"Abandoned Blogs"

Abandoned blogs litter the Information Superhighway (anyone remember that metaphor?) like the traces of wreckage that line the road to Las Vegas: this, apparently, has become one of them. However gone it may have become from the screen you're looking at right now, though, it hasn't left my mind. I've started a number of posts in my head, but the rules of the game I've designed so haphazardly for myself have kept me from exploring any of the ideas I've generated any further than the first few sentences. How frustrating.

So I haven't posted, and I haven't posted, and I haven't posted, and here lies another noble attempt, one, I suspect, of many. It turns out that the major audience for my blog (me) got bored with my maunderings about the very little I have to say in so many words. I'd wager that lots of blogs peter out for just the reason: some word-drunk buffoon gets all excited about the possibility of generating lots and lots of prose for the delectation of an anonymous throng or posterity or the self-regarding buffoon and blurts out a dictionary's-worth of text that nobody but the buffoon can tolerate or get meaning from--and eventually even the buffoon fails to tolerate it. So the buffoon stops doing it, and the attempt sinks back under the smooth dark fizzy water of the Information Supercanal (I made that one up) to join its many fellow failures like the big dark hull of a sunken pirate ship drifting toward the bottom of the Sargasso Sea. What, then, does one do?

I (assuming here that I am this one I'm talking about, which seems plausible) could keep on in the same vein, pumping out the dregs of my vocabulary until I'm hollowed out into something I'm not as tired of. The very lack of posting that I've been going on about seems to indicate that I'm not going to do that, and I hope I don't seem to be complaining about it. No experiment truly fails; even when the information it produces disappoints the researcher, failing to confirm the cherished hypothesis, it does indeed result in information, which helps the process's progress. So, though I can't call what I was doing a failure, I can call the experiment concluded and move on to something that annoys me less. The operation has revealed that I've pretty well explored my verbal stream of consciousness to the extent that it doesn't take me much of anywhere I haven't already seen, at least to my own satisfaction. I may try again after a while, but I don't expect much to change.


The difficulty seems to have lain in two areas: my lack of subject and my unwillingness to deviate from the Ginsbergian fake of "first thought best thought." Both of these conditions led me to an ultimately boring pile of prose, addressed to no one and concerning pretty much nothing. Why would anyone (including me) read that?

Having thought about it for a while, I believe I've figured out how to alter these conditions, correcting the problems I see with this blog and making it, ideally, something worth reading for someone besides me. First (and fairly obviously), I'm allowing myself to go ahead and revise as I type, the kind of thing I did plenty when I wrote essays in school. I might even start outlining to achieve the improvement in communication that comes with enhanced cohesiveness. This, I think, indicates a little more concern for the reader: you. Second, I've decided on a topic. This presented a little difficulty, since I don't consider myself an expert on much besides grammar and myself, neither of which seem too interesting to anyone besides grammarians like me and any other people identical to myself, two (I strongly suspect) infinitesimal audiences. However, I also know about myself that I read books, many books, a number of books that flabbergasts most people I meet. I also have opinions about these books; I can state these opinions with a high degree of articulacy (and, also, in many syllables, hurrah). Therefore, I figure that people--even people distinct from me--might find interest in my opinions of the books I read. I believe I've figured out a subject.

Notes on my Notes, thus, has become a blog in which I write about the books I'm reading. To repeat myself, I read a lot, so I'm pretty sure I'll have something to say fairly frequently. I hope you'll find that something interesting and useful. Perhaps you'll even take advantage of the "comments" function to tell me what you think of the books I'm discussing and of my opinion of them. This could, I think, work. I look forward with cautious optimism to the development of my re-adopted project. To complete the metaphor, I've redesigned my airplane and plan to fly it somewhere fabulous. I hope you're coming along.

"Even Less"

Even less than yesterday am I inspired. Indeed, I'm so uninspired that I've lapsed into Time-speak. No one really writes like that. Even the people who write for Time don't write like that; there's a staff of editors that massages the prose until it develops into the oddly flavored syntax characteristic of America's Favorite Newsmagazine (as opposed to the World's Greatest Comic Book, which is Fantastic Four). Ah, but what can one do but scratch oneself and proceed. If my purpose is to publish my freewriting--if I'm trying to get this uncensored flow to reveal something about myself or writing or how you read what you're reading right now--it's instrumental to that purpose to push (interestingly, I was trying to type "publish," but my fingers hit the "s" instead of the "b" so now I have to incorporate that somehow) the words out as hard as I can even though (or perhaps especially because) I have nothing to say.

John Cage said "I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it." Of course, John Cage was an inventor of the kind I try to be and fail consistently. Most of what I have to say about randomness and silence--most of the matter that this writing will most likely continue to dredge up--comes from ideas of Cage. I know a bunch about the Black Mountain School where he and Charles Olson did the weird mid-twentieth century things they did, but I'm not sure if that knowledge is the same as the inspiration I'm seeking by doing similar stuff like the stuff I'm pretending (intending?) to do here. Cage and Olson developed classics of their postmodern field; I'm developing a pile of words. It may be appropos here to know (again, I meant to type "note" so now I've got a new challenge for my sentence) that Ray Bradbury claims to have burnt his first million words. They're practice, he says, not fit for comsumption (I'm leaving the typo) by an audience that has come to expect the kind of excellent writing Bradbury's known for. Apparently, I'm not suffering from that kind of pressure: either I'm not expected to be as find a writer as Bradbury, or I just don't care. It's very possible that I just don't care.

I just don't care about plenty of things. It's a big world, I'm a small person (if not physically, then perhaps morally or in terms of industry [I'm calling myself lazy here]), and I just don't have the mental capacity to invest myself deeply in much. I've claimed on several occasions to care deeply about writing, and I'm inclined to believe myself. I'm doing this, for example, even though my wrist hurts and I'd rather by ("be") opposing this sea of troubles end it. Seymour Skinner advocates making a game of your tedious menial task so as not to go crazy while you're doing it. I don't know how much advice I want to take from a cartoon character.

Yet I seem to be making a game. Am I avoiding the tedious menial task of writing? When you consider that it's a task I've set for myself--and I game I'm making up the rules of as I go--it's hard to imagine that I'm trying to shirk it. After all, here I am doing it, complaining about it the way I seem to like to.

I've been thinking about the self-absorption here, and I've been excusing it by noting that me and my feelings and opinions and mental states constitute the only subject on which I'm an authority. I'm revealing myself to myself by doing this, then, and here you are watching me do it. I guess that means I'm revealing myself to you, and I wonder if I've shown you anything worth looking at. What I'm seeing is a neurotic English Master (it's true, I've got a certificate signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger [and my possession of it has forced me to learn how to spell Schwarzenegger]) with perhaps way too much free time and such an enormous vocabulary that he's rattling around in it the way a widow rattles around the mansion that's suddenly too big for her now that her husband and children have vacated it. Apparently my brain is developing empty nest syndrome, if that's what I'm analogizing to the widow. It might be that the widow is whatever point I'm trying to make and that Mr. .45 here is the shepherd protecting your weak ass. Extra points for the first to recognize the allusion that bubbled up there. Analogies lead to weird metaphors, and, in a brain like mine with its relentless associative habit, strange bedfellows. Am I inspired yet? Have I completed my task?

Will I know when or if I have?

"I Thought"

I thought about waiting until I was inspired to something particularly profound, which nicely defeats the purpose of this continuing exercise in the entertainment value of pointless rambling. I often think of things to write in this blog, many exciting phrases and very natural-sounding, too, but I'm away from the blog when I think of them, so they don't get written. This very topic is something I've been wanting to bring up, the idea of trying to think of what I'm saying--no--the idea that I think of what I'm saying only when I don't seem to have the opportunity to say it. Once I'm actually at the keyboard, freeze happens, and I lose track of the exciting fireworks I've been producing in my head. The thing that arrives on the paper (or, in this case, on the screen) resembles more the firework after it's been fired, that stubby little ash-colored thing that litters the streets for weeks after the fourth of July. That may be what you're reading right now; it's hard for me to tell.

And that's among my points, isn't it? What I'm writing here--what I've been writing for all these decades--may work just fine. Part of the problem, though, is that I'm thinking a few words ahead of what I'm typing, as I've learned to do to impress and entertain, so it's quite possible that I'm denying myself the benefit of the exercise by the very virtuosity (editing would eliminate that alliteration) that I'm trying to escape here. I'm typing as fast as I can, and I'm dissatisfied, and I mostly blame Peter Elbow. He's a very good writer, very impressive or influential, as I'd probably rather say, and so his program of applied self-doubt gets right in the head of the aspiring writer. I definitely aspire. I'm pretty good (unless I'm dreadful), but I still like the idea that I can get better. Will this help?

And let's consider for a moment the rank self-absorption this transparency reveals. Just about every word I'm typing here refers to my mental state and the importance of recording its awesome triviality. Who needs that, besides, evidently, me. I know you're there, processing; if you're not there when I expect (sometime in late 2011), perhaps you're there at another time, wondering what you've stumbled over and if this guy'll ever shut up about whatever he's talking about. I seem to have arrived (to be arriving) at a nearly content-free language--not language--content-free prose. Clearly these words are about something, but they seem to add up ultimately to zero. I'm not inspired

I'm not inspired. Is this a cry for help? Who'm I crying to? Am I available for response, even for an echo from the cliffs I'm throwing this message over. Hello. The main reader of these words, I expect, will be me, so greetings, Future Charles. I hope that you've accomplished the flying car and the portable house and so forth. Does the latex itch?

I'm funny, and just about every paragraph I type starts with the word "I". These two facts may relate to each other; it's hard for me to tell. Actually, on reflection, it's easy for me to tell, to say, to narrate with many many words. It's hard for me to know.

(supplemental)

Is there any blog anywhere that does not start with a form of the sentence "I've decided to start a blog"? Just curious.

"Indications Have"

Indications have appeared that someone's reading this. Hello. Sorry about the crappy writing, but, as you may perhaps have read below, that's kind of the point of all this. I'm trying to give myself an opportunity to find out what it is I have to say by just saying a lot of the kind of stuff I always say anyway until I get bored with that and by force of my own boredom (couldn't think of a better word to replace the lame repetition, didn't try) develop something interesting to me to say: something, thus, interesting to you. Whoever you are. Probably you know me personally in one way or another; we went to one kind of school or another together. Apparently I'm academic, if you count the School of Hard Knocks (1988-1998) that I attended in conjunction with some of my semesters at Golden West College. I'm happy that I went to the SHK; what I learned there has given me lots of my favorite stories, many of which I'm reluctant to tell in such a public forum. I'm trying to embarrass myself here with the quality of my writing rather than the content of my checkered past. Now I have to start thinking about the game of Checkers and--the way my mind works--try to relate it to the thing I'm currently talking about, whatever that is. My project? Okay, what I'm doing is like a very simple game. In writing center terms, I'm publishing my freewriting. I must be very confident to do such a thing. It's possible, if I'm taking this seriously enough, that I may stumble over something in my brain that shocks and appalls not only you but also me. I'm a little worried about that. Fortunately, I have equal confidence that this limitless self-absorption, this idea that if I keep typing something will emerge from the simple wonderfulness of my awesome writer's mind, will drive readers away the way a mumbler on the bus gets the three or four seats around him cleared simply by his failure to recognize that people can hear him and aren't really that interested. He keeps mumbling anyway. Sometimes I listen (sometimes it really can't be helped; buses aren't that big, and some folks mumble loudly) and it doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, much the way these sentences are starting to fail to make a damn bit of sense. I'm continuing to type anyway, because every now and then some of the phrases that drop from the non-self-conscious minds on the bus, those folks wearing clothes that have gotten stiff as sails (I'm thinking now of the person I see every now and then whose gender I can not at all determine; apparent body of a woman [though it's hard to tell under the layers that people who live on the street have to wear] but bearded like a boy; I keep thinking of The Waste Land then shuddering with guilt at my translation into a literary figure of this evidently suffering actual person) find themselves (as I start to fall behind my sentence; are you keeping up better than I am?) in some of my actual poetry. They've given me images I couldn't have found myself--in, let me remind us both, just the way that this particular stretch of rambling may generate unpredictable phrases and images. This, of course, returns us to my fear that the unpredictable images and phrases, being out of my control, might embarrass me. I'm facing that fear, and I'm doing in public, and maybe there's some kind of medal involved at the end of it. I don't know. I can tell you that my body is actually shaking a little as I type this. I'm a man of feeling, one of my professors once told me, and it might be that my insistence of Standard Written English grammar (the only right kind of grammar, ask any of us native users!) is a way of trying to control that emotion, so often overwhelming, into channels of, uh, communication or display or whatever I'm using all this language for. More on that later, I have no doubt. For the time being I appear to be drying up; I'm looking forward to an increase in creative stamina as one of the results of this whatever, but it hasn't seemed (weird verb construction) to (what I clearly mean [clearly? really?] is "doesn't seem to have") emerged yet.  Did James Joyce leave notes like this? Where do you suppose he left them, and did they clog the drain.

(supplemental)

Somehow this blog generator knows me as "Unknown." I think that's cute.

"I've Decided"

I've decided to start a blog, and I expect it to suck.  To a certain extent, I rather hope it will suck.  My skills are shit.  Coming up with words is far too easy for me, and I think that the glibness I'm generating is doing my writing some harm.  So I'm trying to give myself the permission to suck.

For one thing, I'm not editing so much: the last sentence above would probably not have had the word "the" in it if I had been trying to sound smooth and natural the way a blogger probably should.  I guess this tells you I'm a blogger now.  Does it signify anything that I'm typing this while I'm talking to my wife?  I was just telling her that I'm not trying as hard here to be coherent as I would if I were doing this writing for some other reason than to let myself stumble in public.  Possibly I can't help myself. We will, I suspect, see.

Among the things I'm thinking is that I should impose some sort of minimum word count on myself so that I keep doing this until I can derive some benefit from it.  Since I don't know quite what sort of benefit (I almost wrote "exactly" instead of "what"--see, I'm editing despite myself) I expect to derive, I really don't know what sort of minimum I should set for myself.  Maybe I should type until the scroll bar appears in the text box I'm typing into, or until I've typed for a specific amount of time.  I hope earnestly that you, the reader who may or may (more likely) not exist currently, enjoy the fumbling around that these first few entries promise.  How many blogs start by this kind of earnest fumbling? Or start with it?

I think my actual voice (what Peter Elbow in his book Writing with Power calls "real voice") may be drowning under my articulacy.  I paused for a moment just before the last word in that last sentence to think about whether to include an adjective, to characterize my articulacy in some way; as you can see (if you're there, if you're looking) I didn't do that.  What I'm trying to accomplish here, though--one of those things, anyway--is to not need to pause, to find out what I'm trying to say rather than the smoothest or most articulate way to say it.  Is this possible?  We (I?) shall see.