Embarrassing Questions

In many ways, irony is sarcasm refined.  Young persons, let's say persons under the age of twenty-five, can be observed refining their sarcasms.  

Let's say, as an example, the taunt "Don't mind me." is a sarcasm directed by a young person to a peer or older.  Since we're speculatively saying things, let's say a plateau upward toward irony from "Don't mind me." would be, "I hadn't thought you'd noticed."  Same situation.  Different degrees of sarcasm.

You recall yourself being well into the default sarcasm of the early and mid teens until you discovered an early role model of irony, Oscar Wilde.  You were beginning to see the light of irony on your own and through reading, but the process was hurried along by the kinds of schoolmates one recalls with admiration if not fondness for the long haul ahead.  

These schoolmates brought you closer to Dr. Johnson, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Schopenhauer, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.  By the merest of good fortune, on your own, you discovered Dorothy Parker and Ring Lardner, of "Shut up," he explained, fame.

These forces all came into convergence one lunch hour afternoon at 7850 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles California, in the company of a group of fellow students at Fairfax High School.  At least two of those present were eleventh graders, a fact of social prestige.  The Fairfax High of your youth was probably every bit as stratified as the Fairfax of today, the strata and their implications having evolved from its then demographics and sociology to its current enlightenment.

You were not particularly fond of the eleventh graders, but there was some rub-off prestige in having been beckoned over to lunch on the lawn with them and a few of your tenth-grade friends who'd turned your attentions to philosophers and cynics.  However charged and lofty such conversations could be (try this:  "We hear you're reading Marx."), the subject of sex was as insistent as a show-off student, waving hands or arms to be noticed by a teacher.

When a sex-related topic came forth, your reply to it produced one of those moments that you can now, at this remove, relate more to irony than to the humiliation of being the center, not only of attention but of ridicule.  "You're in high school now,"  you were informed by an eleventh-grader.  "We don't get boners any more.  We get hard-ons."

Another semester, a year at the most, with the likes of Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, and you'd have had some response other than silence. "Roger that,"  perhaps.  Even "Copy that."  Possibly, "Rise to any occasion."  

Early years are years of observation, looking for those key instruments of purpose and intent, which are both important instruments for the growing self to distinguish and determine, then find ways to use in composition. Early accusations that "You did that on purpose" were just as likely to be met with the defiance so common to the age or with the same near humiliation at the discovery that we don't get boners any more.

Another semester or two, and you could use purpose as a refined instrument.  "To what purpose?"  Those three words are, at the least, instrumental beginnings of an essay, which leads to a conclusion and a discovery.

For the next several years, you were asked your intentions by a number of girlfriends and, in some cases, their parents.  Now, you ask questions about intent and purpose of your characters, the characters of your students, of writers you are paid to edit.  But most of all, and on these very cyberpages, you ask those questions of yourself.  

Successful Assholes: Make No Mistake About It

Many of the events in your life have been determined by events out of your direct sphere of interest or control.  You had no say, for instance, in which hospital you were born nor, indeed, did you have choice in the circumstance of being born.

True enough, on one occasion, when you were a few degrees into irritation at someones disclaimer, "I didn't ask to be born," your response, impulsive and immediate, impressed you.  "I sure as hell did,"  you said, then went on to describe how, while not overtly conscious of the intent, swam like hell to reach that egg.  In the immediate months after that declaration, while swimming your daily laps and recalling the conversation, often burst into giggles, which had adverse effects on your intake of air and water.

Events are often determined by intent, which in its way is determined by desires and other awareness of internal and external goals such as hunger, curiosity, tiredness, loneliness, and other subjective targets.

Events often produce outcomes.  These, in turn, can be ranked as successes or failures, accidents or mistakes.  Successes are often the result of mistakes or accidents.  You find yourself thrust into a curious speculation, wondering how many of your successes were accidental.

Often in this blog landscape, you've considered the accidents by which you became a teacher and an editor, each a bifurcation from your original and singular career goal, to say nothing of your goal for individual reach.  Yesterday's observations about mistakes has sent you careening along the path of considering such matters as goals, intent, execution, rates of success and accomplishment, and of course the matter of judgement.  

This day-old curiosity about successes and failures in general and yours in specific has reminded you of a novel you were fortunate enough to have read for the first time in your late twenties, The Posthumour Memoirs of Bras Cubas, by the Brazilian writer, Machado de Asisis.  You were drawn to the work by its subtitle, Epitaph of a Small Winner.  

At the time you first read the novel, you were intrigued by the effect the  reasoning and thought processes of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had on the author.  You, too, seemed drawn to the skeptical cynicism of the philosopher, liking the notion in the novel that the protagonist was summing his life's successes and failures from the point beyond the grave when the first worm had had a nibble of his--Bras Cubas'--flesh.  In fact, the dedication was to that very worm.  

You enjoyed the calculus by which Bras Cubas was able to say he'd achieved a worthwhile goal by having a life with a tad more successes than failures.

You are still drawn to the noir.  In fact, you were just told in an email from the dean that you will be giving a Spring course in noir fiction, which came about when, during a conversation with the dean, you expressed you noir theories and posited the potential for a book on noir studies.

This interest in and identification with noir landscape does not yet cause you to think dark, brooding thoughts.  You are, in fact, as often enthusiastic and ebullient as you are moody.  Thus your identification with Bras Cubas and your sense that all your mistakes have led you to a place where you have the means to devote some significant portion of your life to pursuits you care about and are drawn to. 

If mistakes were somehow obviated from these pursuits and if, worse of all, your successes were not tinged with the potential of being accidental, think how slight and shallow the results.

Referencing another somewhat surreal work to which you are drawn, popularly known as the eponymous Tristam Shandy, you recall a favored quote:  "When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his hobby horse grows head-strong,—farewell cool reason and fair discretion!"

Your hope, particularly when you are in the full devotion of composition, is to give yourself up to the ruling passion and, thus, to shout a fervent "Adios!" to cool reason and fair discretion, both of which, true enough, are required in subsequent drafts.  But not at the outset.

Mistakes galore and occasional successes emerge like guests at a neighborhood block party, where you are a designated host.  Come eat, drink, and join the conversation.

In keeping with your observations about mistakes, there is at least an equal measure of possibility that success breeds as many assholes as does mistakes.  The mistake-ridden asshole attracts a certain dignity from his or her willingness to have and execute intentions.  The success-ridden asshole often pays the price of being seen as a more perfect asshole, a paradigm for whom, indeed, a school of proctology should be named.

Some Notes of Mistakes and the Assholes Who Make Them

On your last trip to the market, you bought two items by mistake.  Your error in both cases was selecting a product directly next to the one of your intention.  You didn't realize the mistake until the time came for you to use the product.  

The first product, vegetable juice (four vegetable servings in one glass) didn't register on you until you'd poured a glass full, then sipped at it, thinking you'd somehow picked up a spoiled container.  Then you read the label, whereupon you saw the list of contents.  The container and use-by date were beacons of congratulation, applauding you for your healthy choice of a fresh product.

The second mistake did not become apparent as a mistake until you opened the container, preparatory to measuring out a cupful to introduce into a pan of boiling water.  This was not steel cut oatmeal.  This was flaky oatmeal, the kind you've deliberately eschewed in favor of the nutty flavor and gritty texture of the steel cut, the kind most likely to turn mushy.

Both products are fresh and usable.  You've pretty well killed the juice, and as for the oatmeal, well, next time, you'll double check.  The point here is two mistakes riding on the irony of your recent cataract surgery in both eyes, leftie on March 21 of this year, right-o on May 2.  The irony is enhanced when you consider how vast an improvement the vision in your left eye and how neither it nor your correctable to 20/20 right eye require contact lenses any longer.

Mistakes, such as those in these previous paragraphs, are of judgement.  You could also say lack of attention.  To speak to your love of pun and inference, you could say lack of focus.

Mistakes come in all formats.  Consider the possibilities of mistakes in identity, mistakes in assuming information to be accurate and correct, mistakes in estimating outcomes, mistaken intentions.

There is hardly a mistake you can conceive of where you are without significant experience.  If uniforms were to be issued or identity insignia developed for degrees and numbers and durations of mistakes, you would be esteemed on sight as a distinguished veteran.  Over the span of years you've been engaging in scientific analyses of mistakes, one important product has emerged.  You are no longer ashamed of them, you have in recent times become accepting of them as indications of your humanity.  

Someone with your record of mistakes has some experience with being called an asshole.  When you think about the implications of being called an asshole, you render the term to mean "a person who makes many mistakes."  The last time someone called you an asshole, your response may have seemed on the surface to be quick-witted, but you believe it was more in the spirit of shared humanity.  "So are you," your response began.  "We're just assholes in different tribes."

Mistakes, their causes and consequences, are valuable tools for the writer's toolkit.  Your standard method of producing the armature for a character is to determine what that person wants.  Then you begin winding intentions and actions about the armature.  Mistakes, past and present, are good physical demonstrations of intentions, how the character sets about achieving goals, and how the character has been shaped by the consequences of past mistakes.

Since these reflections are about mistakes, you will keep discussion of successes to a minimum, hopeful of reminding yourself that tomorrow's notes could well deal with successes in executing one's intentions.  The common denominator in this dialectic is asshole.  Successful individuals are by no means free from being assholes.

You may be mistaken in your belief that mistake assholes have better traction as characters than success assholes.  This is, of course, a question of judgment and preference.

At one time, someone in whom you sensed the potential for a romantic interest asked you your preference in chiles.  Red, she asked, or green?  You are a fan of both, but since a chile Verde is one of your favorite main dishes (try spooning chili Verde into a fresh, flaky baked potato or sweet potato), you said green.  Big mistake.  Not what she wanted to hear.  Even your avowed preference for chicken simmered in mole sauce--you started to say cut no ice, but that would have been a mixed metaphor and, thus, yet another kind of mistake.

Like their creator, many of your characters' biggest mistakes are mistakes in judgement.  This may point the finger of asshole (another mixed metaphor, right?) at you, but consider this:  You'll never run out of material.

The Ill-Tempered Sentence

A few weeks ago, at a regular meeting with an editorial client, you suggested he look up a particular word in a particular dictionary, The OED, The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.

You were emphatic about suggesting The OED, not at all because your client was born in the Devon coastal town of Lyme Regis, rather because OED not only ranks the various definitions of each entry but as well because OED is noted for capturing the first known written use of the word, then more or less tracing its history, up to the moment of the most recent printing of this vast storehouse of a reference guide.  

OED definitions are relevant in this case because the dictionary is a quite valid analog to the core sample, a hole dug into the earth to extract a history of the various layers deposited in the place of sampling over the Milena.  The dictionary is akin to the rings of trees or the levels of enamel on the teeth of animals or reptiles; it shows history, evolution, origins, and suggestions for usage.

The world you wished the client to consult in OED was partnership, a word which, on the surface, would not seem to require an entry large enough to require much room for definition beyond its historical meaning.  At the time of your suggestion, you had no idea where this historical trail would lead you and your client in reference to a book underway dealing with the partnership between humans and animals.

It would be nice, if impractical in terms of space required to have your own copy of OED.  A digital edition would be a high class problem, so too would an abridged version, printed in smaller type, equipped with a magnifying lens to make for easier reading.

A practical matter for you is The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition, which is based on the OED principles of historical use, and which, to your great joy, has a usage committee composed of a number of men and women who write.

When you are away from home, with no AH4 close to hand, you rely as so many of your acquaintance do, on Google, thinking to check if warranted with OED and AH4.  Whether you have your MacBook Pro on hand or must rely on your iPhone, you are still not far from some responsible storehouse of meaning for the thousands of words a person is apt to encounter during the warp and weft of a day.

With a toolkit brimming with words, we have access to describing the feelings that inflict themselves upon us like any number of other natural disasters such as fires, floods, tsunami waves, earthquakes, landslides, and avalanches.  In addition, ideas sometimes have similar effects of catastrophic natures, rendering us, in irony, speechless, but as well inchoate, angry, inspired, delighted, curious, resentful, and apprehensive.

A vocabulary in general and words in specificity would seem to address the problems of communicating ideas.  The worm in that seeming logic  is the belief that sufficient tools can make or fix anything.  This is of a piece with saying that so many keys on a piano should make it easy to express musical ideas along with the ability to evoke emotions in individuals who listen to those ideas.  

Musicians such as Bach and Haydn and Mozart, to name a mere few, certainly had ease in discerning the ranges of pitch and tone and harmony resident in instruments.  Bach even understood and expressed in writing how each of the available key signatures in Western music evoked distinctive emotions (which explains, for instance, why Mozart chose the key of D minor when he wished to convey the most melancholy tonality).  As well, Bach understood well enough the progression of intervals in Western music to write The Well-Tempered Clavichord, wherein he investigated the properties of all twenty-four major and minor keys. Even these well-advanced artists in the language of music needed considerable practice to be able to put their understanding of the language of music into tangible compositions.

You're fascinated with the theory that early reading experiences, both positive and negative, led most of us who would compose our own works to believe these works were easily come by and that they were arrived at in one vision, perhaps mulled over a bit, then set down.  You recognize that naive belief in yourself.  In addition, you're aware that you'd made your commitment to the process well in advance of discovering how difficult the process was.

In subsequent years, you've experienced the thrumming and tingling response of validation upon learning how Beethoven, for all his amazing swirl of musical vision, did the equivalent of a tight line edit on his compositions, fussing, fidgeting, pushing players beyond their own awareness of their ability.  Even Mozart, who seemed to be able to compose works of stunning complexity in short bursts of effort, needed to revise, to replay with his inner orchestra, often many times over to get the crisp sharpness and braided complexity that so defines him.

Writers should be able to do this as well, but so far as you know, only a scant few men and women were able to do so with less than several drafts.

If you're not careful, you'll find yourself able to deconstruct things in order to affect a style or understand a theme, but will you be able to capture the focus of readers, then hold it, spinning the ideas and feelings through the medium of the words?  

You know it when you see it, more in the works of others than yourself. This awareness comes to you through the courtesy of men and women who've been writing for hundreds of years, perhaps even thousands.  They're all aware of how many hours of practice they needed to be able to make the immense difficulty appear simple to you.

Lawn Order

The first thing you notice about homes in the desert is their lack of lawn.  The yards may indeed have lawn furniture, but these are deployed over the coarse grained desert sand or crushed rock, or some sun-bleached conglomerate that is reminiscent of cremated human remains.

The next thing you notice is the similarity of desert front yards with neighborhood front lawns in more conventional areas such as the neighborhoods through which you often pursue your evening stroll in Santa Barbara.  You see lawn furniture, bird baths, active or no longer running fountains, bird houses, and the occasional piece of sculpting ranging from the more sophisticated examples of sculpting to statues of birds or dogs or jungle animals, the most popular specimens (regardless of their geographical locale) being pink flamingos and gray or white long-beaked birds such as egrets, ospreys, or herons.

Whether desert or oasis, some front yards have tendencies toward used washer parts, boats in various stages of repair, either on towing trailers or suspended above two or more saw horses.

Yet another similarity between front yards in high desert locations such as Yucca Valley or Joshua Tree or even Palm Springs  are whimsical mailboxes, some on the more commonplace wooden support, others more complex constructions involving quarter-inch iron rods, bricks, gnarled tree trunks, and the more generic stamped metal, spray painted a matte black.

There are numerous ways you may deconstruct an individual.  Not the least of these ways is the individual's front yard or the individual's choice and presentation for all the world to see of a mail box.  In keeping with E.B. Whites observation that the individual who sets pen to paper is creating a form of self-portrait is the acquired wisdom that a lawn or its condition, or a rock garden and its design, or such extremes as finely raked Zen gardens, or flocks of concrete or plastic birds is a kind of personality fingerprint, in effect a true and authentic manner for an individual to mark and define personal territory and to present an image.

You've spent the last several hours driving through neighborhoods that had, so far as you can see, no tangible reason for being where they were, scattered about desert equivalents of metropolis.  The most affluent of these was Palm Springs.   Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree were among the more diverse and difficult to classify.  A common thread running through these neighborhoods was the fact of their residing under the blazing, bleaching summer sun, relentless from about six-thirty in the morning until close on to eight at night.  

The summer sun wants to bleach out color.  The home owner wants to somehow stand his ground against the sun, accomplishing his goals by the application of numerous coats of pastel, celebratory, and often patriotic color schemes, each capable of holding the bleaching desert sun at bay for another year or so before surrendering into the appearance of leftover vegetables and wilted salads.

Large numbers of individuals demonstrate their preference for desert living, claim to have established some form of mystical bond with the sand, the heat, the dust, the almost constant heavy breeze.  In the same way their home yards demonstrate their stubborn independence, their posture and squinty presence seem to radiate a defiance against the wind, the alkaline dryness, and the sheer persistence of the desert.

Sometimes, when you are at writer's conferences or programs and lectures, you have from your view of the audiences a sense of their stubborn, often misguided persistence, their stubborn presence before their writing implements, the sense of the distance in their eyes that match the far-off gaze of the denizens of the desert.

Such conferences or programs are splendid in practical terms.  Individuals wishing to learn how to set down their dreams and fantasies in defiance of the cynical human tendency to question the validity of story are filled with the same flinty stubbornness as those who spend their days and nights facing down the desert, even to the point of sensing themselves making progress with the stubbornness.

Prowling through these spots in the desert, you noted any number of bookstores, some of them pointed in their announcements of having only used books in stock, others a surprising combination of the brand new and the read-to-the-point-of disintegration hardcover and paperback editions.

There appear to be fewer things to do while living in the desert than while living in places where the lawns tend more to the green.  Numerous saloons, pubs, taverns, and liquor stores speak to the popularity of drinking the spectrum of massmarket beer, designer beers, wines, and the certifiable hard stuff.  Numerous TV satellite dishes advertise the potential for watching dramas, realistic encounters, sports, and dueling chefs.  The book stores speak to reading.  

You'd be surprised to the point of incredulity if sexual interactions were not thought of as valid pastimes, nor would you rule out the potential for dynamic and vigorous differences of opinion at various establishments where liquor was sold, served, offered to guests.  The message here is that persons in the desert would do these things with a greater stubbornness and flinty disconnect than persons with grass in their front yards.

Travels to the Edge and to Joshua Tree, California

E. B. White, an essayist you've favored since you first discovered him in your teens, and had a lifetime of being able to understand and appreciate him, had a particular observation that has remained with you.

"Whoever sets pen to paper,"  White wrote, "writes of himself, whether knowingly or not."

The more you arrive at understanding of him, the more you appreciate and see the implications of this observation of his.  You frequently writer by setting pen to paper, later to transcribe it to computer, often even to these vagrant pages of your blog turf.

From time to time, reviewing your multifarious notebooks and these blog essays, you in fact learn things about yourself you'd not set out to learn, even though you've arrived at a state where you engage in writing in order to make sense of the events in your life, their meanings, their effects on you, and, of course, your dealings with others.

You say of course here because of your primary discovery that some of the things you set on paper have solipsistic tendencies, and secondary discoveries that portions of you are silly, even to you, while other parts represent you, showing off in general and in specific for you.  

This latter aspect is of a piece with you trying to impress yourself with such things as insight, erudition, and humor, all in mitigation of having found yourself lacking in these qualities to the point of being concerned about the lack.

Other aspects of your discovery journey have demonstrated how deliberate pursuit of such things as insight, erudition, and humor can lead to inanity and, worse yet, boredom.

The hero's journey begins in earnest when one sets forth with an honest curiosity in mind, fueled by a decent sixteen-ounce latte and the likes of a peanutbutter and jam sandwich, the latter two often being forgotten in the whirlwind attraction of the former, the honest curiosity, which envelops and informs with no regard for process, which is already quite able to cope with the incoming information on its own.

The hero's journey begins in solipsism when tries to learn things for effect as opposed to learning them for use.  In a real sense, you're traveling to discover tools and other useful parts of yourself with which to deal with the journey ahead, the books to be read and written, the losses to be experienced and weathered, the choices to come, such as which music to listen to now, which things to write now, which animals to adopt into this time of your life, which memories to dust off and polish, aware that they were a part of the toolkit that got you to this point.

At the moment, you are at an apparent edge, inside a funky motel in a small town called Joshua Tree, just above such splendid centers of society as Yucca Valley and Twenty-Nine Palms, all of these in the California high desert in the general vicinity of Palm Springs.

You are here on a whim, away from the ordinary, the recognizable, the familiar.  Given your personal assessment that a person would have to be deranged somehow to live here, there are significant numbers of deranged persons to support banks, a Starbucks, numerous restaurants, an all-night laundry, and dramatic desert vistas about which Joshua trees are strewn with a whisical abandon.  You've already seen a few places here where you gave fantasy to living for a time, ratifying your own membership in the deranged and lunatic fringe.

Part of the tools you seek for success, by which you mean peanutbutter and jam sandwich engagement, come from whim, travels to the edge, and its pursuit until you are deemed too lunatic to be issued a driver's license.

Meanwhile, you set pen to paper, digital word to blog.  You read books with no set pattern relating to subject matter or timeline plateau.  At about eight this evening, the temperature in this high desert landscape was ninety-five, the prospects for adventure shimmering in the purples and magentas and rose colors of the dying evening light, and you out for a few moments in the gravelly patio, looking at the lights speeding down from distant stars.

And then, what happened?

During your senior years--there were a few of them--as an undergraduate, you worked the night shift, 3:30 p.m. until 12:10 a.m. for one of the world's largest and most influential wire services, The Associated Press.  Among other valuable things relative to reporting facts and attributing sources, which caused a dramatic rise in your grades at the university, you learned to watch sentence length, paragraph length, and story length.

The AP financed an extensive survey which concluded that the optimal sentence in one of their news stories should not exceed seventeen words.  There were other findings related to  the optimal number of sentences in paragraphs.  Of course the AP joined numerous other journalistic conventions in the belief that the essential parts of the story belonged in the first paragraph.  

(Adherence to these conventions became the primary cause of your grades on essay-type exams taking an enormous upward spike, even to the point where you were awarded extra points for keeping your answer terse and "mercifully free of padding.)

You've had an ongoing dialectic ever since, in which your sentence length shrank and grew.  One result of this long-sentence vs. short-sentence debate is your observation of how the AP concept of shorter sentences and lead paragraphs relates to real time conversation, to dialogue in fiction, and in general and specific ways, amount of information within paragraphs and entire narratives.

These observations relate to reader overload, the burdening of a reader (and conversation overload, which is the burdening of persons in conversations) and your own metric, the coefficient of boredom.
Stories that begin with too much background about characters and their motives produce a sense of intense disinterest.  

You, alas, have too much direct experience with telling persons in real life and readers of narrative more than they wish to know, with little regard shown for finding ways to freight the information and/or to cause the reader/listener to care and wish to hear more.

The key to all of this is withholding information to the point where the listener or reader, on the edge of curiosity bordering on impatience, asks the relevant question:  "And then, what happened?"  The sooner you can get the listener or reader to feel that degree of curiosity, the quicker your established communication is in place.

You also have experience with short, one- or two-word answers to questions, both in real life and in narrative writing,  This approach to response is the other end of the curve, the rat-tail end.  Such answers are of equal negating effect.  "Sure." "Nothing."  "Yes."  "Okay."  "Why not?"  And for real luxury, "It all depends."  

A question directed at a person or evoked in a reader is a potential opening of communication.  You in effect evoke a question in the reader's mind every time you set a story in motion.  "What's this character doing?"  "Why?"  "How will this work out?"  "What obstacles does this individual have to overcome?"  "What are the potential dangers?"

Most formulas, if repeated often enough, will produce results that, while not entirely bad, are boring.  In consequence of that awareness, you don't wish to carry these lines to a formulaic conclusion.  You do wish to observe that questions, direct and evoked, produce opportunities for response.  In story and conversation, response signifies the ante into the pot of communication with a response, which is either the beginning of a conversation or the involvement in a narrative.

Conversations and stories fail when they present too much undifferentiated information too soon.  Dialogue begins to sour when characters speechify, talking at a perceived problem or situation rather than speaking directly to it.  Dialogue begins to sweeten considerably when the reader is able to sense that there is something going on here beneath the surface, some subterranean design or agenda none of the characters may be able to see with clarity.  With the correct modes of presentation, the reader will become aware of anomalies and sub-surface correlatives.  Then the reader begins examining every word for that most ideal contraband to be found in story, intent.