Tag Archives: reading

Logos and the Summer Reading List   (2016Jul05)

Posted by XperDunn on

Tuesday, July 05, 2016                                             1:03 PM

Kindle Purchases as of July 5, 2016:

Title    Author

Super Extra Grande                                                         Yoss

Infomocracy: A Novel                                                    Malka Older

Mechanical Failure (Epic Failure Book 1)                 Joe Zieja

Illuminae (The Illuminae Files)                                   Amie Kaufman

Porgy                                                                                 Dubose Heyward

Shakespeare’s Sonnets                                                     William Shakespeare

Wandering Stars                                                              Sholem Aleichem

The Noise of Time: A novel                                           Julian Barnes

Into Everywhere                                                              Paul McAuley

Something Coming Through                                         Paul McAuley

Little Machines                                                                Paul McAuley

Insistence of Vision: Stories                                          David Brin

The Technician (A Novel of Polity)                             Neal Asher

Dark Intelligence (Transformations)                           Neal Asher

Not Alone                                                                          Craig A. Falconer

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories                     Ken Liu

Ruined (TCG Edition)                                                     Lynn Nottage

As Good as New: A Tor.Com Original                        Charlie Jane Anders

Six Months, Three Days: A Tor.Com Original           Charlie Jane Anders

The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model                Charlie Jane Anders

Hello World                                                                     Peter Cawdron

This Long Vigil (A Short Story)                                     Rhett C Bruno

Saturn Run                                                                        John Sandford

Against a Dark Background                                           Iain M. Banks

Excession                                                                           Iain M. Banks

The State of the Art                                                          Iain M. Banks

Use of Weapons (A Culture Novel Book 3)                Iain M. Banks

The Player of Games (A Culture Novel Book 2)       Iain M. Banks

Been There, Run That                                                     Koplovitz

Apex: Nexus Trilogy Book 3 (Nexus Arc)                   Ramez Naam

The Artificial Kid                                                            Bruce Sterling

Seeds of a New Birth (Kindred Series Book 1)           Orrin Jason Bradford

The End of All Things (Old Man’s War Book 6)       John Scalzi

The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past)      Cixin Liu

Among Others (Hugo Award -Best Novel) Jo Walton

101 Great American Poems(Dover Thrift Eds)         Am.Poetry&Lit Project

Armada: A novel                                                              Ernest Cline

The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age Book 3)    John C. Wright

The Phoenix Exultant: (Golden Age, Book 2)            John C. Wright

The Golden Age                                                               John C. Wright

Idempotency                                                                    Joshua Wright

To Stand or Fall: The End of All Things #4                John Scalzi

Can Long Endure: The End of All Things #3              John Scalzi

This Hollow Union: The End of All Things #2          John Scalzi

The Life of the Mind: The End of All Things #1        John Scalzi

Mysterium                                                                        Robert Charles Wilson

A Bridge of Years                                                             Robert Charles Wilson

Pandora’s Brain                                                                Calum Chace

Schild’s Ladder                                                                 Greg Egan

The Girl With All the Gifts                                            M. R. Carey

The Turing Exception (Singularity Series Book 4)    William Hertling

The Last Firewall (Singularity Series Book 3)            William Hertling

A.I. Apocalypse (Singularity Series Book 2)              William Hertling

Avogadro Corp: TS.. (Singularity Series Book 1)       William Hertling

Nexus (The Nexus Trilogy Book 1)                              Ramez Naam

Crux (The Nexus Trilogy Book 2)                                 Ramez Naam

Cards of Grief                                                                   Jane Yolen

The Alien Chronicles (The Future Chronicles)          Hugh Howey

The Essence of Aptitude (CorpusChronicles Bk1)    Esha Bajaj

The Defeatist                                                                     Sophie Bowns

The Fold: A Novel                                                           Peter Clines

(R)evolution (Phoenix Horizon Book 1)                    PJ Manney

Curse 5.0 (Short Stories by Liu Cixin Book 7)            Cixin Liu

The Water Knife                                                              Paolo Bacigalupi

Taking Care of Gods (Short Stories Book 10)             Cixin Liu

The Wandering Earth (Short Stories Book 2)            Cixin Liu

The Three-Body Problem(Remem.of Earth’sPast)   Cixin Liu

Seveneves: A Novel                                                         Neal Stephenson

Vessel                                                                                 Andrew J. Morgan

H2O                                                                                    Irving Belateche

The book of the courtier                                                Baldassarre Castiglione

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete      da Vinci

Godless Nerdistry: Or How to be a Bag of Chem      Dale DeBakcsy

Consider Phlebas (A Culture Novel Book 1)              Iain M. Banks

Fear the Sky (The Fear Saga Book 1)                            Stephen Moss

The Lost Starship (Lost Starship Series Book 1)         Vaughn Heppner

Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales                 Jay Allan

Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales                                Jay Allan

Fluency (Confluence Book 1)                                        Jennifer Foehner Wells

The Road to Hope                                                           Crissi Langwell

Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, Book 3)       Ken Follett

Robogenesis: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)     Daniel H. Wilson

A Burnable Book: A Novel                                            Bruce Holsinger

Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo series)    Hugh Howey

Wool: The Graphic Novel #1 (Silo Saga)                    Hugh Howey

YES                                                                                     Leonard Chance

The Fault in Our Stars                                                     John Green

The Divergent Series Complete Collection: D,I,A     Veronica Roth

The Nostalgist: A Tor.Com Original                            Daniel H. Wilson

Electric Blues (Arty Book 1)                                         Shaun O. McCoy

Ride of the Late Rain (Vergassy Chronicles Bk 1)    James Young

The Pattern Ship (The Pattern Universe Book 1)      Tobias Roote

After Shock: (Lucy Guardino FBI Thrillers Bk 4)     CJ Lyons

The Forgotten Land                                                         Keith McArdle

The First                                                                            Kipjo Ewers

The Princess and the Goblin (Illustrated)   George MacDonald

The Water Babies [with Biographical Intro]             Charles Kingsley

The Shriver Rpt:A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back    Maria Shriver

Wicked Sci-Fi Pulp -From1954 The Real Stuff Ill   Philip K. Dick

10 Lost Vintage Sci-Fi Short-Story Masterpieces      Chet Dembeck

Linked List of over 350 Free SciFi Classics                Morris Rosenthal

Distraction                                                                        Bruce Sterling

Vege Press-Cooker-50 Recipes for Busy People      Maria Holmes

The Seventh Science Fiction MEGAPACK Robert Silverberg

The First Science Fiction MEGAPACK                       Robert Silverberg

The Second Science Fiction Megapack                       Robert Silverberg

The Third Science Fiction MEGAPACK                     Fritz Leiber

The Fourth Science Fiction MEGAPACK                   Isaac Asimov

The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK                      Gardner Dozois

The Sixth Science Fiction MEGAPACK                      Johnston McCulley

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 8 (civitas)     Various

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 7 (civitas)     Various

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 6 (civitas)     Various

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 5 (civitas)     Various

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 4 (civitas)     Various

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 3 (civitas)     Various

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 2 (civitas)     Various

Weird Science Fiction Tales: 101 Vol. 1 (civitas)     Various

The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK 16 Tales         Edmond Hamilton

The H. Beam Piper Megapack: 33 Stories                 H. Beam Piper

The Works of Alan E. Nourse  [Illustrated]               Alan E. Nourse

Over the last two and a half years I have read some books—not as many as I would have back in my ‘bookworm prime’, but I still enjoy reading better than almost anything else. The above list is not exact—in the sense that I have not read every book—or every word in every book—just most of them. (Let he who reads every book he buys cast the first stone.) Also, a few of these listed are just Kindle duplicates of books I read long ago, and subsequently re-read as e-books. But by and large my reading list for the past coupla years is fairly represented above.

I could not tell you what most of these books are about. I read them and forget them, as far as details go—if I retain the main concepts and story arcs, I figure I’m doing well. My memory does not work well—I often have trouble, during a big book, keeping things straight as I read—remembering stuff afterwards is a bonus for me. I can re-read a book and get a few chapters in before the sense of familiarity starts to come to me—I’m often disappointed to do that, because the more I read, the more I remember, until I give it up and go looking for a new book. Memory is weird stuff—especially when it’s as dysfunctional as mine.

You’ll notice I mostly read Sci-Fi books. Science Fiction isn’t exactly educational in the strictest sense of the word—that word ‘Fiction’ tells you why. But Sci-Fi does have the advantage of letting science-educated people play with the concepts they were taught—and there is great value in that.

Real math and science are very complex, they’re taught in school (often by uninspired teachers to unwilling students) and they tend to be thought of as rote data. But the sciences are a living thing, growing and changing with every day—and Science Fiction provides a safe space for playing with scientific concepts and ideas, clarifying their meanings and highlighting their possibilities. It can be a thrilling peek at the future or a dire warning to the present—but my favorite aspect of Science Fiction is that it can conjure fantasies about what the human race can become.

And Science Fiction has a strange habit of deciding, every once in a while, to become Fact. It is not so strange that speculation on the future can become prediction—even fortune-tellers get it right sometimes, and Sci-Fi writers have the extra advantage of not talking in general terms, but of extrapolating aspects of real science into stories about where that science might lead. Star Trek once speculated on the idea of hand-held communicators and, lo and behold, we now have I-phones (an actual improvement, since I-phones can do much more than allow conversations between two people). Arthur C. Clarke once wrote a story about a geo-synchronous satellite used for communications—and thus his name appears on the first patent for a communications satellite. I could go on—the historic connection between science and Science Fiction is long and full of anecdotes.

Science Fiction can also lead to greater interest in Science. Among the print books left off the above list are some biographies. Recently, I have read “Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel” (2006) by Rebecca Goldstein and “Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist” (1997) by Albert E. Moyer (which I’m still reading). I’ve also recently read “Henry James: A Life” (1985) by Leon Edel and “Beethoven: The Man Revealed” (2014) by John Suchet. I’ve read James, but truthfully I was intrigued to read his biography when I read, in Henry’s bio, that he was a tutor of the young Henry James in 19th-century Albany, NY. The Beethoven bio was a gift from friends who knew I liked classical music and reading.

So I do have other interests—Sci-Fi is simply my favorite genre. Biographies are great, too—but, being works of intense research, it gets tricky finding someone who can dig up the info and also write well. Biographies can be fun—some historical figures have whole bookshelves of biography written about them—I’ve read three different biographies of Einstein, for example, and learned as much from their differences as I did from their explicit writing.

Sarah Vowell, Barbara Tuchman, Jared Diamond, and Laura Hillenbrand are some of my favorite writers of general history. I’ve also read some lackluster histories by other authors, but I have found that, with biography and historical non-fiction, the lack of literary talent can be balanced out by one’s interest in the subject. I have read some terribly boring books, simply because I was fascinated with the subject matter. Plus, they help me appreciate the really good writers.

In the Gospel of John we are told “the Word was with God and the Word was God”, the word ‘Word’ having been translated from the ancient greek ‘Logos’, which means  “a ground”, “a plea”, “an opinion”, “an expectation”, “word”, “speech”, “account”, “to reason”—later becoming a philosophical term meaning ” a principle of order and knowledge”. Thus Logos has always held a fascination for modern writers and thinkers. The interface between words and meaning is a slippery one. Semiotics become complex. But the struggle between what we mean and what we say (or write) goes on—words may be amorphous, but they’re the best tools we have. And so, this summer, go and get your words on.

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride   (2016Mar21)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Monday, March 21, 2016                                                  5:57 PM

That was snow—they weren’t wrong—but it came when we were sleeping and left before lunch, melting away in embarrassment from showing up on the first day of Spring. This weather is weird. But I’m not freaking out. Climate change is a disturbing vision, but I’ve been on worse planets than this.

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I read a lot of Dickens and other old classics way back when—those sorts of books really put you right in the picture—I could sense the streets, the parlors, the vernacular, the pace, the mores, the rhythm of the changing seasons as experienced in a prior century or two. It became clear to me that life was not always the way I was used to life being.

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I read science fiction, too—Verne and Huxley, Clarke and Asimov, and many others. These stories imagined a future time, with changed streets, different mores, and settings and devices that would seem strange if they appeared in our present. They sparked my imagination just as the classics had—but made me think of how the present might change over time and become something unimaginably different from what I was used to—just as my time was so very different from the days of Dickens.

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Now that reality has, in many ways, surpassed the wildest surmises of the sixties science fiction writers, I feel unusually well-prepared compared to the average person. While I was certainly surprised to see bookstores fade away overnight—along with stationary stores, tobacco shops, electronics stores—and sometimes whole small-town main streets full of stores and shops, replaced by a K-Mart or a Target—I was not shocked. When the state of Florida becomes a coral reef in ten years, I’ll just make sure I don’t buy property there—I’m not going to run around hysterical, like my hair was on fire. My childhood had prepared me for a changing future. I can’t help but wonder if some well-chosen science fiction reading might not be good insight for all schoolchildren.

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Then again, today’s kids would probably read e-books off an LCD screen—they are born into a ceaselessly changing culture and will live a ‘science fiction’ existence through their formative years—so perhaps my reading list would be unnecessary—it is certainly outdated.

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Alvin Toffler wrote his “Future Shock” in 1970—it warned of information overload and social isolation—and we are living his prophesy—though many techno-geeks in Silicon Valley would ‘sell’ that as miraculous progress, rather than a problem. It’s a tough call—but one thing that’s undeniable is that we are giving up something in exchange for our brave new world—and we don’t know ourselves well enough to judge right now whether we’ll come to regret some of those losses—we’re in a ‘new is better’ autopilot mode now.

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Early Europeans deforested their continent to the point where they saw the New World’s virgin forests’ lumber as a treasure trove. Early Native Americans of both continents hunted their large game animals to extinction—so they never saw a cow or a horse until the European invaders imported them. American cities nearly choked themselves to death before they recognized the smog situation and started limiting and filtering exhaust—and now the Chinese, having done the same damned thing fifty years afterward, are just starting to legislate emissions-controls. Anyone who thinks that humankind as a group will show some self-control in the face of dire consequences is no student of history.

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In the case of our new, digital culture, we don’t even know what sort of harm we’re inviting with all these changes—so we’re certainly going to keep right on merrily doing whatever we do—and even when the cracks start to show, we’ll just shrug it off and bull ahead. Sounds like a wild ride.

MrToadsWildRide

Trump Is Too Smart For Me    (2015Sep02)

Posted by XperDunn on

Tuesday, September 01, 2015                                          10:35 AM

Some people are smarter than others. Some people are really stupid. In a classroom, we get an obvious display of differences in intelligence—some kids get it right away, other kids struggle. If you stay in the classroom, you get smarter—not intrinsically smarter, just smarter because you have more information to work with—you’re better able to analyze, contrast, and compare. Thus the second graders think the first graders are stupid because they haven’t learned their times-tables yet.

The grade-level thing works itself out, in time, but varying levels of education and insight will continue to make some people smarter than others. Ordinarily it doesn’t matter—when me and my neighbors are mowing our lawns, we’re all smart enough for the task at hand. Someone’s lawn may turn out greener than the rest of us—but that’s not intelligence so much as interest—having an abiding interest in any subject will make one more knowledgeable. Not by magic, of course, but because one will pay attention to that subject and seek out new information related to it—it’ll catch your eye.

Back when I was a programmer, I was above average—not because I was smarter, but because I had affection for algebra, algorithm, and the trickiness of programming-language syntax—things that leave most people cold. Interest parallels intelligence in this way—we are all pretty expert in the things we love. Those who love reading, who love discussion, who love learning and research—these people will naturally stick out as smarter-than-average. But their smarts are as much a matter of their preferences as of their innate intelligence.

Some of us will be lucky—we will be inspired to read by our librarian, or be inspired to learn by that special teacher—and some of us will learn to love those things through loneliness, boredom, or privation. Either way, we will learn something not consciously taught in schools—we learn to enjoy our own company—this is where the ‘nerd’ factor comes in. Playing with the other kids can be a challenge—it becomes less so when one has the alternative of being by oneself. When solitude is the norm, however, important social skills are left unlearned.

Meanwhile, our childhoods will contain variations in parenting, income, educators, and environment—we can never know what would happen if all the kids in a community had mature, responsible parents, or went to a school with all great teachers. But even in a world of nerds, we can still assume that differing levels of smart would present themselves. I imagine that given optimal educational stimuli, we might experience the paradox of intuitive, non-scholastic intelligence becoming the most admired type of smarts. In an environment where everyone studies like mad, those who can juggle, or always have a ready quip, or have a knack for persuading people—might stand out as the ‘smart’ kids. (Indeed, this is true in reality—but mostly because scholastics are less exciting, not because they’re pervasively uniform.)

Learning facts, understanding relationships between facts, and scholastic pursuits in general are all categories of intelligence—but there are many others: empathy, charisma, intuition, salesmanship, social skills, communication, team-building, entrepreneurial activity, sensitivity—there are many important mental strivings beyond the simple ‘smartness’ of a straight-A student. That’s why top colleges care more about essays and ‘extracurricular’s than they do about SAT scores. That’s why ten different programmers can write a program for a certain job without any of them writing the same code—because there are as many ways to use intelligence as there are types of intelligence.

We use tests to ascertain certain intelligences—if you can pass a road test you are smart enough to be a licensed driver; if you pass the bar exam you are smart enough to practice law. But we have no tests for parenting, for managing, or for voting—intellectually demanding activities that can be attempted by people of any education or intellect—no matter how small. But then, there’s no test for being born, either. On the other hand, testing itself is a questionable method for determining skills—it’s just the best we can do with existing systems, and we have to use something to ascertain minimal competency in licensed activities like driving or practicing law.

But the most difficult aspect of intelligence is that having certain knowledge doesn’t protect the informed from disagreement by the uninformed. In my experience the most drastic example of this is when religiosity is used in place of information—I can know some facts for certain and still be unable to convince another person, because they perceive that information to run counter to their religious teachings. From my point of view it is legalized insanity—from their point of view it’s freedom of religion—but either way, it’s incorrect—and I know that, whether others remain unconvinced or not. And they say they pity me, but no more than I pity them. But they pity me for not sharing their delusion, while I pity them for being willfully blind to information that’s there for all to see, if they’d only let themselves see it.

Religiosity also bothers me because differing levels of intelligence will always be there to confuse an issue—and the religious delusions just add a whole ‘nother layer to that confusion. If you want to tell me there’s a heaven, a hell, a white-haired old guy, or a pearly gate—I’m all for it. None of that stuff bothers me. But if you want to make direct connections between what’s actually happening in life and those crazy fairy tales, there’s where I run into trouble. When religion is all good news and good vibes, it’s wonderful—but when it steps over the line into judgement, division, and hate, that’s a problem. And it’s never the religion itself that does that—it’s always some clown who’s taking an ego-trip or running a scam who decides we should all live within the confines of his personal dream of purity.

One type of intelligence is persuasion. People can be good at persuading other people, without having much of the more traditional forms of intelligence. We see this today in the Republican Party members—they persuade their followers of many things, but they’re not very concerned about the veracity of what they’re persuading their constituents to learn. They ‘educate’ to persuade, not to inform, and their believers mistake it for real education—they’re even taught to doubt the people who speak in earnest for the public good, like scientists. If the GOP can vilify scientists, who’s next—teachers?—literacy itself? This is why right-wingers always wear business suits—they think that if they resemble dignified people, it will dignify their propaganda. It probably helps them take themselves seriously, too—as long as they don’t look in a mirror.

Politics creates its own reality. When a politician faces an unpopular issue he or she will have two choices—please the crowd, or lose the election. We used to have a more authoritarian mind-set in this country—a politician had a shot at convincing us that their leadership was true, that we all had to bite the bullet for the common good—like when Johnson sent the National Guard to the Deep South. Now we’ve reached the point where an educated politician (who knows better) is forced to publicly cast doubt on evolution, or global warming, or the need for women’s health care. How those poor bastards get any sleep at night is a mystery to me.

And now they’re stuck with this guy, Trump, who has a PhD in persuasion—and almost no intellectual property outside of persuasion—and he has made their private sins into a public celebration, and they’re uncomfortable with that. They know that a lot of their hot-button issues are ‘naked emperors’ that won’t bear honest inspection—they know that the key to fighting progressives is to spread fear and confusion—not to bring these things out into the sunlight, as Trump is doing. He recognizes that many people are bigoted against Latinos—what he doesn’t recognize is that it’s a leader’s job to tell the haters that they are wrong. The rest of the GOP have at least that much understanding of public service—that one must use ‘dog-whistles’ to attract the haters without joining their ranks, where one is forced to defend the ethics of hatred—an impossible task.

Trump crystallizes the difference between ‘being correct’ and ‘winning the argument’—he can win almost any argument, but I have yet to hear him say anything that is true. I heard one talking-head on TV yesterday say, ”Well, it’s August…” I guess that means we’re all supposed to revel in stupidity while the sun is shining, and we’ll all get back down to earth when the leaves start to fall. Personally, I think we’re all being stupid enough, all the time, without taking a summer brain-break.

‘Twice Daily’ ? — Sure, Let’s See You Do It…

Posted by XperDunn on

When I was younger, I heard about some of the details of organ transplants—that the recipient had to take pills for the rest of his or her life to keep the body from rejecting the organ. As a healthy young man I thought, how awful—I’d just as soon pass on the whole thing. Imagine having to remember to take pills every day. And what if there was an apocalypse, huh? No more pills factories—bye-bye, little post-apocalyptic transplant patient! It would hardly be living at all, I thought.

I don’t know if I took my morning pills. A handful of pills in the morning, a different handful at night, continue ad naseum until you reach a fog of backward spiraling memories of having taken pills, pills, pills. Result: I have no idea if I took my morning pills—and they’re the important ones, though oddly enough I’m not referring to the prescription morning pills, but the OTC remedies for 24-hr acid suppression pills and anti-squirts pills (alas, I blush to admit!) The lack of them often prompts me to the realization that morning pills remain untaken, one way or another.

But you know how it is—fourteen hours of sleep, ten hours of relative consciousness—the metabolism of a coma victim, most days. So that morning problem lags behind, lurking ever nearby. And if I err on the side of caution, I get sick from doubling up on all those meds—it’s either be sure, or endure.

I amazed myself earlier with a passable read-through of a piano transcription of the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony—made it all the way to the end (which, if not a first, is certainly a second-time achievement). I’m always surprised by the amount of playing I can do when I stay relaxed.

Strangely, staying relaxed while playing the piano takes focus—not a tense focus, but a floatation type of focus, noticing ‘rigidity-creep’ and willing the muscles to be slack, or at least slacker, and maintaining a posture that is most supportive for my exertions, reducing the amount of muscle required to keep me upright and redirecting that power towards the arms.

And while that may sound very alert, it is only possible if one is quiet and not agitated. I do best upon waking in the morning, or from a nap. I pretend that I don’t care what goes on around me—I am in the living room, after all—but the simple truth is that silence is the best canvas to paint music on. So, half asleep, in a silent room, without the camcorder watching, I can do wonders. Too bad their nature makes them impossible to reproduce in front of other people, or even a camera lens—if people could only hear some of the stuff I get up to when I’m really on my game—oh, well. It’s good to have a private life—one has got to hold something back—and for a chatter-box like myself, being physically unable to display my best is the best (and only) way I can hold anything back—so that works out, if I look at it that way.

‘Twas ever thus’, as my dad used to say—I could draw a crowd while sketching in my pad in the old days—and an audience was an exciting addition to my sketches al fresco, especially at school, where cool points were counted. But my best drawing only ever happened in complete solitude—without interruption. Nor can I sparkle in conversation with the sort of easy erudition I can voice at the keyboard—like now, fr’instance—I could never sling this verbiage orally. It is only possible because I am alone and comfortable—and when I am not, nothing is possible. I have poor social skills, to put it mildly.

But peace of mind is vital. Whenever I’m worried, it gets in the way of my piano playing—being open enough to play and feel the music means being open to stray thoughts and when I’m worried, a whole flock will rush in. Sometimes it’s so bad I forget I’m playing the piano—weird, huh? You’d think a person would forget their troubles at the piano—but it’s just the opposite. But there’s a silver lining to the ‘peace of mind’ conundrum—when I read a good book I lose all awareness of my surroundings; I grow deaf to even loud noises; I am enthralled.

I couldn’t be more inside the story—I am a very good reader. To be a ‘good’ reader is a vague term—I’m specifically very good at vicarious experience. And as I look back at a lifetime’s book-worming, I’d say that my vicarious experience very likely exceeds both my conscious experience and my subconscious experience, i.e. I’ve spent more time lost in a book than I’ve spent not reading a book, or sleeping. Other people may talk about vicarious experience, but none who haven’t travelled in the world of books can ever truly understand its meaning.

I’ve often had occasion, upon being asked how my day went, for stopping myself from describing the adventures of the character in my book, and remembering to answer, “Just read a book, is all.” Here’s a good one—have you ever been reading about someone speeding through a dark woods and felt your eyes squint up at the danger of being poked by ‘twigs’? Have you ever eventually noticed a cramp in your arm from swinging a long-sword for so long in a ‘battle’? Then I hail you brother, or sister, in the Fellowship of the reaDing.

Kaleidoscope

Posted by XperDunn on

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Saturday, March 30, 2013               1:54 AM

Oh My God! When I read back some of the crap I’ve written, I could easily puke. There’s something about writing—in trying my hardest to make myself crystal clear, I muddle about worse than if I’d told it plain. But then I re-read my so-called ‘plain speaking’ and I find it full of vacuous nothingness—in avoiding detail and subtlety, I’ve written the equivalent of ‘Life is like an onion’ or some other such fortune-cookie rubbish.

And what indication has the universe given me that what I write is worth the digital disk-space to store—much less a hope that someone else will come round just dying to read it? None whatsoever—trying to kid myself is out of the question—I may not be much of a writer, but I sure as hell know good reading when I read it. In my normal course of reading a book I make allowances for times when I’m not in the mood for that particular story—or not in the mood for reading, as a past-time, generally.

Granted, that was nearly never in my original life. But even then, I’d be sometimes obliged to start a new book, with a different tone or texture than the one I’d not yet finished. Nothing is so well-written that it is always a pleasure to read—even for a dyed-in-the-wool bookworm like ‘me-point-one’ used to be. And now that I’m just slightly living in comparison to those wonderful days, I still enjoy a book—just not without suffering from the sort of neck-cricks and backaches and blurry vision that less-enthusiastic ‘readers’ like to make a point of complaining about.

And this is the problem with writing—even if it’s good (a big if) it still can make my flesh crawl when mine comes at me suddenly. The pomposity, the mawkish pettifogging, the condescension—I sound like a prize jack-ass. And this would be the same bit of writing I had re-read days ago, immediately after writing it, and thinking it superb!

But I am used to this. Does anyone know the worst thing about LSD? It’s the crash. The heady delirium and fascination with all things is replaced with a hollow, worthless reality that is nothing more than what it has always been—the same thing, day after day, year after year. We don’t normally experience the dread stolidity of life—but the LSD, in simulating the altered perceptions and convoluted thought-patterns of a schizophrenic, gives us a glimpse of a world that seems to be hiding behind the ‘same-ol same-old’ of life. It makes us feel exalted and fascinated by all the colors and sounds of the psychedelicized world—we wander like wondering children in a magnificent amusement park.

Then it wears off—and back comes the flat-seeming world we left from. But now it’s shabby, drab, irritating sameness is put into high contrast—it’s almost painful just to exist without the LSD’s magic. That is the worst thing about LSD—it makes reality seem dreary. The funny thing is, that disappointment lasts and lasts—it isn’t a hangover, it isn’t anything—it’s just the world, the way it’s always been—revealed as the grey, unmusical reality that people get hurt in, get sick in, die in, go broke in, and nothing can be done to stop any of it.

No sense of delight I’ve ever gotten from LSD, or any drug, has ever been worth the cost of that crash—the drug wears off, but the crash lingers forever. It is an awareness that behind all our thoughts and feelings and opinions is a world that doesn’t give a damn how we feel or what we believe—it will still gladly mush us like bugs if that’s what’s going on this moment. Good people get punished. Bad people get ahead. Innocent people get hurt and criminals get away with murder. All philosophy evaporates in the presence of hunger or cold or fear. All happiness comes in an instant and is gone before we have the wits to fully realize we are happy.

So I tell myself that I’m too critical of my own writing—that I’m denying myself the same leeway I grant other authors (and, believe me, many an author has taken full advantage of it—the curse of being compulsive about finishing whatever book I’ve started). I tell myself that perception is a shifty bugger, and if I wait until tomorrow I’m just as likely to see some good in the same writing.

So, like all would-be artists, I spend a lot of time listening to my own music, reading my own poems, looking at my own drawings—always asking, “Is it any good? –and if it is, would I be able to tell?” Many of my proudest creations have given me mal de mer from the eternal rising and falling of my opinion of its quality—it’s a good job that I had a habit of giving away all my drawings most of my life—I’d still be checking them every day to see if they looked okay or not.  And I’m far too busy listening to my piano recordings to waste time on that. As far as the writing goes, I figure it’s good therapy, like a journal or something, so I should keep it up even if I’m positive that it’s all garbage. And some days, I’m treated to a good opinion of myself for a few hours—I actually enjoy some of my writing on those days.

That still leaves a percentage that I’ll always feel embarrassed to have been the author of—but with those I just tell myself ‘nobody reads my stuff anyway, so no biggie…’ One of the many perks of being an amateur. I don’t know how professionals do it—creativity is such a tightrope—if I had to merge it with making my living, I’d be lost. Plus they have to have patience with the jerks that pay for art—you’d think such people would be gracious patrons of ‘art’, but I gather that’s not quite how it works.

But it’s all conditional—one’s faith, one’s happiness, one’s self-confidence, one’s solvency—they come and go as the wheel of fortune spins. The auction price for a Van Gogh will dip and climb depending on the art market. What started as Matt and Trey making silly, irreverent cartoons has become the toast of Broadway and London—a devastating lampoon of a major faith during which, apparently, no one in the audience can stop laughing. People starve. People text while driving. People grow old. People laugh.

Is it not fitting that our mood should also rise and sink from moment to moment, transforming the jumbled pile of reality as would a kaleidoscope, into seemingly perfect geometries of meaning and fulfillment? Can I ever hope to write down words that would improve the life of any who read them? Or can I only hope to interest myself in that conceit as a means of avoiding my true uselessness? And could I tell the one from the other? Do I want to?

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