A Return To Form

Ferryville, WI (but probably posting in either Prairie du Chien, WI, or Guttenberg, IA (UPDATE: Actually am currently in Dubuque IA))--Sorry for the lapse in posting frequency, it's been a very busy and Internet-and-cell-phone-free couple of days: nice every now and then, but eventually it's an itch you gotta scratch. Nick and family hosted us like long-lost relatives (it makes strong bonds, this River) and were able (sans one who had I believe a football game or something of the sort) to come out paddling with us yesterday, and we formed a small and slow-moving flotilla (seriously guys ever since I learned that word I've been aching to use it so cut me some slack re: its “proper” meaning (UPDATE TO THIS POST: I just discovered that Apple's TextEdit uses the same algorithm for determining the direction of quotation marks (I've also been dying to do a third parenthetical at some point so here it is: is there a specific word or term for the direction of quotation marks? Quotation Vector? Sub-Question: If one person somewhere made up such a word and used it exactly once, would it be a word? Super-Question: ..............? Super question! (Ed.: I'm going to kill you, and I already know exactly how and when I'm going to do it: with a knife. Sometime soon.)) as does Google's Blogger. Is this, like, the best we can do? Aren't these guys the giants of the algorithm-innovation-and-development fields? Hasn't MS Word had like a perfectly good algorithm for precisely this problem for, like, twenty years? Am I the only one who cares? (I know, I know, but Sub-Question: Is there a dedicated Quotation Marks Algorithm Developer on the Programming Staff of any of the three aforementioned companies, and if so, how does he feel about his title? Is he out for the Senior Punctuation Manager's job (and its accompanying colloquial title of “Pun(c/k) Guru?”), and if so, does the SPM know, and is there pushback (I'm sure there would be really nerdy, passive-aggressive pushback, although is there pushback that isn't passive-aggressive (excluding sexual harassment)?)?)); it's such a cool word, especially when “armada” is just out of the question) moving through the backwaters of the UM (Upper Mississippi for all you landlubbers (shore-shovers? concrete coolies? leg-lemmings? walkie-talkies (we neither walk nor talk on the UM)?)) (Ed.: oh my god get a life!).

T.O.: If you've made it this far, and read each parenthetical the way you should (read pretty much straight through until a close-parens, then go back two open-parens and start again, skipping the complete thought you already read and finishing the interrupted thought), congratulations. I felt that after a couple days of rather lax posting, my return shouldn't be a whimper (Ed.: Christ, you show this guy one fucking poem and suddenly he's... well, well, well I can't really think of any writer who is best-known for his allusions, I mean Joyce is kinda close but they're not so much allusions as archetypes; I'm sorry, you all know I'm a figment of his imagination and thus it's really him who's at fault for this shortcoming; but wait again, if I start blaming him for my flaws then do I lose free will? I've never been one of those people who can stand a paradox e.g. “God gave me free will.”). But it's also a result of paddling 20 miles in the hot sun on Friday then getting up and paddling a canoe a whole bunch yesterday (OK OK a whole bunch is, like, seven or eight miles but still it was also in the hot sun) and currently facing the prospect of another 20 miles in the hot sun today. So enjoy it while it lasts, buckos, cause nothing lasts forever.

T.I.: So all of this just kind of goes to show that it's been a pretty exciting few days, and exciting is all well and good (witness, e.g., how good this post is!) but it doesn't leave a whole lot of time or energy for writing, or really I guess producing anything at all. It's a sort of condensed absorption phase, and I was thinking about that again yesterday (Question: can writing or thinking about the creation and production of art and even artistic impulses, and I mean all that in about the broadest sense possible, possibly be considered art? And I really really don't mean that in a sort of freshman-in-college (-or-if-you're-me-junior-in-college-cause-I-didn't-get-a-whole-lot-of-those-questions-in-high-school (“get” meaning either receive or understand)), and I suppose I should modify the question to read “possibly result in art” rather than “be considered art”. And I guess first of all it's sort of a meaningless question, as is every question about what might constitute or prevent from constituting a work of art. So anyway.) and I was particularly considering this point, again, that the question of what this trip does for me (I still think it's too soon to say “has done for me”, not to mention that that formulation makes me a little sad), i.e. how does it change the way I see and hear and respond to things, is far more important the question of what I produce in direct response to it, which in the long run might not be anything beyond this blog. But then I started re-thinking: I've been dreaming a lot recently (which is, as a few of you might know, not something I do regularly), and they've been not especially vivid or memorable but one thing they have been is odd and, well, original and creative. I remember the night before last having a dream with a very cool soundtrack that I have never heard before (oh to have remembered it!), which has only happened to me a very few times and is both a fun experience and a sign that I have some, well, stuff that I want to get out. So I wouldn't say absorption is complete because obviously it never is. But I've spent a month and a half in places I've never been, doing things--highly mythologized things or at least a highly mythologized thing--that I've never done before. That's gotta do something.