Posts Tagged ‘random writing’
Random Stream
Pursuant to the lack of guidelines set forth in the reasoning by the party in the first part for bothering to write down a series of words in a stream of conscious mode for no reason other than the seemingly valueless exercise of manipulating fingers on keys while the mind wanders aimlessly in the direction that can only logically be described as no direction at all with respect to the idea of having a point, there comes a time when doing so simply becomes an end unto itself. Far be it from me to shy away from the harsh light of intellectual curiosity which renders the urge to avoid any association with acts deemed mindless, in pursuit of the almighty reason for breaking things down
into more bite-size bits
no less cryptic
although maybe less
drastic
hardly fantastic
teasing along
like a favorite song
fragments of hints
memory-like glints
reasons for following
the words down a path
around underground
as if through a looking-glass
one that mirrors a soul
with a newfangled feature
like the future should hold
that tells a hard truth
we don’t want to unfold
it’s why we all hide
or collapse in the grasp
of rambling run-on sentences with nary a subject with which we can latch for tracking the topic that never seems to arrive with a pleasing dispatch that rewards our incredible diligence for having the strength to hold on all the way to the end in hope something will bring with it that warm fuzzy feeling like a hug from a friend who we are happy to see in spite of all else and we forget for a moment that the reason is not clear for forgiving ourselves and we let down our guard and just let it all be, while we pause for a moment, and smile from our hearts toward whomever we see.
Just Write
“Just write,” I was told. So, write is what I did.
Sometimes, I just ramble on and on about things that don’t even make much sense to me. One standard instruction to writing students is, “Write what you know.” Maybe that is why I write things I don’t understand. I know all too well about how little I really know.
Usually, my writing is something of a composition of sounds that form in my head. Songs, without the music. Prose.
Trying to navigate the plethora of trivial minutiae that presents itself at a steady, heady pace on a daily basis amid the unending onslaught of news being reported about the scale of unimaginably real calamity that has befallen our fellow humans after a devastating earthquake that was bad enough on its own, yet amped up beyond comprehension by a tsunami that, as time passes, is at risk of being diminished in significance by an unprecedented nuclear event that is threatening to live up to the worst case scenario that brilliant minds have been warning about since the time this dangerous science of monkeying with radioactive substances became harnessed to create electric power that enables the manufacture and use of uncountable options for plugging in devices to occupy our attention and complicate the simplest of tasks by transforming them into increasingly bizarre rituals of detaching ourselves from the real world and bringing on a mind-numbing amount of new trivial minutiae that mysteriously becomes the master of our precariously fractured attention span which makes it difficult to mentally process what the people are currently suffering while all around us are nuisance ailments and ridiculous inconveniences mixing in with usual responsibilities of remembering to put the trash out or turning the lights off at a decent hour in order to get a healthy night’s sleep in order to carry out our little morsel of responsibility to society, since we can’t just give up and stop living because the people in Japan have been warned to stay inside their homes to avoid exposure to radiation, even though they don’t have a home to go into because a giant wall of water obliterated everything in sight and they are living a stone age existence without the convenience of plugging in their hair dryers or plying their skills of virtual bowling on their Wii and instead are wandering around in search of living relatives in a way that exposes how important family must truly be at a time when there is nothing to plug in and no where to plug it in and no power available even if you did plug it in the way we do in places where disaster has yet to strike and life goes on as if nothing so extraordinary is likely to happen as long as we navigate the plethora of trivial minutiae that presents itself at a steady, heady pace on a daily basis…
.
.
Falling Short
Strings of random electrons that turn out to be not so random often lead me to create something out of what I thought was absolutely nothing and I have been known to exclaim to Cyndie that absolutely nothing is precisely all I’ve got when I have been sitting in front of my computer for an extended period of time. Some weird law of the universe seems to have it that the times it most seems like I’ve got nothin’ just happen to be the very times that real gems will materialize. Sometimes I just need to get out of the way.
You never know what is going to happen next. Conversely, if I try too hard, or find that I have developed certain expectations for a result, the outcome has a high probability of falling short.
It’s a balancing act. Isn’t everything? We are all some version of the tight rope walker.
I’m not sure why I insist on practicing with my eyes closed.
May you find yourself in complete balance today, without needing to try hard at all. A real gem just might materialize for you, when you least expect it.
Flowing Thoughts
I apologize in advance for my decision to allow some words to flow unabated, but this is one of those times when I haven’t come up with a specific subject worth writing about and so as an exercise in freeing myself from the logical center of my thinking and all the usual censors of common sense for communicating in a conventional manner, I allow the words to tumble out in a stream of conscious flurry that for some reason involves a distinct aversion to happening in concise, pleasing-to-read sentence structure. It brings to mind the fact that it reflects all of nature and time in that none of that ever pauses in the way we do with our little dot at the end of each grammatical phrase. The earth just spins and spins and light fades to dark so fast sometimes it boggles my mind and then in a blink it is daylight again and critters and little children are skittering about with irrepressible energy to explore their world as if this might be the last chance to do so, probably sensing that for centuries people have been conjuring ideas that our existence is doomed and some apocalyptic event will unleash horrific wrath as if something we earned or at least somehow deserve and it may just be thoughts like that which allow entire tribes of people to become so fixated on their fears and hatred that they will do everything in their power to avoid peace settlements which normal logic sees as twisted because peace makes so much more sense in the way that a calm sunny day compares to a dark and stormy one. Do you see how an untethered mind will wander to the angst which can be the wrong place for a mind to dwell and therefore effort does need to be made toward correcting the path of the stream of thinking toward a plane of hope that allows for a vast landscape of happy, healthy ideation in which possibilities abound and where reality is still well within grasp so that it doesn’t turn out to be some frilly false front of fantastic, but a seriously great accomplishment of truly healthy being and that is something that can be managed on an individual basis and with some luck there are moments when enough healthy logical individuals come together to impact our world in a way which adds value for the masses and not just in the way a group of athletes do when they surmount all obstacles and beat the odds to triumph and claim the top prize in their sport, but in a way that entire nations succeed in doing right for all citizens and supporting the human rights of people and animals and when doing so finding that everyone wins, not just the greedy financial wizards who devise ways to dupe the system… oops, there it goes again. See what I mean? So much for that exercise. I’m considering going back to normal sentences. As if that will solve things. I suppose it can’t hurt. Hope that was relative something. It’s what I am offering today. It is Labor Day weekend here and I am up at my favorite place. I’m going to go see what the day brings. Thanks for stopping by. Happy Sunday to you!
A Simple Trick
It is a bit of an understatement to call it a bit of a trick to describe in words, the thoughts that float like wisps of cloud through the catacombs of consciousness in a mind never trained to think in the same way as others who’ve endured years of direction to align and compartmentalize mental activity with almost military precision. Unrestrained, the result is some pretty wicked sentence structure, often with too much going on all at once which hardly allows a casual reader the simple courtesy of effortlessly gliding through the reading while simultaneously drinking their coffee and snacking on a treat to the background sounds of someone talking to them about an entirely different subject while the usual ambient noise of the television or a favorite Broadway musical soundtrack drowns out the monotone vibration of the droning fan bashing the humid summer air filled with clattering chipmunks chirps that compete with the squawking and tweeting whistles of the birds that seem to be earnestly carrying out their business with critical incident importance. It’s as if there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to capture the images of faces, let alone expressions on faces, and places, real and imagined, that materialize intangibly in mind-space at a rate of speed that would be mind boggling if a mind were able to disassociate itself long enough to discern such a thing. Then, smack dab in the middle of such a barrage of mental imagery, there appears the understandable interruption of thought along the lines of detached curiosity for the indescribable probability of explaining the origin for so many ‘out of context’ subjects surfacing without anything resembling logic for the train of thinking currently barreling along. With any luck at all, cloaked within all those brainwaves vibrating along, there resides a contiguous thread of an objective idea that slithers along until it grows legs that bring it to the launchpad of realization to blossom like the smile of a pretty girl that suddenly grows into a laugh. At that point, all that remains to be done is execute the simple trick of describing it succinctly and accurately with words. Succeed with that, and some artist just might come along to take it from there and turn it into a movie. The thought of that is absolutely brilliant, yet at the same time, just plain wrong.
Mental Manipulation
You can’t put a genie back in the bottle. We are far beyond the point of no return.
You can smile at the person you find yourself with today.
You can choose to do what is right in each situation.
Take a look at the raindrops with awe.
We can see things differently today, from the way we perceived them yesterday.
We can’t undo what has already been done.
We can do something new, something brilliant.
Or something simple.
Problems are rarely simple. They are complex
We like to give problems a name and devise a single solution.
Then we get frustrated when we can’t make it work.
But simple just might be the secret to solving our plight.
Simply consider other ways to look at the world,
Like from within the shoes of another.
Imagine for a minute or two,
If each one of us, weren’t the center of the universe as we know it.
Tight Corners
There is something right around the corner and you can just sense that it will influence your otherwise uneventful experience of late. But there is no corner. Why do we say things like, “The corner of my mind?” Metaphoric corners are rolling around us all the time. The word “corner” looks just fine until you focus on the word “corn” and then you get that strange feeling that it doesn’t look like a correctly spelled word at all. How is it that our mind can suddenly see a group of characters of the alphabet in such a way that the word formed looks totally nonsensical? I have found myself pausing in disbelief at the word, “then” as if there were no way it could possibly be a word, even though logic led me to carry on as if it must be legitimate. This might explain why I have neglected to master a second language all these years. I can hardly maintain order in my head with the words of the language I grew up speaking.
Any credit for understanding the English language should go to my ears and the blessing of having parents who spoke properly. When rules of grammar were being taught in grade school, I quickly discovered that the correct answer was simply the one that sounded right to me. Unfortunately, that means I didn’t ever really memorize the actual rules of grammar. That will be visible in my writing style, where I often opt for choosing to lay out a sentence in a manner that reflects how it sounds to me when spoken, which sometimes turns out to be grammatically incorrect.
I still find myself occasionally choosing to follow a few grammar rules that result in written sentences sounding different than the way I would actually say things, but it is because there are times when doing so just reads better. I credit that to the reading I do and how I ‘hear’ the words written by professional journalists. I don’t know if everyone ‘listens’ to the words and sentences they read in their mind to the same extent that I do. (I think it makes me a slower reader.) I have a tendency to mimic what I see and hear, for better or worse. My writing will tend to reflect the writing of others that appeal to me.
When I edit, I don’t always know what is correct for a given sentence, but I usually sense when it just doesn’t sound right. I credit my parents for the way they spoke and also for their habit of having a radio or television on where I heard broadcasts of WCCO and dialects that most closely matched what I found to read in published works. I have no idea what led me to start thinking about things like corners of a mind or why I see things from a somewhat skewed vantage point at times. I guess it’s just a relative point of view. Relative to something.
Relatively Less
Less is more. Really. Trust me.
I don’t want to muddy it up with superfluous details.
Short and to the point, that’s the ticket. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
It is also handy to have a point, when you are making a point. That can make all the difference.
It doesn’t hurt to deliver the message with a smile.
But most of all, have a point. Really. Trust me.
If I had a point right now, I’d offer an example for you.
Unfortunately, I’ve got nothing. Nada. Zip.
You can’t get much less than that.
It’s a good thing less is more.
Sometimes, it’s all I’ve got.
It’s all relative, something.
How Hard?
How hard could it have been to accomplish what it was we set out to do the first time we landed one of those moments of inspiration that transcend the usual impulse to disavow any knowledge of the reason for following more of our intuition than logic reasonably allows? Not that I know anything about that. For all the solutions that appear to fit the formula for fixing the multitude of sins, it ends up being the least anticipated outcome that evades our lucky glance and smashes into view unannounced behind a shower of highly volatile serendipity that is casually disregarded in a quest to out-think surprises for some vain simulation of what we think reality is supposed to be. Slowly, but surely, the rest of what is destined to transpire, in spite of our noble attempts to engineer obedient allowance, falls precisely where it would obviously land anyway, whether or not we try to orchestrate it. Having the stamina to outwait the ultimate momentum of outcomes is like knowing the secret of which one of the many answers is the actual meaning of everything that is anything. How hard is it to mine the courage to become better than that which could easily be considered adequate by all standards? It hides within the smile that is shared, as much as with the eyes as with the whole of the rest of our being and shines much farther than we ever imagine might be possible. Or not. It’s hard to tell for sure from this angle.
Latest Behavior Pattern
It’s the cat. I’m generally of a mind not to go on and on about our cat, Kitty. I’m not really a cat guy. Many people have come to believe I’m not a pet guy at all. Not true. Well, not accurate. I’m not a pet guy of the suburban house, pet on a leash, critters in cages type. If we lived in a rural area, I’m pretty sure we would have had dogs. But the issue I’m not wanting to go on and on about is all about Kitty.
Kitty was certainly not my idea. She was a Valentine present to the kids from my wife. I just allowed it to not be a battle I would wage. For the sake of the family, I would tolerate living with a cat for a while. How long is a while?
Now the kids are grown and gone, yet the cat remains. She must be growing lonely as heck. All day long there is no one to play with. By the time I get home in the evening, she is starved for attention and loiters underfoot wherever I turn. And she meows. A lot. It is as if there might be a way to annoy a person who is not a cat type. Welcome to my world. I was clueless about all the details that Berkeley Breathed’s character creation, “Bill the Cat,” embodied, in the comic “Bloom County”, but I really, really loved it. Aack! Now I understand it to a whole new depth.
Turns out that our Kitty happens to be one of those classic vomiting felines. We get the full range from coughing up a fur ball to emptying the contents of her stomach for no apparent reason. Ack.
I recall a time when the cat was in her early years with us, Kitty would sometimes climb under the covers and sleep with Elysa. For the most part, Kitty has never been a lap cat. She never generally tolerated much in the way of extended contact with a person. Now, that has changed again. For whatever reason, Kitty now has a persistent urge to climb in bed with me, under the covers to sleep against my body. It was quite a surprise the first time, and then a little cute the second time. I never got around to plying the art of discouraging the behavior and now it seems to be her compulsion every night. If I fail to provide easy access, I get the meow cries, any time of the night she decides she wants in. One night when I was too tired to bother acknowledging her, she added pawing at me while she meowed. Just what I always wanted!
I am contemplating what level I would need to raise the reward to for the first child that finds the cat a new home. It’s becoming an increasingly likely ploy for me since the morning last weekend when I discovered some pieces of cat litter in our bed after one of her midnight rambles to and fro while I had tried to sleep. Lovely. Ack.
Relative Something 