Process
A brief glance at the calendar over on the right here shows that because I spent a month writing that last post I didn't actually get anything up for April. This is probably the first time I've skipped a month since I started Atomized Jr.
That post was an example of a piece that somewhere between the initial set of notes and the final post things become tangled in mind and tangled in the page. When I say tangled in the page I mean tangled in my AlphaSmart Neo the word processing device I use for the notes, outline and draft portion of the process here and other writing NEO Direct. The tangled times are when I most feel the Neo's few drawbacks; notably its six line review screen. And while the Neo has a nice feature that allows you to collapse a file to the first line of every paragraph, allowing you to hack an outline, it becomes unwieldy somewhere around seven or eight paragraphs. After that you start to need a separate formal outline to keeps things tidy and on track. I often spend a lot of time weeding repetition out of pieces at this point. There was a period where I used to use OmniOutliner to write posts. It was not a terrible thing by any means, I recommend it highly. I like the portability of the Neo even more (three AA batteries a year, that it autosaves with every keystroke. I like that it is a separate device from the one that holds my email and twitter and Firefox and their worlds of distraction. This also mitigates against writing posts on an iPod touch although one day I will do that in a proof-of-concept manner. In general I don't need to be writing two-thousand word weblog posts.
There is also a disturbing property of thought that it does not resolve against other co-existing ideas tangled in the mind. Contradictions are only apparent when caught within the web of language. Specifically written language when you have committed yourself to a specific word, a specific concept and left a concrete trail of evidence on paper. This is when a piece unwinds on you. When certain beliefs are revealed strands of separate string. Your shoelaces lie untied, assured conclusions provide no support and grand perceptions fall apart. Ignorance is bliss, to be sure. I never feel as smart as when I am responding to something with an ambient frame of reference the zeitgeist provides. This happens so often - and I see it in others - that I can only conclude that thoughts aren't anything, only words are something. Even they are not action.
I didn't, in that last post, say things about Japan I wanted to. I've been to Japan it was one of the places the Navy delivered me to. It was an experience to have Tokyo be the next city to see after growing up near Boston. I went to the top of the Tokyo Tower and observed solemnly that the city below extended to the horizon in all directions. An urban entirety. The Sendai earthquake and tidal wave; however, hit small towns and medium-sized cities NOVA | Japan's Killer Quake:. It was of a scale and nature of human community that seemed oddly familiar and beautiful. I was strongly affected by seeing this side of Japan.
If anyone out there is of the opinion and motions that the phrase "debris fields" has appeared too much in the news recently, I will second that. Like wars and revolutions growing up in Massachusetts tornados belonged in the class of things that happened else where, to others. Even here in mid-Atlantic Maryland, they belonged to the realm of stories. Then one came through College Park a few years ago and amended that. - Tornados are sudden specific non-predictable things. A storm front can hang over three states, tornado watches and warnings can be set against counties, sometimes towns. A tornado though will reach down from from a single cloud and obliterate a path 50 yards wide and a mile long before disappearing forever into thin air. Thinking about the weather, what the weather can do falls into two main categories. It can give too much wind and rain. It can give too little rain. We are at the mercy of nature treading a narrow and precise path. We have evolved within a set of expectations and have survived by the practice of gathering where they hold. Human ingenuity moves unevenly and sails mostly behind the van.
11:50:49 PM  ;;
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