Samhain Winter Moon
An unsubtle irony. All those people bent over their phones, heads down, eyes focused on another world, the cyberworld, have become tiny islands, connected to seas not in evidence, influenced by information and persons not present. It is as if gatherings of people have become insular, the very islands which we were not supposed to able to be, at least among those to whom we are physically present, but functionally absent.
| — | Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy |
| — | R.W. Emerson |
| — | The Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvoir |
| — | Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon |
| — | Enemies, Anton Chekhov |
| — | R.W. Emerson |
Charles Darwin in letter to friend: “But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everyone and everything.”
| — | R.W. Emerson |
Samhain Winter Moon
Carlson Toyota. Getting the Rav4 oil changed and 30,000 mile diagnostics. It was a busy Friday afternoon, not as I had hoped. My reasoning went that if I got there before 3 pm I should be ahead of the after work crowd. The reasoning probably wasn’t wrong exactly, but the conclusion I’d drawn was. Other old folks were in there with their cars along with mothers with young children, all the folks that have available time in the afternoon like I do.
The crowd at Carlson has a much more diverse feel than its Anoka County location might suggest. Yes, we’re a pretty white county in a pretty white state, but Carlson employs many Hmong and Vietnamese as mechanics (technicians) and back office workers. When I spend time waiting for an oil change, it’s always clear that the customer base is 15-25% asian. Not all Hmong or Vietnamese either. A few Chinese and Koreans as well and today, in a beautifully colorful winter hat, I spied my first Tibetan there. African-Americans are less frequent, but they are there.
I watched one young African-American going over his bill, in detail, with a tall asian woman who looked Chinese. She had a full head of black falling curls and at first, from a distance, I thought she was African-American, but when the encounter finished she headed back to her office and her asian features were apparent. It is after all an asian car company and I suppose that has some influence.
Having a lot of time, an hour plus, much of which I spent reading Toppling Qaddafi, a change in behavior that everyone knows but goes little remarked was the shoulders slightly hunched, head bowed prayerfully, fingers flicking over the small hand held computer we insist on calling a phone. This behavior is so common that it seems ordinary yet even 5 years ago it would have been unusual to see almost all of the adults in the waiting area, maybe 30 people, at one point or another assuming this position.
Almost does not include a certain contingent of older white males who either had constraint or had not yet entered the smartphone era. Kate hasn’t. Below that strata though, everybody had their phone out at some point.
Though the screen of choice for me was my kindle paperwhite, I still dutifully checked my e-mail, the weather and my calendar. I rarely use the phone app, but I’m right there praying to the wireless gods to bring me good information, soon. Right now.
Oh. Yeah. Oil change. Multi-point inspection. Changing of air filters in the cabin. The cabin. When the did the front seat area become a cabin? Other various lubes, fluids and filling tires with air. $152. Worth it because a well-maintained Toyota is a thing of beauty forever. Well, maybe a thing of transportation for ever. Still a good deal.
Samhain Winter Moon
I needed the philosophical last night because the cards ran strong against me at sheepshead. Near the end I picked on weak hands just to have a part in the game.
The current state of my reimagined faith is a lumpy stew, made of bits from here and there, but that in itself may be a sign of the transitional time in which we live, a transition from Enlightenment certainty to the post-modern uncertain, from Modern meta-narratives that guided life to post-modern personal narratives.
What would a more compact version look like? The Great Wheel positions us in this world and affirms our part in an ongoing and ever renewing cycle of life. This cycle allows us to see that our efforts are not futile or meaningless, but additive and communal. In both the additive and communal senses our life work can (should?) enrich our own lives and the lives of others. An important, even central, aspect of this work right now involves creation of a sustainable human footprint on planet Earth.
That’s not bad.
Samhain Winter Moon
Started using Dramatica this morning, entering characters, thinking about plot progression and story points. It forced me into a new way of considering the task of writing a novel, something I want. If you’re not pushing, you’re going backwards.
It also intimidates me. My confidence level is never at its highest with writing, but I decided a while back to stick with it, keep on typing. With Missing I focused on revision.
With Loki’s Children I plan to focus on the craft, creating interesting characters who do things you want to follow and taking the story to a satisfying conclusion. I’ve considered those things before, of course, they’re basic, but I’ve never given them attention before writing. I always dove right in.
The new novel feeling for me is like standing on a path that leads into a distant land, a place mostly invisible, over the horizon and writing moves me along the path, opening up new vistas, new experiences as I go. It’s a lot like travel, maybe exactly like it. I leave home, familiar territory, behind and go off to see how they do things far away. And I report back about what I find.
Spent more time with Lycaon this morning, too. Here’s a snippet, still requires some work, but it shows the heart of Lycaon’s crime. It’s Jupiter who is speaking:
He had planned to destroy me,
225 weighted with sleep and not expecting dark death.
226 He is not yet measured against my strength: one of the race of Molossa
227 Was put to death for an ambush, his throat opened by a sword.
228 A portion of him softens, half-dead joints in
229 Boiling water, another portion roasted by placing under the fire.
Samhain Winter Moon
Space junkie? This virtual tour of the space shuttle discovery will amaze you.
Samhain Winter Moon
By tomorrow I’ll have a first pass at a polished translation of Lycaon to post here. I say first pass because it will represent my best translation from the Latin, trying to use English to communicate the sense and sensibility of Ovid’s poetry. Meter, at this point anyhow, is beyond me, so it will be more prose than poetry though I’m going to keep it in stanzas and verses.
A second pass will involve going over the translation again with a thesaurus and other translations, looking for ideas and phrasing that might change my mind about how to approach a particular verse. Then, I’ll produce another translation. That one I plan to discuss in some depth with Greg. When I’ve finished with him, I might send it to a Latin scholar or two for an outside reaction.
Once I feel comfortable with my approach, I’ll tuck into the same process for as much of the whole work as I decide to tackle. At some point, soon, I want to return to De Rerum Natura because it seemed pretty interesting and Lucretius’ Latin is different from Ovid’s.
First off today though is back into the research for Loki’s Children.
Samhain Winter Moon
Put together a banker’s box of manuscripts used during the several revisions of Missing. That cleaned out a full shelf. Back at Loki’s Children. Listened to a fascinating BBC podcast on Norse mythology, organized my research. There are these very different phases to writing a novel, for me at least.
The first involves the idea beginning to grow, like sugar crystal building a new shape on a suspended piece of string. The shapes are not uniform and they can look sharp. Then research begins to consume the development time. The crystals have now begun to build one on another and the whole string has some small, sweet projection. At some point the research seems done. The string is pulled out of the water.
The second phase is more like a snake eating. The research and the character ideas and the plot ideas somehow inform the fingers as they type, chewing up this piece of data, consuming that idea that seemed good, sliding the whole body around undigestable information. This is the preliminary draft, perhaps the first draft or some less clear very early version. It has to sit for awhile, like the snake in the sun, letting the warmth drive digestion.
After this phase or the next one, which ever produces first draft, after the drawer (shelf in my case) has made those words less familiar, more removed, a first revision can occur. At this point the story begins to become clearer, the characters take on more life. Occasionally, there’s the happy moment. Hey, I wrote that. Or, more often, there’s the oh, god, I wrote that moment. Most of it is in between.
After the rock crystal phase and the snake phase, comes the sculptural phase. The first two phases are additive, like clay sculpture, where shape builds up on an armature or free form until the desired result. This third phase, revision, is more like subtractive sculpture, where the artist removes wood or marble to, as Michelangelo’s cliche suggests, reveal the object already there. It’s not exactly like subtractive sculpture because, unlike marble, a manuscript can take additions as well as subtractions, but the emphasis is usually on what’s not necessary.
This plot line doesn’t serve the story. This character is unnecessary. This whole chapter can go and nobody will be harmed. Of course, there are, too, those additional descriptions, enhanced motivations, now needed scenes. In the case of Missing I cut out 30,000 words and ended up with a word count roughly the same as the one I started with.
I’m now waiting for Bob Klein to finish and then there will be the work of assimilating his critiques and finishing a last draft before submission. In January, Missing will start its journey into the world.
Samhain Winter Moon
My comment to this NYT’s article:
I have taken and completed four MOOC’s. And, yes, I have a degree(s).
32,000 enrolled in my last course. It lasted 10 weeks and let’s go with the 4% completion. That’s 1,200 students who completed the class, more than would fit the largest lecture hall course in the U.S., one with teachers and teacher’s aides.
That MOOC’s have not delivered on the dream of widely distributed high quality education says little. They’re barely two years old. How long did it take for the current bricks and mortar campus to become normative? And, that was a long time ago.
The MOOC’s are an excellent tool, but that’s all they are. There is not yet a coherent enough catalog of courses for the equivalent of a college major (except perhaps in computer related courses).
This tool will be used to build the educational system of the future, I’m sure of it. Will they be the only tool? No, but the high quality of the MOOC’s I’ve taken, two from U. Penn, one from Wesleyan and one from Hong Kong University have shown me the potential they have for excellence. It will be the excellence they deliver, combined with some clustering of students, mentoring, use of MOOCs in already existing educational systems and as yet undreamed of support apparatus that will deliver them more broadly.
And, it will happen.
Samhain Winter Moon
-12. 81. 72. 34. 35. 14. Andover. Singapore. Muhayil, Saudi Arabia. Mihailesti, Romania. Montgomery, Alabama. Denver, Colorado.
Mary and I talked today, she near her bedtime while I ate a quick breakfast. 7:30 am here while 9:30 pm there. It’s a big planet.
(Thanksgiving 2013, Singapore)
Having close family members scattered around the world affords an occasional window on quirks in places far from the center of North America. Mary reports that Thanksgiving has taken hold in Singapore, colleagues say to her, “Happy Thanksgiving!” and many Singaporeans celebrate with a big meal. Thanksgiving has no religious roots and its secular coloring is very faint, the whole pilgrim/indian thing long ago and perhaps apocryphal anyhow. It’s emphasis on food, family and gratitude could travel well into any culture.
Halloween and Christmas are also big in Singapore with Mary reminding me of the lights by Hitachi that go up on Orchard Road, lights that I saw when I visited in early November, 2004.
There is one holiday transfer that puzzles me. Mary says St. Patrick’s day is big, too. And, people wear green and go to bars and drink green beer. In this case Chinese and Indian people, maybe even a few Malays, too. Maybe it’s seen as a spring holiday?
(St. Pat’s 2013 Singapore)
Mark is in his third week of classes in Muhayil, Saudi Arabia. He reports that many of his students leave class early to go home and eat kabsa. “Kabsa (Arabic: كبسة kabsah) is a family of rice dishes that are served mostly in Saudi Arabia — where it is commonly regarded as a national dish. Kabsa, though, is believed to be indigenous to Yemen.” Wiki.