Aftereffect

One joy of attempting to write over a longer period of time is that echos become a habit.  A couple or three semesters ago, I taught a seminar in metaphor and since then I've never quite felt like the course landed well with me.  The students (hello you all) seemed to love it, but there was no closure, no artificial sense that I knew something that I hadn't known before. Had I not invested myself enough in it?

But this morning, I write this passage as part of a larger piece:

How can something not have meaning?  In a metaphor seminar, remember?  Jamming any two items together, no matter how far apart in domain or correlation or connection, creates a thing that has meaning.   Take, for instance, locked fur, cram jumble, under freshen, trace hump.  Either sonically (“hey that sounds German!”), imagistically, or conceptually,  there’s meaning, even if the meaning is simply more what the complex of words echo than what it seems on the surface.  Meaning is an appearance that never fails.

And now, meaning is an appearance that never fails.  My response, perhaps, to those who took Derrida to nihilism.

That seminar is remarkably worth every learning minute now. 

Afraid?

"Android" and "ipad."

Two philosophies inherent in the current technological advertising conflict?

Neither look good for assuring we'll have an educated, responsible, and active electorate . . .

They might also represent schools of poetry some day: those who follow and those who are self-involved.

Worth It

One blog worth subscribing to: http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/

Each day, sixty years ago, that Orwell wrote in his diary, the site feeds his entry. 

On April 7th, 1941, for example, he wrote that a "[s]hortage of labour more and more apparent and prices of such things as textiles and furniture rising to a frightening extent" and that"[t]he secondhand furniture trade, after years of depression, is booming." 

It's a good time to sign on, since December 7, 1941 is only six months away.  By that time, you'll have seen the accumulation of England's struggle, and Orwell's take on the sudden (?) involvement of the US will surely be poetic.

It's also good to see how such a concise and intelligent writer did work away from the publishable page.  What he wrote for himself.

Why

Writing for little to no one at all has its pleasures, even if you hope the text will be read by someone. Writing for no one is the practice you need to make writing for someone, like Ip man dispatching his contestants so publicly, no more or less consequential than it needs to be: there is always you, the words. Just hit your target. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Until writing for no one is writing indeed.