Reflections on a Good Beginning Gone Awry

My humble bow.

I write this with the intention of doing exactly what I set about doing however I know that this will change and chaos will ensue. A match cannot be held too long before it burns. I have somewhat of an understanding that there are often times in everyone's life, in every government's life, and, hey ho, in every corporation's life when fingertips begin to feel the pain signaling that change will eventually occur. It is nature. It is barbecue.

Such change is inexorable in the long run whether it is the change we set out to create or the change that we are compelled to endure. This sounds reasonable enough. So, we'll let that be.

If we are smart we guide our canoe down the changing current not expending too much energy as to create a running battle. We will place our paddle carefully and hold it strongly. By this manner, we can create a short path which we might intuitively know is best. Yet we cannot keep our placement overly long or we will become rudderless against the natural forces that overpower what was our previous best guess at the way things were and now aren't. That sounds less reasonable, but I tire of rewording.

Sometimes I find myself predicting what might befall others even though it is far more important to know what I might myself come across-- but that is dangerous territory for concern. It is certainly easier to see the much more likely course of failure from the unpredictable than from that which has been taken into account. It is not too difficult to predict disaster with generalities and be correct. Empires like Rome will fall, a space shuttle will explode, and a dust speck will fly into our eye.

And this does not even account for other possible alternate universes where at some point a scientist will land a tiny probe upon a comet and then wear an awkward shirt with multiple Tabasco sauce bottles upon it and still be loved.

Fascination with failure creates an environment much more likely to result in failure, yet fascination with success, also, is likely to result in failure. To become overly worrisome is to lose sight of the current in the stream-- to become overly proud, the same. Our news networks are both.

Everywhere around me are empires that will one day fall. There are rocks in the stream that go unheeded. I have found that it is easy enough to point out the possible problems but more difficult to know whether the current might somehow whisk us around that outcropping of rocks without issue. I blame this on a course that must have been cast early on.

The inevitable happens and life is no longer what I once knew it to be, or simply no longer.
When I look around at you, I see a novel by Joseph Heller. When I look at myself, I see some stoic masterpiece which lies disguised inside a paperback edition of the boy scout manual.

Really, we are one and the same... in the end.

Digressive Second Thoughts

For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader,-not for want of penetration in him-but because 'tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;-and it is this: That though my digressions are all fair, as you observe, -and that I fly off from what I am about, as far and as often too as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care to order affairs so, that my main business does not stand still in my absence.

Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne

While it was at the top of my head, where there is a reddened bump caused by my neighbor's misplaced rake, I must remember to cling to my "main business" of blogging when blogging. Yet, I am afraid I find that there is no main business to blogging. The structure of blogs is asleep on the job and one is constantly paying no mind to audience because of it's miserable scantiness.  If ever there were a barren form of writing in regards to organization and readership, blogging is it. Were it a diary, which would at least configure the mess into chronology, then my life would be presented in simulcast here. Not only would I merely be reliving moments for exiguous purpose but... take thought. Even though I disguise my time zone as that of the Canary Islands, and even save entries written for days and then post at odd moments of time, even then a schedule might be deciphered and my comings and goings-- by the detail of my writing, such detail being the "main business" -- would be manifestly recorded as if train watching while the entries be shuffled into an inviting puzzle. Any good logician could piece together general happenings given the bare outline of an itinerary, well, adjusted to Canary Island time with mere mathematics.

And were one to inattentively leave one's security system lying about in diligent pursuit of one's main business... well, the danger is well apparent. The Internet is a place of sharing.. and so of unlimited information, and too much detail about how to sling Roundup laced ice cubes onto that jerky neighbor's manicured lawn may just be unproductive though well deserved, yes, well deserved individually. The rake!

Perhaps I need a biographical structure like Sterne. This is not my first mention of this, I am sure... and thus... the need. I will contemplate the idea. A full fledged book with beginning and end ... yet blog backwards. Oh my head.

Worn at the Heels

[I really don't mind if you sit this one out.]

 Hasten, because you cannot know who pursues closely behind or what might lie in wait ahead through your malingering. Exactly when the world seems a manageable tiresome muddle, something new will pass you and pass as something tried and true. I know that my words seem to veer and likely will not pass muster of being anything other than some cataclysmal rant of the day. But heed, because it is likely that in every age there is disorder which one might unwisely dismiss or adopt as being unto the same disorder that has all but been dealt with hitherto. “My father thought that the loom would cause a lot of trouble and here we are on the precipice of the next golden age of fabrics,” one might tell oneself. “Darwin was correct about the survival of the fittest and all is well,” one might say. But Darwin, alas, seems but the weaver of an inferior seam in the moral fabric of society, giving the bully a greater status over the thinking fawn that is torn asunder by brutish strength, By logical extension he further points ominously to an ever more likely catastrophic deselection on a grand scale which I fear is looming but just a short distance ahead. For the fawn in some scenario will not get wind of the charging lion until it is too late.

I assure you that my tragic drivel of the impending “Great Muddle,” trademark applicable, is of a concept wholly unused and neoteric. Even that word “neoteric” is so pristine that my spell check declines it. When no entity but the lexicon argues, things are far from being aright. I hold aloft a sign proclaiming the end is near and all scoff and take another bite of their energy bar, but what if a version of the end is actually nigh? Does it not seem that way? Might we be grazing on the green spring grass as the beast approaches? 

Ends of eras constantly pile up on the History Channel, sometimes multiple ends in an evening's viewing. When that moment of closure arrives someone inevitably is metaphorically stuck on an assembly line without a coffee break. Someone and perhaps many may find themselves without the ability to exist, simply deselected. Evolutionary nature favors the ones that were selected, but the deemphasizes the ones that, say, bravely cover a hand grenade to save comrades. We may be at the end of an era for the likes of them. Procreation, that is what improves the species. Survival regardless of the morals involved is prized absolutely.

And, yes, I can admit that at each step of perceived future chaos things appear to be drastic before they yet again appear to calm down. I must beseech you to hear the tolling of the bell and see the toll that is taken. Mercantilism is on the upswing, technology is beyond the comprehension of those selling it, and darkness pervades the country’s spirit as ever I have seen it. Our society may be that which is doomed through the weeding process though we assume it always, though contrary to our lying eyes, to be the winning nag.

Forgive this lack of digression. My new shoes are worn at the heels while my suntan does rapidly peel. My undissembled fear of the tail leader of the movie reel is stark and I fear it is unworthy of my envisioned diverting blog. I  have been too progressively focused and obsessive. This is really unlike me. So, at this opportunity fortuitously provided by my accidentally though consistently shabby efforts, I will offer an excerpt of a supremely better work than mine -- penned by my hero, the distinguished and eminent Laurence Sterne -- on the subject of digression, offered as a hasty digression, and in proof that though Stephen King is a survivor with more seamy success, those who met their frayed end long before with little reward are vastly more clever and worthy:

" By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too,—and at the same time.

This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth's moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy;—though I own it suggested the thought,—as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and discoveries have come from such trifling hints.
 
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;—they are the life, the soul of reading!—take them out of this book, for instance,—you might as well take the book along with them;—one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;—he steps forth like a bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.
 
All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a digression,—from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock still;—and if he goes on with his main work,—then there is an end of his digression.

—This is vile work.—For which reason, from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what's more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits. "

This is not the chaff that has been separated and caste to the winds, but like most classics, it is the wheat that an ignorant neglectful Darwinian mold of social unawareness has all but overcome, endemic madness accepted. And penicillin.. it will come... and only the hardy boys will adapt and survive.

Extenuation

I rarely have excuses of any merit when I need them in any manner. That seems to be the harmony of communal thought upon the quality of my excuses. Explanations for failures being a sign of a flawed character one might wonder why I have not amassed a treasure of them but let's just let that go because, in this matter, I have no excuse.

All will be made whole, a wormy apple but still intact, after this entry. Decidedly, it has been a protracted length of time since I last wrote in this preposterously fatuous blog. I make no bones. I attach no flesh upon those bones. I am... inert.

First, I have a... femoral to pick. Why in the name of the goddess Ananke do I desire to write a book just as my faculties begin to fail me? What is the justice in having such a large allotment of one's childhood spent in learning the fundaments of grammar only to have them escape one's grasp at the very cusp of the moment when their best opportunity of wise usage arises? That unseen villain of fate drives a remarkably agile and heavy bus in my direction, regardless of my attempts to follow the street signals of safety. My crosswalk is unclear, my time more important but less abundant. It is all there in plain view.

My eyes are not what they used to be. No matter the ocular lens I am given, all is a foggy battle for focus. I look down and half of the scene is of clear hairs standing upon my arm and the other half but an amusing cacophony of impressionist subject that not even the vacuous nature of modern day artists would touch. Though Monet was fairly blind when he did some of my favorites, those large panels, the ones that go beyond canvas and creep into one's vital being, I have some doubt my own impairments will lead to more than unspectacular result.

My, but it is a bitter wormy apple. I must attempt to lighten the veil of extenuation if I am to make it all whole to you, my dearest reader. You, I have perceived, are quite the dogged pursuer of sense in nonsense. I think it so admirable that I must think of some way to repay you. I have noticed your efforts. I will attempt to allot long distance dedications as my short time of span permits. Though keep in mind, that I cannot touch the soul of everyone who follows foolishly into the abyss of rambling discourse. Perhaps I should hold a lottery for dedication...

You deserve more. Yes, you are here.. towards the end... with bells on. I humbly bow to your pluck. Oh, dizziness, I must finish...

Dignatious Doggerel (in progress)

Doggerel

The bookbinder, the barrister, the cheat.
Commutation, compensation, low deceit.
Journeymen full worth their price,
For they had looked it over once or twice.

Then they brewed a blog of love and hatred,
Sussing the overfed and the overrated.
Contemplating council fixers,
And criticizing Dorothy Dixers.

Then they looked down upon the blogs they'd made
Scorned with crisp words and smug charade.
And packing it all up to the breech
The spewed it forth each one to each.
And resultant carnage was never mentioned.

But the cheat was tired of the cards he played,
And laid his drowsy words to rest in the shade.
The bookbinder, the barrister, without a clue, 
One could never spot when they were through.
To the eye they were well intentioned.

by Michael DeVore

Three Sheets to the Wind

Her dissembled tresses cascaded down over her silken shoulders like a latticework of lunacy, textile madness, a bolt to the senses. The structural complexity of her loose garments could not be sussed in that folly of descending locks. Like a waterfall 'twas, with repeating patterns only there to confuse. My concentration had never been so deranged. Close the door.

Am I forever to be a victim of what is going on about, while in truth never knowing here what merits going on about?

Time moves more and more swiftly towards it's conclusion. "The end of all things is near; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit..." - that Book. My spirit has never been as sober as my ability to ignore it...to slosh around and make a muck of what lifeblood I have left. 

All my born days, and many of my unborn days in all likelihood, were spent a worrier. I have tried a diet of trying to be more positive, attempting the realization that I have nothing to worry about, and believing that everything will be ok. But I ask you, who would believe such a worrisome twit that would drivel thus? 

I have not touched a rusted thimble of alcohol in such a protracted period, an ellipses, as such.  The only locale in which I feel comfort while drinking in this old age is upon a seagoing cruise liner. Though I may sound a fool, there are plenty of folks around to tend to one, inebriated or otherwise. It is further unlikely one would be in charge of the helm. Even in the cheapest of accommodations of a ship, one is sovereign. A state room... and worry seems far away. Though the ship could sink; one could fall overboard; those decks -- oh so slippery in the mist -- all but nonexistent in my mind. The worry disappears as daily life (the commonplace routine apprehensions) dissolve into the spinning newsprint of the past. Potted, unbalanced...

Rosebud...

by Michael DeVore

Errant Pondering

Errant pandering is all that 'tis. A blogger, one who is a close friend of mine, who writes blogs very similar to mine, seems nothing but a currier of obsequious favor from his rabble of readers, blogsters, his oppressors if you will, for I can see a relationship of mutual dependence. One or the other or both the two seem not in full mastery of their leisure time, putting it to such immature usage.

When I was a child I felt out of sorts during my summer vacation from the soulless academia of the time. A day or two would pass in boundless oblivion, the stone finally off of my back. At those times, without the benefit of a halfway house, a safe harbor from the jarring transition, I plunged headlong into my newly unbounded yet even more newly bounded freedom.

And, at this point, time has passed since I put to type those paragraphs and I have completely forgotten what I was on about. Nevertheless, since I am limited by the time I have been granted upon this plane of existence (but had I the world of time, I doubt I could figure the meaning) I publish. Even if the significance eludes ... quickly, quickly, I must publish... before the flicker expires and all goes black.

by Michael DeVore

Nonchalant Renaissance

As the new year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Fourteen, begins, the hour has come to present to you a reborn blog, full of eagerness for getting at the material concrete substance of random thought. Having put an end to the levity of the past in my last entry, declaring things over and done, flipped and spattered, it is with solemn respect that I continue upon a new course, as if such weren't ever consistently so.

Edit: nigh well I must have written  this entry in a drunken stupor... Tis now two months hence.

by Michael DeVore