelevant to the "people who are not me" demographic; there is a sort of guilty pleasure that I associate with the act, a feeling that I am writing in a way that I am often scornful of. I don't, as a general rule, try to write for any length of time about my "things." Frankly, I don't think this revelation will bother or impress anybody; certainly, my things won't mind if I ignore them, because they're things.

I wanted to write today not so much about the shiny new computer on my desk (and it is, indeed, shiny. I touched it once and now it's covered in fingerprints.) Instead, what's on my mind is the feeling I have now that I'm writing on this new piece of fancy equipment. It feels like a milestone for some reason, and I find myself thinking back to the my very earliest days as a writer and the fledgling efforts of an uncertain hand.

The sound of rapid keystrokes has always been something that I relish and as a younger person, I specifically taught myself how to type at an age and time where Hunt-And-Peck was the order of the day. I didn't have any reason beyond liking the sound of clicking keys. It sounded mature, it sounded impressive and it sounded like I was creating something that was not an artifact of a childhood world, but important, adult-world work.

We don't put a lot of thought into our writing tools outside of the basics. It's either notebook and pen, or keyboard, with most of us now firmly in the camp of the latter. We only pay attention to the tools in our minds. Our processes. Our mental games, our psychic gymnastics, all the things that we do to get ourselves from the mental state that gets us through the day into one that is capable of true expression, a state capable of composition.

And largely, the actual tools don't matter. We've all heard about certain famous writers composing their masterpieces on the backs of envelops and napkins. I've written on a variety of computers, ones that I owned, ones I've borrowed, public computers in libraries and coffee shops, and much of the time, I never think twice about it.

But as I was setting up the new machine on my desk, as I was checking the cords and arranging the speakers, I could not help but think about the first time I ever sat down in front of my parents' computer with the intention to "write a book." I remember the keyboard that they had; it was one of those divided, ergonomic thingies with the curved wrist supports and the division in the middle, so that your left and right hands stay on their own damn keys. My parents, evidently, did not approve of cross-hand key interactions. Perhaps it was deemed unseemly, or something.

On a completely unrelated note, this post is an excellent example of why I always approach public reflection with the slightest hint of trepidation. Generally, I try to keep this meandering, wandering stream of consciousness thinking to myself, or at the very least, I keep it concealed behind a screen name so that when somebody looks at my deathless prose and denounces me as having no business wielding a keyboard, I can say to myself, well, they're not really denouncing me and for some reason, that makes me feel better, to know that the integrity of my good name has been preserved.

I recognize, of course, that I could make this space private if I so chose, but I think that given the context of what we're trying to do here, it would go against the spirit of the class. After all, we learn from each other as much as we learn from what we read and what we're told. I do not pretend to contain any great insight on the nature of craft or indeed, writing in general, but maybe there's something in here that might be useful or interesting to people who are not in the demographic of me.

At the very least, it doesn't cost me anything to share and I'm just shameless enough to embrace that with a smile.

Tales of Customer Service

I always like the pamphlets that you're given by the "higher-ups" every so often, especially when you work in a job that involves dealing with the public. Do you know the ones that I'm talking about? They're typically titled something like "The Customer and You," or "Learning to love your Costumer," or something that, in principle, would be a good idea.

In principle, because the reality is that, while the vast majority of people are basically good, decent individuals, there's always that one guy.

I swear to God, I've worked in eight different locations for three different, entirely unrelated jobs, and in every location, there's always the one guy. It's never actually the same guy, and I've never seen more than one per location. It's uncanny; that one guy is so widespread you'd think they'd encounter each other more often. Maybe they take turns and respect each other's turf? I don't know.

What I do know is that there is always the one customer who comes in acting like he owns the place. He doesn't own the place, of course, because if he did, he'd be my boss. If it's in a retail location, he will rarely actually make a purchase. He'll just... hang around. Often by your service counter or information desk. And he'll talk. And talk. And talk.

Now, there are some chatty customers who, whether by personal charisma or by virtue of having something interesting to say, are a pleasure to interact with. You have a good rapport with these "regulars" and you're genuinely happy to see them come in, either because they always make a purchase or they're just generally nice to be around.

But that one guy has no redeeming social qualities. He's loud, he's obnoxious, and more damning of all, he is very frequently rude. He'll insult you to your face. He'll try to tease you to your co-workers while you're standing there. And of course, he'll do this with other co-workers to you, so it's not like you're the only one who has the displeasure of dealing with him.

It's a true mystery why he doesn't seem to grasp one essential fact: if you are obnoxious, if you are insulting, if you are rude, then people around you probably hate you. These people will listen to you only because we're being paid to do so, and the pleasure of a paycheck is (usually) more satisfying than punching you in the teeth (or so I remind myself.)

The only explanation, the only reason I can fathom that explains the behavior of that one guy is that he is afflicted by some sort of mild dementia or hallucination or something; in his mind, everything that he says is clever and witty and hysterical. Or maybe he does know just how irritating he is, but is so lonely that he'd rather hang around people he knows disdain his presence, because being disliked is preferable to being ignored.

Either thought is actually pretty depressing, now that I think about it.

The Writing Space

In Thursday's class (at least, I think it was Thursday, although possibly it wasn't given that time and I are rarely on speaking terms) when we discussed the individual writing process, one of the things that was brought up was the actual writing space where the act of creative thought and composition takes place. For most of us, this is at a desk, either in our bedroom or a study, possibly out in the living room if we have a laptop. The point is; we're typically in a comfortable space. Music is something that comes up quite often; a closed door is usually a must.

All of these things are gestures meant to keep the outside world temporarily at bay while we commune with the world within. The idea of perfect solitude, of uninterrupted silence is as mythical as the Hemingway image of the lone, stoic, solitary writer. Most of us simply don't have the opportunity.

I would like to tell you about the space that I'm doing this writing in.

First of all, my computer is broken; has been for about a week and a half. This means that everything I've done that requires a computer (which is to say, almost everything!) has to be done in whatever time and access I can piece together. This has meant using library computers and borrowing from friends. Since (most) sane people will not allow even a trusted friend to simply walk out the door with their cherished laptop or desktop, it means I have been doing a lot of writing, and subsequently, a great deal of thinking in spaces that are not my room, my apartment, my favorite coffee shop, etc.

At the moment, I'm using my brother's laptop. He doesn't own a desk at the moment, which means it's been placed on this puny little night stand. Come to think of it, he doesn't have a chair either, so I'm half-sitting, half-kneeling on the edge of the bed. There's already a pain in my lower back from the awkward position. The strange clutter of the space is disconcerting, which I find interesting... my own workspace is extremely cluttered, but it's my clutter, every notebook or scrap of paper or empty drink is mine, and these relics contribute to the sense of identity I attribute to my space.

So, while I am extremely grateful that my brother is generous enough in sharing his computer with me, I cannot help but reflect on how this differences in atmosphere and comfort level make for a completely different introspective experience. Typically, when I reflect in these fashions, especially on a blog, I do so as an act of catharsis; I rarely go into it with any sort of plan. I simply open up the mental floodgates and let whatever's on my mind pour out, typically resorting to prompts only when I find that I really don't have anything on my mind. I typically work quickly, but it's a comfortable speed, an enthusiastic pace.

Now though, I find that I simply want to be done with what I am required to do. I already find myself thinking, "hmm, have I reached my requirement for the day?" which is not a line of thinking I often indulge in. Perhaps it is purely in my imagination, but were I to take the time to consider my tone and cadence of today's work to the previous day, I would imagine there would be a subtle shift, perhaps indicating my impatience, my desire to simply be done so that I can hit publish and stand up, stretch the kinks out of my back and retreat back to an apartment where the detritus around me is my own damn detritus.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, while we all talk and think about our writing space and how it relates to our writing process, I don't think we too often get an opportunity to see how space actually affects us in so concrete a fashion. Or maybe I've just been spoiled by years of having my own computer and my ability to tailor my space as I see fit. After all, I do seem to recall writing papers in my teenage years on the family desktop that was squeezed into the loud, hot, frequently aromatic chaos that was my family's kitchen.