A complicated day at No. 3. I'm putting up a blog for the firm, and I'll send some links. (If someone cannot figure who the hell I am, s/he is more inept at this computer shit than I am.)
And I had a dr. appt. in Morgantown, so naturally had to make the obligatory stop at B&N. 6 books, 60 bucks, so many books, so little time.
And I went to the damnedest place in my mind this evening, and I don't think that I can even cast a shadow of these thoughts in writing. I (not so secretly) admire writers whose minds can go to . . . hell, I can't even describe the places they go. Mark Helprin did it in Winter's Tale to an unusual extent. Arthur C. Clark made it in the last 2 chapters of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some would say that Tolkein found that place, but while the idea of an alternate reality is well developed by him, the world of "Middle Earth" is remarkably conventional. Let's see - Emerson touched upon those places; and Richard Burton (the writer, not the actor) a little bit. Charles Lamb touched them. But descriptions of a truly different kind of reality are pretty poor and very rare even for those. And I know that this sounds like babbling, because these thoughts translate very poorly from my mind to yours using these few dozen symbols arranged in a particular order. Did you ever look at printing, and not see the words, but see the strange symbols and marvel at how any thoughts at all are communicated through them? It's magical, to me. Perhaps these "other places" are so unreachable because we think using language. When you think of a broom, what is the content of the thought - a visual image? an image of the broom being used? or just the word "broom" or, for people who are illiterate, however they symbolize or remember the sound of the word "broom"? If these places aren't recognizable, how in the pluperfect hell can we share them? This is exasperating.
OK - my poor attempt. I've talked in some recent posts about this yearning for a cabin in the dark, dark, dark woods. Tonight would be a perfect time for that, since the moon won't rise until nearly sunrise, and there are no clouds diffusing or reflecting distant light. There is absolute magic in walking silently through such a night, and again I do not have the words to approach my feelings of being a part of the night. I know that Brother Pete has been there, and Brother Dave, and they know whereof I speak, but I can't tell someone who has not experienced it what that experience is . . . like (?). No, I can't tell you what that experience is, it's not "like" anything describable. Tonight, I was in that cabin in my heart -- geez, what a poor description -- the muscular pump that moves blood around my body has nothing to do with feelings. OK, I was there in my mind, in front of an open stone fireplace with a burning fire, perhaps the "birch logs burning" that Kipling described (remember that line, Pete?). In the corporeal world, I can (and do) sit for long, long periods and stare at flames in a fire. At a restaurant with the family the other night, I did just that, and I wasn't there with my body. There is something about the flickering, the movement, the light, the chaos, that draws me in. Tonight, there I was sitting in front of that fire, and I entered into a totally alternate reality, where I became a part of the fire. All of the senses were present. I could hear the popping of the wood and the hiss of air moving, smell (a little) and taste (a lot) of the smoke and heat, feel (some) heat, but the visuals were the most striking. I was in the fire, but not a part of it, and all of the tracks of my mind were engaged there, were totally present there. What I saw was not beauty in the see-the-sunrise beauty, or what-a-nice-painting beauty, it was elemental, primordial, universal, non-reproducable. There is no painting, no photo, no image that can exist in our reality that would be there. The images were of the colors and brightness, of the chemistry and physics, and of the geometry. EVERYTHING in that fire is predictable and follows a fixed path. But there are so many elemental particles at work and such complexity, shapes, fractals and non-connection with conventional perceived reality that it is functionally chaos. Hell, we cannot picture infinity or "even" the size of the observable universe, and we/I get totally displaced in a micro/nano experience? I lost myself for I honestly don't know how long in that place, there was no language, there was no biological life, there was no falsehood, there was no truth, there were no expectations or demands, and the only way I can describe it was that there was nothing recognizable there, the only way I can describe it is by what it was not. But I was there. And when I run down tonight and go to bed, I know that I'll go back there, and again experience something extraordinary, something that has no connection to these symbols or language, and I feel sad that I absolutely do not have the ability to take you there with me. This is sooooo frustrating - I feel mute. And silly, too, because as I look this over, I see essentially blather. But I'll publish it anyway, in the hope that even a spark of where I went will strike a chord with someone. How does a Helprin or a Clarke do this?
In a more localized fashion, this also takes me a bit to other writing in the pipeline. (OK, on the memory stick that's on my key ring.) In a book entitled Living Large published a couple of years ago, a political consultant fellow (whose name I don't recall right now, and I'm too lazy to look, Mike something-or-other) wrote about his struggle with obesity, and how it felt at his high weight. I went there with him because these were experiences that I had. However, his high weight was maybe 320, which in my experience is not that damn high. (See? My reality, based on my experiences, is totally divorced from yours.) I am trying to write about what so-called "malignant obesity" feels like. Partly because it is unexpectedly gross (and I cannot inflict that here) and because it is indeed an alternate reality that is a living torture, I am having an impossible time with that writing. Dammit, I can write humor, I can write cute, ironic, sarcastic, social, loving, informational, verbal, symbolicly, but I cannot write about things that are only in non-language thought. And I have the fleeting thought of, hell, a couple of slugs of the Bombay Sapphire would expand my thoughts and loosen my constraints, but that would only dumb me down even further.
I don't know reality, and I'm without a compass this evening.
R
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6 comments:
Brother Roger,
I absolutely know what you mean. On my last Woodbadge weekend, we were given a group of tasks in which to compete on a back pack journey to a remote corner of the camp. We spent the evening there in calm quiet fellowship and turned in. I was first up way before dawn and got the fire going and made coffee. As I sat there, sipping my coffee I realized that there were a few deer at the edge of the light from the fire, calmly going about their business. The morning was crisp with the frost, and as the clear dark night slowly gave way to the dawn my fellow patrol members started to stir and it was time to get the day started.
Often, when looking for a calm moment, I remember that morning at the fire with a cup of camp coffee watching the deer...
I have no idea when you get the time to read so much. I am still only half way through a book I got out of the librabry in November by David Liss, and is now so overdue it would have probably been cheaper to buy it :o)
though it must seem pure hubris to say this, I think I know exactly what you mean. If we're talking about the same phenomenon, I've experienced it many times and have also experienced the same frustration in trying to describe those transformative moments to others. I believe if you've never experienced them, they seem impossible, or possibly psychotic :)
One day I'll make an attempt at writing up a few, but doubt I could manage even half as well as you. And how DO you find all that reading time???
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"Partly because it is unexpectedly gross (and I cannot inflict that here) and because it is indeed an alternate reality that is a living torture, I am having an impossible time with that writing."
If it's your reality, then it is NOT an alternate reality (except in the sense that all individual realities are alternate). Given the obesity rates in our country, how can you think it an alternate reality? Alternate to what, the false reality of the media?
Roger, I'm unsure if you're finding it hard to write because you don't want to relive it (which is a sign that you're not ready to write it now) or because you're afraid of others' response (which in not a valid thing to worry about). I'll start with a question I ask all of my writing students--just why are you wanting to write about this subject?
When you talk about langauge/symbols, I recommend to writers to you (if you want to read about the theory of this stuff). Ferdinand de Saussure is the founder of modern linguistics and goes into all of this, and Umberto Eco whose "A Theory of Semiotics" is fascinating.
However, the writing instructor in me feels obligated to point out...this is all procrastination if you want to write the story of your experiences.
and PS would like to read your new blog, and would really like to read about your experience with your weight if you can bring yourself to write it. Anything that deeply felt, I'd find fascinating to read -- you write terrifically well.
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My learning curve is climbing up.
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