St. Inquisitive

I could have, couldn’t I? I wish I had. Why didn’t I? What was I thinking? (Before you go there, neuroscientists long ago demonstrated no difference between thinking and feeling.) Having gone that far, having done such doings, said such words, I could have hit the brakes, paused, slowed down, or — gasp! — come to a stop, sure, a rolling stop, the kind cops give tickets for, but a stop nevertheless, even if the word and the action were adorned in demurring, qualifying quotation marks, in Helvetica bold ital. Or a complete stop. Stop right there. On the other hand, in the other brain hemisphere, what if I couldn’t have? Given who I was then, the accumulated detritus and virtue coursing through my blood making me who I was in that time and place, who is to say those parameters allowed any choice whatsoever? With that notion percolating, go back, rewind the tape, as in the days of reel-to-reel tape recorders, and record again, record over the first take, what we now call overwrite or reboot in computer parlance, and say, “I couldn’t have, couldn’t I?” And the absurdly laughable Samuel Beckettish logic-and-illogic shotgun marriage of it all says, What’s the difference? Tell me, tell them, tell us the difference between could and couldn’t, between did and didn’t. I fail to fathom, plumb or plunder, any real or imagined difference. You vehemently shout: Of course, it makes a difference, it makes all the difference in the world, your world. Says you. I’m not playing with belly-button lint here. I’m not semantically self-abusing here (to use the lusciously lubricious term the Roman Catholic pre-Confession Examen of Conscience employed in the days of my seminary youth, etymological pun intended. Is there anything more oxymoronic than “self-abuse” as a term applied to self-administered pleasure? Can any two fused words say more about a generation? It is LOVL [laugh out very loud] now but not then, when we needed a St. Portnoy to save us). But I digress, and not because of perfume from a dress, Mr. Prufrock. Or do I digress? This metaphysical monologue, this diction-ated debate, on could vs. couldn’t is no dodge, no escape from responsibility. It’s an honest question twinned in pain and peril: Could I have gone another way? Could I not have gone another way? With or without the “not,” it’s the same question. Alas, after all this, after every self-administered midnight polygraph exam, after infinite Torquemada auto-interrogations on rack and ruin, I am finally brave enough to cry, Tighten the screws, have at it, boiling oil and all, ask it from every angle and in every tone of voice! 

I can’t for the life of me answer Yes or No.

And I blithely shout, It doesn’t matter.

heavy mental

I'm going to give you an address, and say it three times, and a little while later ask you to repeat it back to me.
Okay. I can do that. All righty.
John Smith 42 High Street Bedford.
That's a weird address.
What do you mean?
I mean, it's a name and an address.
That's what I meant.
Then say what you mean.
I just did.
Never mind. On with the exam.
Do you smoke?
No.
Drink?
No.
Are you a Mormon or Seventh Day Adventist or Muslim?
None of the above, but none of your business.
Do you exercise?
Sometimes.
Tell me the address.
The address? Or the name and the address?
You know.
No, I don't, but here goes.
John Smith 42 High Street Bedford.
Excellent!
Says you.
Are you angry?
Be honest, is that one of your listed questions?
None of your business.
Are you angry?
John Smith 42 High Street Bedford.
What about Pocahontas? And is it Bedford Falls, like George Bailey?
I can't say.
Can't or won 't?
I don't know.
John Smith 42 High Street Bedford.
What?
You heard me.
I did. I think I did.
Bedford New York? Like Bedford Hills?
They didn't say.
Who?
The people who . . .
The ones who . . .
The people ones?
The ones who gave us the address.
The name and the address.
Those too.
The toos.
Them.
Us.
Us versus them.

texting one two three

the text text texts Scripture scripture stuttering writing the writing the word words wording string of semantic syllables passage extract narrative pretext context line lines nonverbal unspoken legible utterance utterances legible illegible indefinable posit of posing etymological energy of imprecise embedded thought would be thought inked inkling of linked intuition articulation you say text synonymous anonymous musing musings musingification beyond deeper than hermeneutics semiotics sunny cloudy composition in the infinite cloud unlouded texture texting fabricated text the text tyranny of term terminal terminology text textual silence nothing no-thing  
 

dial tone

Terms from the last century, artifacts from another age, which if said rapidly, fait la liaison, as the French say (and as Phil Ochs did it in song), sounds like "another rage": dial tone, land line, busy signal, modem hookup, Polaroid, dial, rotary, party line, long distance, directory assistance. What did these words mean in the 20th century? And what do they mean in this age? Each of them meant something. Each has a lexical hangover of some sort or another, masquerading and strutting as if these words could declare, as they used to, quite automatically, "Everyone gets it. Everyone knows what I'm talking about!" Who could not be jealous of such linguistic surety, such bold certitude? Now, these words or phrases are relics, on the shore, verbal driftwood, polished into alien sculptures.

metrics

One measure (the hip and already worn out word is metric or metrics) of my well being and well bearing today is to succeed in avoiding metrics. By that I mean, I will have achieved some measure of serenity if I have enough spiritual stamina to AVOID going to the Createspace website or the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) website, both tentacles of Amazon.com, to feel the pulse of my paperback or e-book sales, more typically, lack of sales. It does me no good whatsoever to gauge the financial or egotistical temperatures of these ventures. It costs me too much in the wages of attachment. I do better to ignore such empty calculi, laden with expectation and self-validation. And stuff like that.

cone of uncertainty

The projected paths of hurricanes are surely not the only examples of a "cone of uncertainty." We are born (and borne) through and into a cone of uncertainty. Our cone of uncertainty encompasses the all-direction maze of life, death, and all stations in between those two terminals. Uncertainty about meaning, lack of meaning, direction, no direction, beginning, middle, end -- it's all there, entwined by faith or fear into a conical conundrum, comedic or tragic -- take your pick.

words

I make a living through the caress, postulation, positioning, embrace, and fondling of words. But they are mere words. Paltry. Nothing. They never quite say it, do they? All words, however you jumble them, miss the mark, to some degree.

Has any pair of words ever said as much as a pair of eyes?

means to an end

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." 

T.S. Eliot

Every ending has its seeds in its beginning.

What to make of that?

Do we see those seeds? Do we recognize them at the outset? Likely not.

Why would we? Why would we want to?

Knowing these things does not make anything automatically easier. (I don't even know what that means. What ending is "automatic"? Or "easy"?)

Or less painful.

Aptly, today, Day 355, has these words from Thich Nhat Hanh in a compendium of his wisdom:

"Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things."

expectation

Expectation, the act of expecting, pregnant with meaning. Expectation, connoting hope or desire (or wish fulfillment, consistency, constancy, as in "I expect the sun will rise tomorrow," or obedience to mathematical laws, as in "I expect two plus two will equal four tomorrow"). Expectation: a Latinate thorough looking at. But also a burden. You expect that X, Y, or Z will happen. Or you expect Z, or Y, or X to happen. At least one of them. You are sure of it. It is ordained. Preordained. You anticipate the outcome. You can see it. You can see clearly now. Except for one tiny problem: "it" is not yet now, and when the cosmic clock strikes "now" (where is "now" on the clock's face?) what you saw so clearly turns out to be different. Entirely different. Or nano-different. It is not a matter of better or worse. It is different. It is not what you expected. This new now turns out to be different from your expectation. If you were honest, you would be forced to admit that the outcome, the outcomes plural, of your expectation, your expectations plural, are always different from what you envisioned, what you saw so clearly. Be honest. Isn't that always the case, at least to an infinitesimal degree? To an infinite degree? When did something, anything, ever turn out to be exactly as you expected it to be, fully, in all dimensions, in duration, in intensity, hue, proportion, sound, and sense? So expectation is a setup, if not for disappointment, at least for surprise; if not for surprise, at least for a shift (closer, farther, dimmer, brighter, fuller, emptier) in what you thought you saw, before it even happened, even though you really weren't "seeing" anything yet because there was nothing to see. Except expectation.

seven words

Elegant simplicity:

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

That is the essence of Michael Pollan's eater's manifesto. Aside from the cogency of its message, you sure can't miss its clarity and single- mindedness. Seven words. Simple.

'This Is Water'

Bookstores grant me a galvanic pleasure bordering on the manic, or the erotic, or both. I want to draw in the delight of delicious words: by digestion, in morsels or by the mouthful; by injection; by osmosis, by obsessive-compulsive-disorder savant memory; by paper or electronic note taking. I am the kid in the candy shop with eyes as big as donuts.

Tonight I borrowed from the shelves a collection of W.S. Merwin poetry, a collection of poetry by Amber Tamblyn (Bang Ditto), The Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Everyman Library edition), and This Is Water: Some Thoughts Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, by the late David Foster Wallace.

I sat down in the cafe and read some of Amber Tamblyn's poems. Very witty. Telling. Scathing. Confessional. I truly enjoyed one poem about hating haiku (not necessarily what you think) (actually, I read that while standing by the shelf, just as I earlier pored over Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity?, an apologia, as we used to say in Latin) as well as Amber Tamlyn's "Hate, A Love Poem," if I remember its title correctly.

But finances and time being what they are, I read David Foster Wallace's "manifesto" in one sitting. Was I borrowing? Or stealing? Rest assured, I felt little guilt. After all, I first encountered reading in a bookstore at City Lights Books, in San Francisco, in 1974. (You lie, Pawlie, or else why would you be writing about such issues?)

This Is Water is adapted from a commencement address David Foster Wallace gave in 2005 to the graduating class at Kenyon College. He never gave another such address, the book-jacket flap says. Someone decided to publish it, handsomely, after his death in 2008.

I had browsed through the book once before; this time I felt an urgent need to read through it. Not sure why.

And I freely confess I was rather floored by its title, This Is Water. [Some versions of this still float around the 'Net, but I felt better about linking you to a site for purchase of the "authentic" version of this pamphlet.]

Was it serendipity or unconscious connection to pick up this book, following on the heels of my last post, on water?

I once met David Foster Wallace very briefly, which is a semi-humorous story in itself for another time.

He died last year, a suicide. I found out about his tragic death after returning from a friend's wedding, in Ithaca, on a day that also happened to be my son's birthday (which is how I remember the exact day).

Many of those who eulogized David Foster Wallace (who happened to have Ithaca connections), this year and last, in The New Yorker, and on a PRI radio feature, spoke achingly of his gentleness and wit and understanding of American culture.

All of those things come through in this little gem of an essay, made all the more haunting and sad by its references to suicide.

I will not dare (or be so rude) to summarize This Is Water. I already feel like a cheapskate in not having bought it. I do not want to cheapen its message, or its delivery. (Not to say I can't buy This Is Water at some point, for myself or someone else or shave my head and give copies to pedestrians on South Salina Street.)

I can, however, report that I am glad I read it tonight, sitting in that cafe. Yes, it made me rueful (hey, if one can be rueful, can one also be rueless?). But it also made me a bit wiser.

Wrong word.

Attentive?

Braver?

Alive?

Aliver?