Writing 200 Blog Post 20 - The Witching Hour

Why do I do my best writing at 2:30 AM? 

It seems that there's something about obscenely late nights that unleashes the muse on my brain. It could be written off as a few isolated instances, but if my count is correct, two out of the last three times I've been up that late have resulted in two of my favorite poems I've ever written. It's pretty touchy-feely stuff, not the sort of pragmatic prose I usually feature here. For instance, here's a stanza in the most recent addition to my nocturnal canon:

"Every current that puts us in motion

Is one step approaching the end

But we can’t sit here stagnant, in fear of the ocean

And knowing we’re rounding the bend"

Looking back on it, I might replace "current" with "oar-stroke" or something similar, which adds more agency to the setting in motion while sticking with the nautical theme. But other than minor changes like that, I'm struck by how much I enjoy these raw, unedited outpourings of my sleep-deprived mind. It almost feels as though they're written by someone else, as though even the memory of my fingers hitting the keys must be some sort of illusion.

Perhaps I'm less guarded when my mind is in this state. The poems I tap into my Notes app at stupid-o'clock are, even more than most of my other writing, intrinsically personal and private. I never expect to share them (and this is the first time I have, even in part.) This alone—a lowering of my rational guardrails, a baring of the soul in creativity—might explain why I love to reflect on this work. But the explanation could be even simpler than that.

I often find that once these flurries of nighttime scribbling are over, I'm able to go to sleep. So perhaps the insomnia itself is somewhat a result of an idea I needed to get off my chest. This seems to better explain the urgent nature of the writing, as that also happens at more decent hours when inspiration strikes harder than usual.

Whatever it is, at least it gives some value to being awake that late.

Writing 200 Blog Post 19 - Viscera

Leave behind these phantoms

These weightless shapeshifting images

That fill you vision and leave you wondering what lies beyond

Yet too scared to even look

Leave behind the soft embraces of these quiet deaths

That pull you in closely, whisper that you’ll be okay

That you never have to leave their caresses

That you are where you need to be

Leave them. Throw their arms off yourself. Run.

Plunge into the cold soft viscera of the world

Into its labyrinthine crevices, its echoing canyons

Into the sun. Bask

In the shade of a grey overpass adorned with metal trees

Whose limbs will never know the feet of birds

Then venture further and find the things themselves

Their tangled wood and moss and dead and dying leaves.

Find that the sum of a million imperfections and shortcomings

Is something no human mind could conceive. Something 

That lacks nothing. Not a representation, but real.

Find that you stand amidst it, that you are swallowed up.

Reach out and touch the solid roughness 

Of the world. Feel the undying energy of the river

And the slow unstoppable flow of the seasons.

Weep for each death and celebrate each new life.

And return. The phantoms still haunt you,

Still wrap their clinging hands around your neck

But they’re faded. No danger lies in their eyes

Only emptiness. Finally, see the vapor of their promises.

Know that they can be escaped, if not killed

That they can be ignored, if not erased

That you can live a life in which they recede into the shadows

All but gone, all but dead.

And know that they will never tarnish the things that are real

That their insubstantial essences are impotent

They writhe, shadow-boxing. You stand apart

A part of the world of people, places, things.

The images are dark and twisted but is that the fault of the world?

Somewhere these ghosts become not photographs

But paintings that feature your fears of what might be

Fears that forgot what is.

Writing 200 Blog Post 18 - More Poetry

Nothing ventured, nothing lost

A pin falls as the curtains cross

Concealing every motion on the stage

Every thought and every word

Stays in hiding; lost, absurd

Revealing nothing but my silent rage

Tales of excess, tales of loss

Burnt by fire, bit by frost

Ever seeking, never finding. Sing!

Into our indifference:

Watch the senseless finding sense

Laugh at all your lovely vanished things

Weave the cloth of doubt and fear

Soft with silk and pull it near

Shroud your eyes with everything you hate

For if you keep your enemies

Closer than the ones you need

You'll never have to open up the gate

Never have to say goodbye

Through the veil the shapes go by

Distinct as summer days that melt to one.

Never, in the future, now

Consigned to let somebody down

Just rest alone. Forever. Is it done?

Can this eternal moment end?

The fleeting present shall extend

And fill my plans as far as I can see

But someday, will I reach a cliff?

My legs grow tired, my feet grow stiff

And plunge into the darkness, mon ami?

Well, now we're mixing metaphors

Of course we are. With death and force

Surrounding this last bastion of the heart

No plan remains to win this fight

Save feeble, flickering human light

A candle held and thrown into the dark

We watch in silence as it falls

Forever it seems, like Echo's calls

Unanswered, unrequited, unconfessed

But then this weak and wavering sign

Ignites a wick, and thousands shine

The stars appear in force from the abyss

And though the lighting still is dim

Our feet appear. The path is thin

But clear. We know, we've always known the way

Forgotten, yes, at times we left

Our feet traced circles all bereft

But never quite abandoned it to stay

And now we march in confidence

We trace the scores of aging prints

And add our fresh ones, follow one by one

The sun shall rise (though who knows when)

And all shall be at peace again

For now we fight, but know the battle's won.

Writing 200 Blog Post 17 - Publication

What are your thoughts on the predicted demise of traditional book publication? Rely on this week’s reading—or other information you’ve uncovered—in your answer. And, do these seismic changes make you despair as a writer, or do you see changes in publication as a boon for new writers?

Taking a cynical view of technology for the sake of a presentation a couple weeks back has given me a different light on this question. My group argued that the greater accessibility given to modern authors—meaning essentially everyone since the advent of the printing press—has had a negative effect. I don't actually believe this; I'm of the pretty basic opinion that hearing a wider range of voices is a good thing. In fact, taking this cynical view as a devil's advocate gave me a more positive view of the advances in publication in recent years.

For one thing, there's the bias we've heard about in publishing houses. Whether it's identity-based biases (like giving awards exclusively to white men from Western countries) or even those based on the publishing tradition (like not taking risks on books that break too many conventions), publishing still isn't equally accessible. New technologies like online review aggregators and the easy, cheap self-publishing outlets have made this barrier to entry significantly lower, and as the decisions on which books make it are further democratized, perhaps the cream will rise to the top.

Then again, maybe it's better to leave the early decisions to experts. After all, the books that make it into readers' hands will always be determined somehow—if not by publishers, then by librarians, booksellers, influencers—even the algorithms that determine which influencers individuals see, and which books appear on online marketplaces. Is casting the decision into the hands of an amorphous, inscrutable social web really superior to leaving it to a respected institution, albeit one that has some issues? Or is the devil we know better than the devil we don't?

Whatever becomes of traditional publishing, I don't think the shakeups in the years ahead will be any greater than those in the past. And, as has become far easier to recognize in the last few years, history is constantly being made. Writers will survive, and if the past is any indication, more and more will continue to emerge.

Writing 200 Blog Post 16 - Trees, Part II

If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound? I used to think this was a rhetorical question, or at least an obvious one. Of course it does. The laws of nature don’t change when humans are watching. The air is just as capable of propagating sound waves, the tree just as sure to create them. Problem solved—a resounding yes. Now I’m not so sure. A strange confluence of factors has arisen in the past week to make me doubt what I once took to be self-evident. First, I watched a video about quantum entanglement and learned that my first premise—that the physical world doesn’t work differently under observation—is apparently false. Next, I started reading a new book, The World as Will and Representation. I haven’t gotten too far into it, but the first few pages have been dense. Among the points made so far is this puzzling statement: A subject (“that which knows all things and is known by none,” e.g. a human consciousness) and its object (“all that appears,” e.g. a tree falling) cannot exist independently of each other. This calls into question not only whether unobserved events happen predictably, but whether they happen at all. And finally—after this blog post began, actually—I started thinking about the word “sound.” I originally thought of it as a purely physical phenomenon, but is that really what the word means? Or is “sound” intrinsically meshed together with “hearing?” To ask the question the opposite way, can hearing exist without sound? If not, why be so sure of the converse? This gets at an equally sticky philosophical question that I’ve encountered specifically in the work of Sartre: does unrealized potential—like the potential of a sound to be heard or the potential of an ear to hear—truly exist? I really don’t know how valid my doubt based on quantum entanglement is, since a 20-minute video didn’t make me an expert, but the latter two seem to be well-established and unresolved metaphysical questions. Had I thought to visit the question’s Wikipedia page before today, I would have seen the first one listed. There’s no resolution to this post. In fact, the resolution came first. I was smugly happy to be so sure of my answer before today, and now my world is shattering. Even the premise of the question is unclear. Can a tree fall in the forest when no one’s around? Does the forest exist? Do I exist? I still want to say yes. But why? If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to give it a name, is it a tree?

WRIT 200 Blog Post 15 - Grammar

What do you think? What role should the instruction of grammar play in the writing classroom? Does the type of writing classroom influence whether—and to what degree—writing should be taught?

Formal education in grammar is a fond but distant memory for me.  Diagramming sentences, absentmindedly humming Schoolhouse Rock, and knowing what a preposition is are behind me now. But reading about grammar education this week brought those memories back, and along with them came thoughts on whether that education benefited me in the long run. I can't know, of course, how life would have been different without grammar instruction. Would I have spent more time writing? Would I have picked up on the rules on my own? It's impossible to say. However, I do think understanding the concepts of grammar has helped me.

Primarily, I believe I'm a better editor for having learned grammar in a classroom setting. Those who picked up on it naturally may be just as able to see something that feels grammatically wrong in a paper or other text, but understanding why it's wrong allows me to communicate that to the author in others' writing, and to more swiftly address it in my own. 

This self-correcting impulse may also help me write more correctly in a first draft, though sometimes that takes the form of unproductive editing that interrupts my writing to address minor errors that would easily be fixed later on. 

Based on how I see my grammar education at play in my writing today, here's my attempt at a middle ground on the debate: Teachers should focus on allowing time for composition over memorizing parts of speech and grammar rules, but should give personalized feedback that addresses errors in students' work with explanations of why they're wrong. Teachers could even give personalized quizzes on a student's common mistakes to check their conceptual progress throughout the year.

This may be less practicable in a classroom with many students, but catering grammar education to those areas a student isn't picking up naturally would minimize the time it takes away from composition and maximize the benefit for each student. 

Writing 200 Blog Post 14 - Trees

The tree is rotting. 

Where we used to place our hands for support, the wood has grown soft and crumbled, each brush of a hand eroding deeper and deeper. The branches are looking ever more fragile. Leaves are growing sparse, fewer returning each spring.

It's a paradox, how as things grow older they grow closer to death, and yet we take their existence so much for granted. When we built that treehouse in the limb that fell last summer, it wasn't supposed to be temporal. Or at the least, it was supposed to become a memento, its weathered planks growing to match its host in dignity. But the three winters it saw weren't even enough to grey the wood. 

Yes, all trees will die eventually, but not this one in particular. Not so soon. It must have been hundreds of years, since before the roads and houses were there to be escaped. Back when this damp, green quietude was expected. When other giants loomed in the canopy above.

No one was here to see it be born. And if they had been, would they have noticed? It was just another shoot back then, like the dozens around its roots now. How many of those will grow to stand so tall and broad, with the rest of the forest keeping a respectful distance? How many will even grow tall enough to climb?

The tree is rotting.

How long will passers-by see the spectacle of death just now beginning? It can't last forever, but it must be years at least before the mass of its body can be absorbed. The two of us together can hardly stretch our arms around it, after all. How long until those final rings in its center, the ones that have been hidden away for centuries, finally see the air in a last dying moment?

The corpses of its relatives are lying around us. Slowly reentering the ground, but for now out in the open. Not empty shells to be hidden away, but meaningful, beautiful things passing on to another stage of being.

They will leave no skeletons.