Category: Creative Nonfiction

Literature

The Problem of Nothingness (bonus pts if you guess the source-it should go without saying.)

An abstraction is made when something not capable of existing in isolation is thought of as in an isolated state.

Consciousness is an abstraction.

The concrete can be only the synthetic totality of which consciousness, like the phenomenon, constitutes only moments. Effecting a phenomenological reduction will not succeed in restoring the concrete (of consciousness) by the summation or organization of the elements which we abstracted from it. The relation of the regions of being is an original emergence and is a part of the very structure of the beings.

“Is there any conduct which can reveal to me the relation not man with the world?”

We have established a Parallelism between the types of conduct man adopts in the face of Being and Non-Being. We’re tempted to consider being and non-being as two complementary components of the real: like dark and light.

Two contemporary notions which would somehow be united in the production of existents and which it would be useless to consider in isolation. Pure being and pure non-being would be two abstractions which could be reunited only on the basis of concrete realities.

There is nothing in heaven or on earth which does not contain in itself Being and Nothingness.

What the Technical Meaning of ‘Emergence’ means to me (3 Things)

EMERGENCE

system: combination of components can form a more complex organization, that can be termed a system. E.g. of biological systems: cells > organism > ecosystem. To understand how biological systems work, it is not enough to have a complete “parts” list.

emergent properties of systems: with each upward step in the hierarchy of biological order, novel proerties emerge that are not present in the level just below. They are due to the arrangement and interaction of parts as complexity increases. E.g. thoughts, memories are emergent properties of a complex network of nerve cells.

reductionism

reducing complex systems to simpler components that are manageable to study (horseapples: I say) The dillema of understanding biological breaks down thusly:

1. We cannot fully explain a higher level of order by breaking it down into its parts

2. Something as complex as organisms and /or cells cannot be analyzed without observing them take their own selves apart.

I Slept Like A Champ Yesterday.

I woke up and thanked you.

“The rhythms fell slow,” one of us said.

The other one of us immediately noted the line was not being spoke in the original sense.

Bespoke all over again

I laugh at this to give myself another opportunity to smile up at you.

I had to handle errands.

marginalia: see how easy errand goes errant

but there was nothing to doubt, dear.

I narrated to you.

(I narrate for you)

Even when time’s changes and the earth’s rotations

make it impossible to know where or when you are.

even when you are not there or here,

when you could not know you were there….

unless…but who could be that magical really?

Still,

I know you are

glad

I am.

(any reading thereof)

I hope your feet are warm.

It rained.

It stopped.

It remains grey.

The mountains are obscured by clouds.

You coulda gone weeks without knowing they were there at all

I suspect

back when our opposable thumbs were still novels

Hey there’s an attractive Japanese couple to my right.

waiting for the light to cross on foot

made me wish I was on foot

they are young compared to us

they laugh and smile and gesture wildly.

Now I’m smiling.

They pretend to be sign twirlers for some surreptitious business or affair,

spinning the invisible boards. dropping it, kicking it back up and catching it on their backs

It’s good panto. I can see it. The invisible they indicate.

I dream they are trying to indicate you to me.

It’s Not A Stretch

Tendons turn before hips.

Calves cramp before pointes.

Ligaments lech over muscles.

Impeccable imbecile.

Lovely Repetition.

That is the first secret.

you tell me the second

(and third);

and, I’ll tell you if I already knew that

already

How do you deny what you have smelled for days?

Vitamin C(an) D(o)

My sister once (and repeatedly since!) insists Vitamin C by Can sums up the grey months in Seattle. She’s not wrong. Ok, fine. She’s right.

That’s hard to say as an older sister.

She also told me about this

Sadness Hides the Sun thing.

Too sad, sister.

Party foul!

Party fowl.

I’m chicken o’ that kinda sad.

Cut it out.

Now

Pitter Patter

There’s blue sky

and the sun’s jutting outta the grey

but it’s not gonna last all day!

Sometimes you gotta run at it

or walk at quickly

(seriously girl-don’t blow them knees out!)

ha

What is a book but manual?

Is it just, using an alchemical apparatus within a story?

Just

an alchemical apparatus used to drive the plot, scaffold the story structure, and/or function, also, as a skeleton key?

Transmutate to into art.

The reader and/or audience undergoes the Cathartic process,

like enzymes provoke.

The Apparatus drives the substance of letters/words toward catharsis.

Our story’s technical equipment enables a bunch of words

to BeRead by an audience or reader of the collection.

In this way, words transmutate to a collection, set, Sum, somme

that somehow be-came greater than the sum of its parts

This alchemical thing is but primarily a piece of technical (albeit ‘unscientific’) apparati that is taken-up, in itself, and then applied to a bunch of words such that when those words are taken-up [sic. in the abstracted sense], an epiphenomenon emerges on a different level of scale.

res ges’tae (Latin)

Inclination of the Needle

(dip of the magnetic needle)

illude

(trick, delude)

illudere

(promising)

illywhacker

(confidence trickster)

Illocution

(an action performed by saying or writing something. promise)

idempotent

( < math. an element of a set which is unchanged in value when operated

on by itself )

idem

( < Latin. ‘same‘ ; French. ‘somme‘ )

idée fixe

( obsession < French lit. ‘fixed idæ‘ )

idée reçue

( generally accepted concept < French lit. ‘received idæ’ )

Curious and Capricious

Curious and curiouser.

you’ve heard that, right?

Do you remember Jacob and Esau?

How Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated?

That quintessential golden child and magical child.

Arch.

Jacob and Esau are both parts comprising Alice Ladder.

But, Alice Ladder does not reduce to the sum of her parts.

Alice Ladder is greater than the sum of her parts. constituency.

Did anyone tell Jacob and Esau that they were two sides of one coin?

Janus.

Bachus.

guarding the present now from the encroachment of past and/or future.

God/dess of doors.

Persephone

God/dess of staircases.

Someone let that poor girl out of the basement.

It’s the time of the season they let her out, right?

Scoop and abscond.

We have many more blind spots than the vehicles we proudly drive

It’s stupid, actually,

Kinda funny.

Like when people fall down.

Highlarious, I don’t care who ya are!

Bipedal locomotion is not the most efficient in terms of energy expenditure.

That really comes through when we fall down.

Just a bunch of stupid, lovesome monkies!

This Night Tonight

Inscenced not indignant.

Indignity nonetheless.

Bemused not befuddled.

Bespoke not beholden.

Beloved not betrothed.

Vouchsafed by dint of condescension.

I am howling.

Interference for interference sake.

It’s raining, so I bought three pens for two dollars and ninety nine cents before tax.

What surprises Them about me, breaks my dummy heart.

I smile unconciously.

Caseface as Britt said back when we are all servers,

going home at night to the Isleland of Misfit toys.

And how my upper lift now curls upward.

trembling and pulsing up and down over white teeth.

A wolf’s mouth starting to growl.

Starting again to howl.

Fear? nah. maybe.

replete

the timbre was ash and cherry.

Cinnamon and cheesecloth.

Poetry is everywhere and we’re the only ones who can see it?

But then I read what I’ve written and its just word lists.

no pomp puffery, no pithy trick for the wolves playing sheep.

so I show it to you.

Why?

Cuz I’ve Written it regardless, despite, in spite of everyone and everything.

But, really, simply because you asked.

And I looked at you hard and cold.

the lip recovers my teeth.

my brow unfurrows.

infinitely written meets unwriteable.

effing idiots will never get it, will they?

Isn’t that wild?

Passing Time After Cancelling Dinner with the Parents of your Ex ( i.e. Saturday getdown)

Anon, anon.

tried to guess different ways to write it.

she’s cagey!

Watch “Joni Mitchell – You Turn Me On I’m A Radio – Live 1974” on YouTube

No rights, just homage

Live version of a song (if memory served) was not her fave.

A little corny? maybe.

Not here.

Just wait til she sings harmony with the guitar lead.

Wild!

A Pretty Beautiful Poem

Conviviality: C17 from Latin convivialis “a feast”

“fit for a feast”

(of an atmosphere or event) friendly, lively, enjoyable

potential. hy/Poten/use

potentiate

potent. pot. Portia (circa Antigone)

portent (n) ; portend (vb)

– portentious

port

porter

Deceit…. disgust

Conceit…. disguise. (dis/g -)

Receipt… despise

(- cei/P/t)

DISAMBIGUATION

Pretext: ostensible reason (false) used to justify an action.

Pretense: act of pretending, false ambitions / claim

Pretend: imaginative same / fantasy

Pretension: claim of aspiration to something pretentious

Pretentious: attempting to impress with falsehood

Prevaricate: act or speak in an evasive way

Prima facie: (law) at first sight [ / site / cite]; accepted as so until proven otherwise

The Old English spelling of pretty = prættig, meaning

‘cunning or crafty’ coming as it did from a West Germanic base meaning

‘trick’.

By the Middle Ages, pretty had come to mean ‘clever, skilful, or ingenuious’.

The sense development [ deceitful, cunning, clever, skilful, admirable, pleasing, attractive ] has parallels in adjectives such as nice.

PRETTY

1. attractive in a delicate way, without being truly* (common) * beautiful. *author’s change*

2. used ironically to express displeasure: fairly ; trinket ; (used condescendingly) attractive person.

Pretty is to prevericate in order to increase Prestige?

A pretty face is a prentious face?

Pretty is pretension?

Beauty is.

Is being pretty pretentious? or prestigous?

The pretension of the face being ‘pretty’ was pretentious?

Pretty is prevarication to gain? [Prevaricate and procrastinate have similar but not identical meanings.

Prevaricate means ‘act or speak in an evasive way’.

Procrastinate, on the other hand, means ‘put off doing something’.

Prestigious.

A face being pretty is a pretension.

That’s beautiful, that is, Pretty!

PRESTIGE entered English in the mid 17th century (tricksy, cuz it means the 1600’s) from French, and ultimately derives from the Latin plural noun praestigiae ‘conjuring tricks’.

It took on its modern meaning in the 19th century (the 1800’s) by way of the sense ‘dazzling influence, glamo/u/r’, which at first [only] had a derogatory implication.

Aren’t we beautiful, Pretties?!

Extra Credit: speak the 17 words below aloud. Wild right? They kinda stopped making sense after a while. Lovesome.

Pretty ; Prettify ; Prettifies ; Prettifying

Prettified ; Prettification ; Prettifier ;

Prettier ; Prettiest ; Prettyish. . . . . Prettyboy.

Prettily ; Prettiness ; Prettyish ;

Pretties.

Prettied.

Prettying.

* Knock Knock…Orange… Orange you glad the other (stars) astericks didn’t make you scroll all the effing way down here? Hyuck.

I. All words cited from OED Concise (pic below-citations take forever)

II. All 17 “Pretty” derivations were taken from 3 dictionaries.

Mix tape to the World. Soul Funk. Rev. James Brown. A Maverick.

I did not know about James Brown.

Ha! I believed it was sexy-good-time music: good beat; easy to dance to.

It is.

It is also so much more.

Powerful medicine. I compiled a list of tracks to hike to.

Thought I’d share. Will continue to update as I find more.

It’s all good for productivity.

So take a walk, guys.

or destress and jam this when you carry wood (work).

Because like a ball on the bound,

you’ve got to get down, down, down!

Talking Loud and Saying Nothing. 1972. There It Is.

Blind Man Can See It. extended cut. bonus track. Jungle Groove.

Soul Power. 1971. “12 inch long version”

The Good Foot. Pts I & II.
Mind Power. 1973

Cold Sweat. 1967

Bonus points:

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

16 June 1972 (released).

8 November 1971 to 4 February 1972 (recorded)

Side 1

2nd track

 

cheers.

Back on my Literacy Soapbox

First things first: Thank you educators (formal and informal). You guys are on the front lines doing something about literacy issues.

With our digital world still unfolding and it currently being the wild, wild west of the world, I worry there has been a tendency to view words as inferior to numbers. Reading is seen as escapism, a hobby, and other whimsy. Literacy starts meaning the ability to read a newspaper, which is written on an 8th grade level. What do we mean by literate?

The ability to grasp meaning from language requires a capacity to hold those abstract principles in your mind and then critically apply those abstractions to yourself. Sure, a 10 year old girl reading Anne of Green Gables, is absolutely doing this. Even if she’s reading for a school assignment and hates every second of it: she will have a feeling about what she reads and that feeling becomes opinion which she then must express in both a written and oral book report. Then she has learned to think for and express herself and her own thoughts.

Working in risk management for businesses and professionals, my days involve a lot of reading of policy forms. That huge stack of papers they give you when buy, say, auto insurance. Not the page that shows your coverage limits (commonly called or declarations page) but all the stuff after it, that is a legally binding contract you paid money to sign. Consider court documents and the language of laws. Reading a court filing yesterday, I hit a word I did not know. I have 4 print dictionaries I consult for such things. The word was in none of them and I could not find much online either. I was outraged.

I consider the work of promoting literacy to include the right to readability of “binding written agreements.” Things like state and federal law, how voting works, court papers and explanations of rights and lead options, credit card and bank agreements and capitalization and interest practices, student loan education.

The list goes on. My point is: there are ways language can be used to obfuscate instead of illuminate. The less we read the more likely we are to not even notice it. That is not a fair game; everyone deserves equity.

THE IS

He said, “Slick-you don’t hafta put effing limitations on the goddamn variables in a dynamic system! Like, the more chaotic the individual parts of a dynamic system are, then the more effing potentialities or organizational principles may be exploited and checked out for utility and efficiency. Why lock in and hoover when the shit will regulate itself eventually? Hmm? Why is it that everyone effing assumes that organic self-organization is so uncommon? … Well, you can still call it uncommon, I suppose, like…shit, like uh, as uncommon as a not great hand of poker.”

She said, “You mean if liberty is completely maximized, despite the appearance of chaos, society will spontaneously organize itself in a sustainable or meaningful way?”

“Yeah.”

“And the odds of this are as likely as getting dealt a losing poker hand- likely to occur more often than not?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “the only precondition is that the individual parts all impact each other’s functioning.”

By a bit of water

After her meander, she soon spotted him sitting in the tall grass with an unlit smoke hanging off his lip, facing the bottleneck where the narrow little creek began to come together on itself and collect into a pond. A dam edged the flow at the far side of the water and a fishladder sat right alongside this spillway.

Salmon spawned and climbed there. But not yet, as fall was only now making the scene.

She wonders what he is seeing. What made him sit down in the first place?

His back faced her and yet she knew he was gone. Mentally absconding down some path, having been beckoned by guazy spirits within his imagination. She liked to watch his corporeal form when the immaterial consumed his attention.

It was the way his neck worked. Parallel thrusts of unnoticed nuchral rigidity held his head fast and at its present attention. The slope delineated by neck becoming shoulders.

She considered breaking his reverie, but chose to keep still in the moment with him and bask in the felicific tension.

In the suspension of outcome;

the bit before the finale;

the desire for denouement.