Existentialists, Elephants, and the Encroaching Threat of Directional Nihilism.

Welcome to another edition of the world’s recently reinvigorated foremost source of text-based misery. Here, at the outset of the second edition of the second incarnation, I’d like to mention some interesting facts about Existentialists. Soren Kierkegaard once went on record as being deeply in favor of repetition, and extended his approval and endorsement even to others who willed repetition. All of which is to say, if you came here hoping against hope that last week was a painful reminder of the bad ol’ days, but that the sun had dawned anew, you have only The Existentialists to blame for this vicious repetition of The Saturday Address. It is their view that you should enjoy, nay, that you should will this.

Not that The Existentialists will mind very much if you blame them. For one thing, they’ve always seemed to have more enthusiasm for misery, despair, and hopelessness than a rock band of suburban teenagers, so they’d probably appreciate the compliment, and for another thing, they’re all dead.

And actually, just presently, both things make a lot of sense to me when I consider the fact that The Existentialists were, as near as I can figure (having only a rough knowledge of them, their work, and biographies) involved in academia for most of their lives. It is no surprise to me—embroiled as I am in the dreadful second quarter of a semester—that this made their outlook somewhat dim.

Anyway, I was all set to unleash another piece about my present ills, one that was going to center on another way in which the necessary conditions of doing my job have rendered me unfit for life, and ill-suited for academic endeavor, but the truth is, I have not yet achieved a Kierkegaardian enthusiasm for repetition, and just can’t bring myself to put the needle back down in that particular groove.

Instead, I’d prefer to talk about elephants.

Here is the thing. Here are two things, in fact. First thing: I don’t know almost anything about elephants.

Second thing, giraffes, not elephants, are the rulers of the Saturday Address jungle, and we are great respecters of tradition.

So I’m not going to talk a) about other unfortunate bits of my development which render life difficult and miserable, or b) about elephants.

What is left?

This is actually a pretty good question. What is left?

According to Dictionary.com, it is “of, pertaining to, or located on or near the side of a person or thing that is turned toward the west when the subject is facing north.”

That is to say, there is no context-independent definition of left. Left is a word which carries no meaning by itself. To understand that something is left, we must know what object it is to the side of, and which side of the orienting object we are viewing the scene from. Because after all, if we were on the other side of the object, that which is on the left, would be on the right.This is not, of course, to say that left is arbitrary. It isn’t, at all, but it is extremely context-sensitive.

This context sensitivity of left illustrates several important points, but because my wife is waiting on me to finish this so that we can leave for Cincinnati, I will restrict myself to the most important principle we can gather from this brief discussion of relative directions.

Always remember, friends, outside of an orienting context, we cannot tell who, or what is right. And without something being right…

…there is nothing left.

Have a good week.

Three Hanses Together Take Time to Talk About Taking Time to...Focus.

After eons of wondering whence my modest ability to write short stories, long stories, poetry, academic papers and Russian-novel-length emails had gone, I have uncovered  (stumbled across, really) the dread cause of it all. It is the same reason that I now find it much more difficult to read long books, watch movies instead of tv shows, and study for exams. It is not, as it happens, crippling self-editing tendencies. Self-editing has become a crippling tendency of mine, in that I’ve now re-written the preceding sentence thrice, and this one twice. Still, I’m getting better. Sort of. Watch me: I’m going to leave those two sentences alone, now.

Yes, here at the beginning of the second paragraph it still seems as though the third time through, we conquered the self-editing habit. Oh. Bother. I reread the first paragraph just now, and rewrote that second sentence. And pointed it out in the sentence. Just so any confused readers are aware, there are now two distinct timelines in play—the one where I wrote about two-and-a-half paragraphs on Thursday, the 25^th of September, and the one I am writing now, on Friday, the 26^th. Timeline 3, speaking. I’m writing on Saturday, and in italics. Any readers not presently confused should just hang tight, because I’m about to mention (Thursday self is, that is) the main issue, which led to the whole thing not being done yesterday, and will almost inevitably lead to a multiplicity of timelines, and possible parallel realities. Any readers objecting to such a plan are encouraged never to a) read comic books, or b) watch films, especially films based on comic books.

Leaving it (self-editing, and multiple timelines) lightly aside, let us proceed to the true cause of my constant inconsistency. This is it: I’ve become good at multitasking. I discovered yesterday (Wednesday)—by way of a class lecture—that multitasking and single-tasking skills are inversely proportional. That is to say, as a person increases in their ability to concentrate on manifold objects and events more-or-less simultaneously, they lose the ability to concentrate on one object or event for very long at all.

This seems pretty unfair. Pretty predictable, perhaps, but pretty poor per principles of parity. That is to say, it is as though learning to juggle carried with it the danger that you (a trained juggler) couldn’t really be trusted to hold anything—a baby, for instance—for fear that you might involuntarily juggle it. This, as far as I can tell, is not the case at all. I know some jugglers (including—no jest—the president of a large association of Christian jugglers). As far as I can tell, not a single juggler I know has ever involuntarily juggled anything. In fact, I can think of only two instances wherein the juggling skills of my friends, the jugglers have ever amounted to anything resembling a real drawback. In one case, as I recall, the current president of the Christian Juggling Association juggled (intentionally, mind you) a number of machetes, and one of them ended up doing an impression of the double-bladed sword of scripture (separating flesh from bone). The impression was pretty effective, and his hand was pretty ineffective for the next couple of months. In the other case, I witnessed a friend attempting a juggling trick that involved not only a pattern of keeping balls suspended in the air, but also bouncing them off of the ground. He happened to misjudge the angle of the bounce, and was compelled by the ball to join it on the floor in a writhing heap.

Anyway, you see what I mean? It is very difficult to get anywhere if, instead of writing straightforwardly about how multitasking has ruined me for concentrating on a single task and theme, I go off on tangents about juggling injuries, and multiple timelines. What I meant by those stories, though is that the problem was not that they started involuntarily juggling their dinner plate or steering wheel or whatever, leading to disaster, it was that they made mistakes while juggling, on purpose. But apparently, this is not how mental juggling works.

 Incidentally, I’ve now written past the end of the Thursday timeline, so everything you read from here on out will be Friday. Unless I get distracted again. I did.

At any rate, I’ve started working on being able to concentrate on one thing at a time, again, so that I can do so when the moment calls for it. That is, so I can write enormous, bloated blog posts that call to mind the wretched years when those of my friends who didn’t have the necessary technical savvy to get ‘em sent straight to the Spam folder spent Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings weeping on account of the Saturday Address. Also, so I can write papers, and stuff. I just wrote a paper. Between that last sentence, and this one.

My first real step toward this was forcing myself to not read a book, browse the internet or try to write poetry while watching Thursday Night Football on CBS. I ended up multitasking, anyway; by midway through the fourth quarter, I was simultaneously watching football and snoring. Still, it was progress. Now I’m writing this, and watching football. Progress erased.

My one concern, which wasn’t really addressed in the classroom, is this: I need to be good at multitasking. Working as a restaurant server requires that I concentrate on sixty things in one minute, whereas writing, reading, and studying for exams requires that I concentrate on one thing for sixty minutes.

I have not yet done any research on the point, but I am intrigued—can I reacquire a skill at single-tasking without sacrificing my livelihood-required ability to multitask? And if not, which is better in the long run? Is it better to be able to do a bunch of little things at once—in a world where it is increasingly demanded—or to be capable of sitting down, and giving my senses, mind and emotions more time and opportunity for developing skills I already have, and developing new ones.

For instance, I don’t know how to juggle, and I’d like to learn.

It's What They Do With Their Cars That Makes Me Nervous About Their Guns

Patriarchal family dictatorship having largely slunk off the stage, missed by few, regretted by fewer, I would not, could not, forbid the thing. But I tell you this: if any child formed of my genes and/or raised in my care proposes to link their future and plight their troth with a person who merges late and/or drives on the shoulder in traffic jams, I will campaign against the match. 

It's about the easiest way to demonstrate that you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself.

A Revelation and A Resolution

              The past year and a half has been one of the most exciting and beautiful of my life. In gas station parking lots, on pew kneelers in a catholic cathedral, and in a copse of trees awash in ashy failure, I’ve begun to discover just what it means to belong to another human, and to be entrusted with a human soul. My faith has been challenged more directly and more ambitiously than ever before, and has continually emerged from battle refreshed and renewed.

               Through the record-setting heat of last summer and into the heavy woolen winter, I worked two jobs, averaging more than 45 hours a week, and managed to take a full load of courses more intellectually ambitious than any previous semester of my collegiate career. In order to complete projects and study for exams, I was frequently obliged to burn the midnight oil until relentless daylight seared my irises, already dyed pink by contact lens irritation.

                And in January, I stumbled out of it with a 3.85 cumulative GPA, and onto a plane. From January to May, five of my best friends and I rampaged across the South American continent in an ancient station-wagon, taking life as it came.

                I came home, swept back into my arms a woman for whom the adjective ‘incomparable’ was personally crafted, slid a ring onto her finger and set a date.

               I say this not to toot my own horn. Goodness knows there are resoundingly more popular venues for torn-tootling than this blog.  I say it to give myself perspective: my life is awesome.

               I say this because through all of it, I have been consistently distracted.  I let the most miniscule uncertainty or tension in a friendship upend my world. I let my perfectionism become writer’s block, and my writer’s block become a monkey. The monkey, suffering no similar creative blockage, has purchased a saddle and become a relatively nimble horseman at my expense, since.

               I’ve known, throughout, that my life is awesome.

                But somehow, despite maintaining a mostly-proper outlook of the big things, I’ve allowed myself to lose the intense gratitude of the remarkably blessed.

               This evening, due in part to John Wayne, King of the Apes, and some minor unpleasantness that has arisen regarding my employment, I began to compose a sad, sad, song.

                No worries, I shan't be sharing.

                Anyway, the upshot was something along the lines of the endless endurance required to live, and the way in which we all get stretched out further than possible, until God—having unfairly extended our rubber-band souls to the point where the gritty grains begin to show—lets us snap back together. Fulfilling my role of Faithless Israelite 1, I was on the point of expressing doubt as to whether He was ever going to stop stretching.

                  And then it hit me like a musket-ball between the eyes. An archaic truth, unearthed in millennia past, and a personal mantra for me since roughly my twelfth year of existence: it’s all in your attitude. It’s all in perspective.

                   It’s odd to me that I’ve been so close to right this whole time, all the while allowing a pessimistic and thoroughly unindomitable frame of mind to overwhelm the sunniness in which my soul was made to bask. It leaves me more than a little embarrassed, let me tell you.

                  It also fills me with gratitude that a certain Someone was willing to extend the revelation while I was soggily sobbing in verse form.

                  And finally, it allows me to repeat my epiphany for your benefit, and for my own when the time to be reminded comes again: how good or bad your life is is not entirely in your control all the time, but most of the time, it is. And when the skies seem black, and cares attack, and you essay to count your blessings….Count ‘em, count ‘em, count ‘em. And put some soul into it. 

Some History

I began writing, began actually writing, at an early age. From approximately age eleven, I channeled my predispositions to self-expression and performance most devotedly (amongst many lesser passions) into the written word. I wrote approximately eighty pages of a prodigiously complex novel at that self-same age of double-ones. The story centered on a surprisingly dramatic civil war in a medieval kingdom in which all of the characters were named and styled after myself and my cousins. I was a ninja. I lost the girl I loved, and I died. Even at eleven, I understood that one must murder one's darlings, death and tragedy are inevitable, and readers relish the unexpected.

Two annums on, at thirteen, I decided that I'd try writing songs, so that someday I could be an ultra-famous musician. My motives at the time, I believe, revolved around impressing girls. My early songs did impress my sisters and their few friends who saw them, and to this day, I continue to feebly poke away at lyrics, and in recent years, abomination of abominations, I also write poetry. 

At about thirteen, I was entangled by a story about a boy, a girl, and a posse of warring aliens that was originally dreamed up with only the barest whisper of an accompanying plot by my best friend, and his best friend. For a few years, all three of us bounced ideas off one another, but in the end, my best friend and I lost track of his friend, and--with apologies to my best friend--most everybody but me lost track of the story. I, however, fell so deeply in love with the world I created to accompany the characters that had been birthed from the original cardboard cut-outs that I decided to devote myself to writing other fiction, so that in ten years' time--a guidebook advised me it took nearly a decade of practice before one was a truly worthwhile artist in prose--I'd be a worthy scribe to finish the story.

It has been ten years. In those ten years, I've written three complete novels, two halves, innumerable songs, slightly more numerable articles, and the bones of a spartan post-apocalyptic musical. And I'm still not the writer I hope writes that story. But I am more determined than ever to become him. I am more determined than ever that this writing thing--if I love it so much as I claim--deserves attention and deserves effort, and that it is entirely worthy of my best efforts to eventually dress up this blog, to send articles, essays, short stories and novels to editors and agents who do not want them, if only to demonstrate to myself that I love writing, and I mean to do it as well and as fully as possible. 

This post, then, if anything, serves as my ultimatum to myself: I am announcing my intentions to the anyone-at-all who may stumble across it. I intend to write, and as your poor luck may have it, I intend to write here.

Here goes.

That Moment...

...When you post on an interesting blog, and realize that you´re posting under the ramshackle leftovers of your teenage xanga persona. And then you think ¨Zounds. I could use this thing.¨


...For the moment, I´m all tied up in blogging at thesouthernrampage.blogspot.com, but I have some ideas for this place, when I´m finished there. If you´re interested, check back here in June. At which point we will do our darndest to cancel your interest.

An Expression of What...

This evening I have attempted three times to record my thoughts concerning an incident this evening at work, but the three attempts have each been ruled a strike, and the at-bat has ended for that original concept.

In the face of such odds, one must retire, and regroup.

Unfortunately, I have been so overwhelmingly fatigued that regrouping led simply to another cluster of thoughts to fan out at the plate. In this case, I suppose the urge to express oneself overwhelms the need for there to be something to express.